Upon Further Review

Prior to getting to the crux of this review, some short commentary on recent events with the Ms. I think Jackie Z did a good job on the handling of Cliff Lee from start to finish. He basically stole Lee from the Phillies and then parlayed that into a bat and 3 decent prospects. It should be also noted the value that Lee provided to the team off the mound, and in particular, the pitching staff. I don’t think that Vargas and Fister would be the same pitchers without the influence of a consummate professional like Lee and it was a pleasure to watch him every fifth day as a Mariner. I did have the opportunity to see him pitch in person against the Padres, which was not his best outing (I think he gave up 6-7 runs), but the Mariners spotted him a 9-10 run lead by the third inning. I actually had to look around the stadium and make sure that I hadn’t accidentally drunk too much and ended up at Yankee stadium by accident.

I have mixed feelings about giving up Lowe in the Lee trade with the Rangers. As discussed later in this column, he added tremendous value to this team in 2009. What prompted this column was the performance of the Mariners bullpen in the past 5 games. In the sweep at the hands of the Royals, the Mariners starters all turned in quality starts only to have the bullpen blow the lead. In the first game against the Yankees, ditto. In last night’s game, the man who was asked to start in place of recently departed Cliff Lee was David Pauley, a recent call up from Tacoma and 8th round draft pick of the Padres back in 2001. Up to this start, he has bounced around the minors and has had 31 1/3 innings of major league experience, mostly with the Red Sox. So he has seen the Yankees before. He pitched well for 5 innings giving up only two hits, 3 runs (2 unearned). The HR he gave up to Tiexera in the first had its own flight plan, but that’s OK.

Anyway, I like to approach this writing hobby by watching games, forming an opinion of what I see with my eyes, and then validating what I saw with statistics and hopefully a reasonable explanation of the two. This accomplishes two goals, it tells me if what I am seeing and if my first formed opinion has any merit, and conversely tells me if I am missing something when I am watching the games.

In my initial review of the Mariners at the halfway point Here , I left out one aspect of the team that is different from last year’s squad which on the surface I completely overlooked but has been a sore point since opening day. For as stellar as the Mariners starting pitching has been this season, their bullpen has been a disaster. To compare (rankings are for AL)

                                                 2009                    2010
Marniners Team ERA            ERA  Rank         ERA    Rank
Total                                          3.87   1                3.90     3
Starters                                      3.89   1                3.56     1
Relievers                                    3.83   3                4.80     14

                      2009     2010
Holds             82         17

Full 2009 Mariners relievers statistics are Here
Full 2010 Mariners relivers statistics are Here

I really don’t where to begin. In 2009, I was joking with my girlfriend at a Red Sox game while watching the relief pitchers warm up, that Batista was the guy the Ms brought into the game when they wanted to lose. This was a case where what I saw live didn’t match the statistical reality. I only mention this because my girlfriend didn’t really care whether or not Batista could go into a game in a critical situation and hold the lead, what she cared about was that he was a gorgeous man. She told John Wettland (Ms bullpen coach) that watching the pitchers warm up was like watching Playboy TV for women. Needless to say, this hurt my feelings considerably and she is no longer my girlfriend. John Wettland thought it was hilarious. For those of you who have not been to Safeco, it is one of the neatest ballparks in America. You can get that close to the relievers warming up for both teams and talk to them, if they will oblige. I plan to write a column on the ballparks that I have visited and the fan experience through my eyes, with Camden Yards being my favorite, but I digress.

The number that explains the Mariners pitching problem more than any other in this list is the number of holds that the Mariners pen has been able to obtain, or in this case, to not obtain. Projecting 2010 out to the full year, the number would be 34. That is 48! less holds for the season. That is also an astounding number. Assuming that only 50% of those occasions translated into wins, that would translate into 24 more wins for this team! So while everyone and their uncle bemoans the fact that this team cannot hit and is on pace to score less than 600 runs this year (worst in the AL, second worse in MLB) and correctly so, the bullpen should also be accountable for this continued train wreck of a season. Taking half of the holds total and adding it to the win column in the current standings, the Mariners would be 46-40 and 4 games back of the Rangers.

While Aardsma has struggled a bit this year, I don’t place the blame of this situation squarely on him and cite two factors that I think are directly responsible for this atrocity: First, the absence of Mark Lowe and second, the attitude that the bullpen had last year as a unit. The latter cannot be understated.

Lowe had 26 holds last year, a 2.5 to 1 K/W ratio, and was the setup guy for the Mariners. While this is quantitatively a good performance, his effect on the psyche of the bullpen cannot be underestimated. The Mariners bullpen last year had attitude. This had to have some positive effect on Aardsma and the other relievers. The bullpen, for some time, would bring different warrior helmets to the game and display them in the bullpen. They were a unit that said, “When we come into a game, we are going to shut you down”. Of course, this tradition had to end because MLB thought it might offend some long lost descendent of the Viking population that happened to have brought his boat to Safeco to take in a game in the spare time that he had from raping and pillaging modern society.

The substitute for Lowe is League, who is still an enigma to me as his stats are not awful but marginally worse than Lowe’s, except in holds (6, projects to 12, 2/1 K/W ratio) and a 3.95 ERA for League versus 3.26 for Lowe. Apparently, what seems to be a minor difference is a remarkable difference in overall performance as Lowe lost 7 games all year and League has already lost 6. Maybe he is worrying too much about his next tattoo and hair style to focus on pitching in tight games.  It should be pointed out here that League was part of the saga that was Brandon Morrow, as he was one of the players that the Mariners received from the Blue Jays in that swap during the offseason.

Sean White has been injured on and off and that may be the reason for why he hasn’t performed this year and the loss of Batista through free agency hurt this team more than I expected. So when I say I have mixed feelings about this Lee trade, it comes down not only to what the Ms got in return, but what they gave up. While Lowe has not pitched this year due to injury, he was an invaluable member of this bullpen and a key reason why the Mariners finished so much better than their run differential in 2009.