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.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Deja Vu All Over Again - KC/Ms
3-2 Mariners, top of the 8th. League in as the "setup guy". There must be a new definition that means literally "I am going to come in and set up the opposing team with a win".
Dejesus and Butler walked. Callaspo hit a 97 mph fastball that landed in my living room. Mind you, I am 10 miles from the stadium.
Wakamatsu brings in Olsen. Ugh.
Prediction - I am going to post this while KC is still batting in the 8th. Mariners threaten in the 8th but don't score. They have already had the bases loaded twice in this game without scoring, once with one out and once with two outs. KC wont score in the ninth, Soria will come on and the punchless Ms will go weakly in the 9th. Swept at home by the Royals. It is actually painful to write that last sentence.
PS - While finishing this post, Maier hit a home run that actually went farther than the Callaspo HR, so I guess by my estimatess it flew over my house and hit my neighbor!
Dejesus and Butler walked. Callaspo hit a 97 mph fastball that landed in my living room. Mind you, I am 10 miles from the stadium.
Wakamatsu brings in Olsen. Ugh.
Prediction - I am going to post this while KC is still batting in the 8th. Mariners threaten in the 8th but don't score. They have already had the bases loaded twice in this game without scoring, once with one out and once with two outs. KC wont score in the ninth, Soria will come on and the punchless Ms will go weakly in the 9th. Swept at home by the Royals. It is actually painful to write that last sentence.
PS - While finishing this post, Maier hit a home run that actually went farther than the Callaspo HR, so I guess by my estimatess it flew over my house and hit my neighbor!
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Kansas City 6, Mariners 4 - We've Seen This Before
Wow. I thought that they were done repeating the same mistakes that have been haunting this team the entire season. Wrong again. In last night’s 6-4 loss to the Royals, in 10 innings, dropping their extra inning record to 1-8, they repeated the same script that they have so many times this season.
The story begins very promising, with our antagonists grabbing a 4-1 lead in the 5th inning; Branyan HR and King Felix cruising along in his usual fashion; Piling up pitch count, but getting his K per inning and not giving up runs. Felix has a nice ability to get himself out of trouble by kicking it into that next level. I unfortunately know the ending to this story having watched it countless times this season.
Wakamatsu goes to the new set up guy in the bullpen, Brandon League, after Felix has thrown 112 pitches. League scares me. He has a very odd delivery that tricks my eyes because I never believe he is throwing the ball as hard as the radar gun suggests. It looks like he is chucking it up there not quite sidearm but not quite ¾ delivery, yet the ball is regularly in there at 96 mph. He is either lights out or coughs up the lead. Far too often, he coughs up the lead. I can’t tell from watching and don’t have access to ask anyone why this is but I would surmise it is because his fastball is delivered at eye level and either has movement or is flat. Now that (movement) is naturally the case with any pitcher, but on TV it looks to me like he had good movement last night.
Anyhow, he coughed up the lead. 4-4, moving to the bottom of the 8th. The Royals reluctantly go to their bullpen which has to be giving Ned Yost ulcers. They have given up more runs in the 7th and 8th inning than any team in baseball so there is hope for the punchless Mariners. Keep in mind that I still know the ending to this story but much like a bad car accident, I can’t help myself but to watch.
Branyan walks and Lopez doubles to right. Lucky double but we’ll take it. Men on second and third, nobody out and the D.A. warming up in the pen. I love that the Mariners announcer, Dave Simms, tagged David Aardsma with the nickname D.A. and that they play the Law and Order music when he comes into the game. Great stuff. Side note: Mariners fans at the game have seen this movie before as well. The crowd is busy drinking lattes and discussing whether or not it will rain clear through to December.
This is the point at which I can feel my blood pressure going up. Guttierez can do almost anything to get that run in except for striking out and popping up to the infield. Naturally he strikes out swinging. They intentionally walk Kotchman to get to Bradley. That sentence alone is pathetic/funny/ludicrous on so many levels. Bradley, who is being paid Carlos Silva money to play here, also strikes out.
Research forthcoming on how many times the Mariners have had runners on 2nd, 3rd or both with less than 2 out and didn’t score. It is freakishly high. There was a series in Texas earlier in the year where they did it 3 games in a row!
Cordero now on for the M's after Aardsma gets through the 9th. The top of the 10th was very odd in that two of the three outs were caught stealing, yet the Royals scored two runs. The one that irks me to no end begins with 2 outs, game stil tied. To recap the start of the inning, Callapso walked and got caught stealing. Aviles grounded out and then Maier tripled. Betancourt to the plate. This is where the mild anuerism set in. Cordero gets 2 quick strikes. It is important to note here that Betancourt has ZERO plate discipline (10 walks in 286 plate appearances, good for dead last of all MLB players with over 250 plate appearances), but if the ball is thrown over the middle of the plate, like most major leaguers, he can hit it. The next pitch was down the pipe and of course, Betancourt hit it plating Maier.
Throw the ball at the mascot, the umpire, anywhere but over the plate and there is a high probability that Betancourt will K. Baffling.
The story begins very promising, with our antagonists grabbing a 4-1 lead in the 5th inning; Branyan HR and King Felix cruising along in his usual fashion; Piling up pitch count, but getting his K per inning and not giving up runs. Felix has a nice ability to get himself out of trouble by kicking it into that next level. I unfortunately know the ending to this story having watched it countless times this season.
Wakamatsu goes to the new set up guy in the bullpen, Brandon League, after Felix has thrown 112 pitches. League scares me. He has a very odd delivery that tricks my eyes because I never believe he is throwing the ball as hard as the radar gun suggests. It looks like he is chucking it up there not quite sidearm but not quite ¾ delivery, yet the ball is regularly in there at 96 mph. He is either lights out or coughs up the lead. Far too often, he coughs up the lead. I can’t tell from watching and don’t have access to ask anyone why this is but I would surmise it is because his fastball is delivered at eye level and either has movement or is flat. Now that (movement) is naturally the case with any pitcher, but on TV it looks to me like he had good movement last night.
Anyhow, he coughed up the lead. 4-4, moving to the bottom of the 8th. The Royals reluctantly go to their bullpen which has to be giving Ned Yost ulcers. They have given up more runs in the 7th and 8th inning than any team in baseball so there is hope for the punchless Mariners. Keep in mind that I still know the ending to this story but much like a bad car accident, I can’t help myself but to watch.
Branyan walks and Lopez doubles to right. Lucky double but we’ll take it. Men on second and third, nobody out and the D.A. warming up in the pen. I love that the Mariners announcer, Dave Simms, tagged David Aardsma with the nickname D.A. and that they play the Law and Order music when he comes into the game. Great stuff. Side note: Mariners fans at the game have seen this movie before as well. The crowd is busy drinking lattes and discussing whether or not it will rain clear through to December.
This is the point at which I can feel my blood pressure going up. Guttierez can do almost anything to get that run in except for striking out and popping up to the infield. Naturally he strikes out swinging. They intentionally walk Kotchman to get to Bradley. That sentence alone is pathetic/funny/ludicrous on so many levels. Bradley, who is being paid Carlos Silva money to play here, also strikes out.
Research forthcoming on how many times the Mariners have had runners on 2nd, 3rd or both with less than 2 out and didn’t score. It is freakishly high. There was a series in Texas earlier in the year where they did it 3 games in a row!
Cordero now on for the M's after Aardsma gets through the 9th. The top of the 10th was very odd in that two of the three outs were caught stealing, yet the Royals scored two runs. The one that irks me to no end begins with 2 outs, game stil tied. To recap the start of the inning, Callapso walked and got caught stealing. Aviles grounded out and then Maier tripled. Betancourt to the plate. This is where the mild anuerism set in. Cordero gets 2 quick strikes. It is important to note here that Betancourt has ZERO plate discipline (10 walks in 286 plate appearances, good for dead last of all MLB players with over 250 plate appearances), but if the ball is thrown over the middle of the plate, like most major leaguers, he can hit it. The next pitch was down the pipe and of course, Betancourt hit it plating Maier.
Throw the ball at the mascot, the umpire, anywhere but over the plate and there is a high probability that Betancourt will K. Baffling.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Mariners at the Halfway Point
At the halfway point of the 2010 season, the Mariners currently stand at 34-47, 14 games behind Texas in the AL West and have been outscored 343-281, for a run differential of minus 62 runs.. Last year, the Mariners finished the season 85-77, 12 games behind Los Angels even though they were outscored 692-640, for a differential of minus 52 runs. Certainly not what we expected, or is it?
There are numerous contributing factors to the record the Mariners have posted this year, most of which should not be a surprise. They are, in no particular order, the general weakness of the farm system going into the season, the ridiculous level of expectations with no regard to analysis and statistics, failure to asses that they were lucky last year, and the lack of even one major league power hitter in the lineup. I will maintain that they are exactly where I expected them to be but since I can offer no credence to that assertation other than a few conversations that were had with my friends here in Seattle, you will just have to take my word for it. Both that I have friends and that the conversations actually took place!
Failure to assess the “Luck Factor”
In addition to the expectations that seemed to follow this team going into the season from the moves made in the offseason was the notion that they would repeat the statistical anomaly that was last season. The Mariners finished 9-10 wins above their projected PECOTA rankings last season and had career years from Lopez and Branyan AND won an improbable number of one run games. To put it more succinctly, they were lucky. This year, they are about where they should be given the run differential that they have posted at the halfway point of the season.
High expectations are the hallmark of any professional team going into the season. It is one of the assets of any sport that makes the game passionate for the fans and players. That being said, baseball is one of the few sports where one can statistically predict the outcome of a baseball team before the season happens with relative accuracy. There are very few surprises in baseball.
Expectations and Jackie Z
I will forever be calling Jack Zduriencik Jackie Z in this post. Just easier to type and misspelling his name 100 times is frustrating.
Here are some predictions that I found on the web. The comments are not mine, but those of the writer of the column. I am shocked that Posnanski missed this given his long history of writing with Rob Neyer and coverage of the Royals. Only two are listed specifically here as I could not find the ESPN archived predictions but every site visited that was found had the Mariners either winning the division or coming in second.
MLB Tribune – 94 wins, second in the west. They have the best one-two punch in newly signed Cliff Lee and their big man King Felix Hernandez. They also signed Chone Figgins for some needed offense. This team has made some nice moves this winter and should be much improved and possible make a run for the division or worst case a Wild Card bid.
Joe Posnanski – 87 wins, division winner. Comment: The Mariners rather famously have gone after defense … and they should again be a spectacular defensive team. And with the acquisition of Figgins, Casey Kotchman and Milton Bradley they should score more runs. But while the Mariners are everyone’s favorite including my own going into the season, it is worth remembering that Seattle scored just 640 runs last year, dead last in the league by a longshot. That 640 runs was only better than TWO National League teams — and at last check they let the pitchers hit in that league.
Why, why, why? Why can’t I find one analyst who looked at the simple fact that this team was not going to score runs? They added Figgins and Bradley, neither of which are playing to their potential, but subtracted all of their power by letting Branyan walk and not resigning Beltre. The latter is not an issue as he was terrible last year (.265/.304/.379, 8 HRs) despite being nagged with various injuries, the most infamous being not wearing a cup. The Mariners shelled out $15 M or so for his services. One point on Bradley, he is never healthy and has never hit more than 22 HRs in a season. It is curious that with so much stress on pitching and defense that he was signed in the first place. To the casual observer, he has no business in LF and should be occupying the DH spot in the lineup with Sweeney. Posnanski hinted at the lack of runs in his column but apparently drank the Jackie Z kool aid like the rest of the media. In honor of Griffey, I have nothing to add other than that it was obvious at the end of last year that he should of hung it up.
I am all for pitching and defense as a methodology to win ballgames and building a team that fits the ballpark where the majority of your games are played however there are two things to remember. 81 games are still played in other team’s ballparks and reducing the margin of error by ignoring power to this degree puts a tremendous strain on the team and in particular, the pitching staff. Cliff Lee must have recurring nightmares about losing 1-0 games.
No Power
The local media discussions during the first half of the season here in Seattle centered around why the Mariners could not score runs and generally bordered on the incredulous. As if this was shocking news. Multiple solutions were offered up by the armchair GMs including batting Ichiro somewhere else in the lineup, blaming Jackie Z for failing to see this, blaming the stadium for being too pitcher friendly, blaming Don Wakamatsu for not bathing his dog on Wednesday day games, etc. The bottom line of all this nonsense is that if a team does not have the talent on its roster to score runs; it is not going to score runs. My a priori sense tells me that batting Ichiro third in the lineup may give Ichiro more RBIs, but he will also score less runs himself and this also assumes that there is someone in the order that can get on base in front of him for him to drive in. The Mariners currently rank LAST in the AL with .241/.309/.349 hitting which is, needless to say, abysmal. If they were league average, given that they are third in pitching with a 3.88 ERA, they would be plus 27 in run differential and most likely within 5 games of Texas for the lead in the division. To look deeper, here is their normal starting lineup with reserve players currently on the roster.
Starters
Ichiro .328/.383/.419
Figgins .239/.338/.280
Gutierrez .277/.350/.421
Bradley .212/297/.370 OR Sweeney.263/.327/.475
Branyan .267/.332/.503
Lopez .242/.272/.332
Josh Wilson .264/.316/.346
Johnson .200/.307/.307
Saunders .210/.271/.429
Reserves
Jack Wilson .250/.265/.333
Alfonso .220/.220/.317
Kotchman .206/.288/.325
The league average for slugging is .407. The Mariners average with this group of players that currently occupy roster space is .365 and that is with Branyan’s Cleveland stats included, who now comes to the team with the highest slugging percentage, and there isn’t a close second. Common sense tells me that it doesn’t matter where Ichiro bats in this lineup. If he bats lower, it is statistically likely that he will be left on base and score less runs, even though he may produce more RBIs. While I am sure that there is an analysis that can be churned out to prove this theory, I don’t know how to do it and don’t have the time to do it. I am currently looking for a site where scenario analysis statistics can be run. Probably on baseball prospectus. The long and short of this exercise is the talent does not currently exist on this roster to produce more runs and they will not score more runs until run producing talent is added. So where does this run producing talent come from?
The Farm System
Fixing what Bill Bavasi did to this team is going to take some time. I have every faith in the skill set that Jackie Z brings to the table as the GM of the Seattle Mariners as explained so well in this article by Rany Jazayerli here (http://www.ranyontheroyals.com/2010_05_16_archive.html)which is partially about the talent that was developed in Milwaukee under Jackie Z’s watch (Rany on the Royals) but it will take a few years to repair the disaster known as the Bill Bavasi experiment. His reign of terror in Seattle is well documented; the Baltimore fleecing a la Bedard, the head case that is now Brandon Morrow, why not draft UW prospect Tim Lincecum who openly wants to play at home, etc., so I don’t want to go into that because in general it prevents me from sleeping at night.
The bottom line is that the farm system is a mess. A review of the farm system deserves its own post so that is forthcoming.
My hope is that anyone reading this finds it informational and useful and had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Future posts: prospects, trade deadline, the Seattle sports fan.
There are numerous contributing factors to the record the Mariners have posted this year, most of which should not be a surprise. They are, in no particular order, the general weakness of the farm system going into the season, the ridiculous level of expectations with no regard to analysis and statistics, failure to asses that they were lucky last year, and the lack of even one major league power hitter in the lineup. I will maintain that they are exactly where I expected them to be but since I can offer no credence to that assertation other than a few conversations that were had with my friends here in Seattle, you will just have to take my word for it. Both that I have friends and that the conversations actually took place!
Failure to assess the “Luck Factor”
In addition to the expectations that seemed to follow this team going into the season from the moves made in the offseason was the notion that they would repeat the statistical anomaly that was last season. The Mariners finished 9-10 wins above their projected PECOTA rankings last season and had career years from Lopez and Branyan AND won an improbable number of one run games. To put it more succinctly, they were lucky. This year, they are about where they should be given the run differential that they have posted at the halfway point of the season.
High expectations are the hallmark of any professional team going into the season. It is one of the assets of any sport that makes the game passionate for the fans and players. That being said, baseball is one of the few sports where one can statistically predict the outcome of a baseball team before the season happens with relative accuracy. There are very few surprises in baseball.
Expectations and Jackie Z
I will forever be calling Jack Zduriencik Jackie Z in this post. Just easier to type and misspelling his name 100 times is frustrating.
Here are some predictions that I found on the web. The comments are not mine, but those of the writer of the column. I am shocked that Posnanski missed this given his long history of writing with Rob Neyer and coverage of the Royals. Only two are listed specifically here as I could not find the ESPN archived predictions but every site visited that was found had the Mariners either winning the division or coming in second.
MLB Tribune – 94 wins, second in the west. They have the best one-two punch in newly signed Cliff Lee and their big man King Felix Hernandez. They also signed Chone Figgins for some needed offense. This team has made some nice moves this winter and should be much improved and possible make a run for the division or worst case a Wild Card bid.
Joe Posnanski – 87 wins, division winner. Comment: The Mariners rather famously have gone after defense … and they should again be a spectacular defensive team. And with the acquisition of Figgins, Casey Kotchman and Milton Bradley they should score more runs. But while the Mariners are everyone’s favorite including my own going into the season, it is worth remembering that Seattle scored just 640 runs last year, dead last in the league by a longshot. That 640 runs was only better than TWO National League teams — and at last check they let the pitchers hit in that league.
Why, why, why? Why can’t I find one analyst who looked at the simple fact that this team was not going to score runs? They added Figgins and Bradley, neither of which are playing to their potential, but subtracted all of their power by letting Branyan walk and not resigning Beltre. The latter is not an issue as he was terrible last year (.265/.304/.379, 8 HRs) despite being nagged with various injuries, the most infamous being not wearing a cup. The Mariners shelled out $15 M or so for his services. One point on Bradley, he is never healthy and has never hit more than 22 HRs in a season. It is curious that with so much stress on pitching and defense that he was signed in the first place. To the casual observer, he has no business in LF and should be occupying the DH spot in the lineup with Sweeney. Posnanski hinted at the lack of runs in his column but apparently drank the Jackie Z kool aid like the rest of the media. In honor of Griffey, I have nothing to add other than that it was obvious at the end of last year that he should of hung it up.
I am all for pitching and defense as a methodology to win ballgames and building a team that fits the ballpark where the majority of your games are played however there are two things to remember. 81 games are still played in other team’s ballparks and reducing the margin of error by ignoring power to this degree puts a tremendous strain on the team and in particular, the pitching staff. Cliff Lee must have recurring nightmares about losing 1-0 games.
No Power
The local media discussions during the first half of the season here in Seattle centered around why the Mariners could not score runs and generally bordered on the incredulous. As if this was shocking news. Multiple solutions were offered up by the armchair GMs including batting Ichiro somewhere else in the lineup, blaming Jackie Z for failing to see this, blaming the stadium for being too pitcher friendly, blaming Don Wakamatsu for not bathing his dog on Wednesday day games, etc. The bottom line of all this nonsense is that if a team does not have the talent on its roster to score runs; it is not going to score runs. My a priori sense tells me that batting Ichiro third in the lineup may give Ichiro more RBIs, but he will also score less runs himself and this also assumes that there is someone in the order that can get on base in front of him for him to drive in. The Mariners currently rank LAST in the AL with .241/.309/.349 hitting which is, needless to say, abysmal. If they were league average, given that they are third in pitching with a 3.88 ERA, they would be plus 27 in run differential and most likely within 5 games of Texas for the lead in the division. To look deeper, here is their normal starting lineup with reserve players currently on the roster.
Starters
Ichiro .328/.383/.419
Figgins .239/.338/.280
Gutierrez .277/.350/.421
Bradley .212/297/.370 OR Sweeney.263/.327/.475
Branyan .267/.332/.503
Lopez .242/.272/.332
Josh Wilson .264/.316/.346
Johnson .200/.307/.307
Saunders .210/.271/.429
Reserves
Jack Wilson .250/.265/.333
Alfonso .220/.220/.317
Kotchman .206/.288/.325
The league average for slugging is .407. The Mariners average with this group of players that currently occupy roster space is .365 and that is with Branyan’s Cleveland stats included, who now comes to the team with the highest slugging percentage, and there isn’t a close second. Common sense tells me that it doesn’t matter where Ichiro bats in this lineup. If he bats lower, it is statistically likely that he will be left on base and score less runs, even though he may produce more RBIs. While I am sure that there is an analysis that can be churned out to prove this theory, I don’t know how to do it and don’t have the time to do it. I am currently looking for a site where scenario analysis statistics can be run. Probably on baseball prospectus. The long and short of this exercise is the talent does not currently exist on this roster to produce more runs and they will not score more runs until run producing talent is added. So where does this run producing talent come from?
The Farm System
Fixing what Bill Bavasi did to this team is going to take some time. I have every faith in the skill set that Jackie Z brings to the table as the GM of the Seattle Mariners as explained so well in this article by Rany Jazayerli here (http://www.ranyontheroyals.com/2010_05_16_archive.html)which is partially about the talent that was developed in Milwaukee under Jackie Z’s watch (Rany on the Royals) but it will take a few years to repair the disaster known as the Bill Bavasi experiment. His reign of terror in Seattle is well documented; the Baltimore fleecing a la Bedard, the head case that is now Brandon Morrow, why not draft UW prospect Tim Lincecum who openly wants to play at home, etc., so I don’t want to go into that because in general it prevents me from sleeping at night.
The bottom line is that the farm system is a mess. A review of the farm system deserves its own post so that is forthcoming.
My hope is that anyone reading this finds it informational and useful and had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Future posts: prospects, trade deadline, the Seattle sports fan.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
My First Post
Since this is my first blog I think it is necessary to give some context of who I am. And since this is my blog and I can write whatever I want I am going to do just that! I am just this guy who has a passion for baseball, politics and taking an interest in the city where I live. This city happens to be Seattle, WA. I moved here 6 years ago from Washington, DC and am originally from Buffalo, NY. My sports interests are the Sabres, Bills and Terrapins. The University of Maryland was gracious enough to give me a college degree and 635 parking tickets as a parting gift.
What is missing from that list is a baseball team and a pro basketball team. Pro basketball has no appeal to me and probably never will. There is no allegiance to a baseball team either. Growing up, despising the Yankees came early on and has carried with me throughout my life. More on that in a different post.
Moving from Buffalo to the DC area (this is before the Nats came to town, leaving DC before they came to town) I became an Orioles fan. The Oriole Way was intriguing; hard work, pitching and defense. Bring up your own developed players from the farm system and put a good team on the field, year after year. Two things happened to the Orioles that made me sour on them. Peter Angelos bought the team. From this fan’s perspective, he single handedly drove that once proud franchise into the ground. He has not put a quality product on the field in 15+ years and the mindset of how he runs that team disgusts me. Given that he made the bulk of his money suing tobacco companies, he comes across as a quick fix guy, with little morals and that has shown with the product that he continually passes off as a baseball team and inflicts on the wonderful city of Baltimore.
Moving from DC to Seattle in 2004, it was the Red Sox time, and I became a fan of that particular Red Sox team. Watching them since 1986 and the infamous Bill Buckner play, my compassion for their long suffering fans drove me to root for them, much like the Cubs, who I would root for if they ever were to get into the World Series. I am by no means a die-hard Sox fan and the team has changed dramatically since then.
Living in Seattle, there is no choice but to follow the Mariners because it is the only game on TV. I’m too cheap to buy the baseball package and most of the games are on at 4:00 PST which interferes with work. I go to about 3-4 games per year and watch almost all of them on TV. I would not call myself a Mariners fan, but since I live here and take an interest in the local teams and the city, it makes sense to follow them. During the season, most of these posts will be about the Mariners.
Fanaticism lies in Bills’ football, Sabres’ hockey and Terrapin’s sports. In retrospect, that is a very tortured existence, but that is a post or 10 for this fall.
I am not a professional writer and don’t pretend to be. For a living, I perform random acts of corporate finance and accounting. I also try to keep breathing each day, be thankful for the simple things in life that bring happiness and joy and always remember that no act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted (Aesop).
Happy Fourth of July. God bless our independence and those who keep this country free.
PS – Rereading this blog post, there is too much reference to “I” and “Me”. Not usually my style, however it will be left on the site as a reference point and some context into who I am. It is of great assistance to me when I read other people’s writing, especially people that do this for a living, to know the context in which they write. Most sports writers will say they are objective but then again, I don’t spend a lot of time reading that type of work!!
What is missing from that list is a baseball team and a pro basketball team. Pro basketball has no appeal to me and probably never will. There is no allegiance to a baseball team either. Growing up, despising the Yankees came early on and has carried with me throughout my life. More on that in a different post.
Moving from Buffalo to the DC area (this is before the Nats came to town, leaving DC before they came to town) I became an Orioles fan. The Oriole Way was intriguing; hard work, pitching and defense. Bring up your own developed players from the farm system and put a good team on the field, year after year. Two things happened to the Orioles that made me sour on them. Peter Angelos bought the team. From this fan’s perspective, he single handedly drove that once proud franchise into the ground. He has not put a quality product on the field in 15+ years and the mindset of how he runs that team disgusts me. Given that he made the bulk of his money suing tobacco companies, he comes across as a quick fix guy, with little morals and that has shown with the product that he continually passes off as a baseball team and inflicts on the wonderful city of Baltimore.
Moving from DC to Seattle in 2004, it was the Red Sox time, and I became a fan of that particular Red Sox team. Watching them since 1986 and the infamous Bill Buckner play, my compassion for their long suffering fans drove me to root for them, much like the Cubs, who I would root for if they ever were to get into the World Series. I am by no means a die-hard Sox fan and the team has changed dramatically since then.
Living in Seattle, there is no choice but to follow the Mariners because it is the only game on TV. I’m too cheap to buy the baseball package and most of the games are on at 4:00 PST which interferes with work. I go to about 3-4 games per year and watch almost all of them on TV. I would not call myself a Mariners fan, but since I live here and take an interest in the local teams and the city, it makes sense to follow them. During the season, most of these posts will be about the Mariners.
Fanaticism lies in Bills’ football, Sabres’ hockey and Terrapin’s sports. In retrospect, that is a very tortured existence, but that is a post or 10 for this fall.
I am not a professional writer and don’t pretend to be. For a living, I perform random acts of corporate finance and accounting. I also try to keep breathing each day, be thankful for the simple things in life that bring happiness and joy and always remember that no act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted (Aesop).
Happy Fourth of July. God bless our independence and those who keep this country free.
PS – Rereading this blog post, there is too much reference to “I” and “Me”. Not usually my style, however it will be left on the site as a reference point and some context into who I am. It is of great assistance to me when I read other people’s writing, especially people that do this for a living, to know the context in which they write. Most sports writers will say they are objective but then again, I don’t spend a lot of time reading that type of work!!
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