Let’s say the season ended on September 3rd and we were going to vote on the Cy Young Award. Here are the AL WAR leaders according to Baseball-reference. Com:
Let’s assume that is all of the contenders for the award. It is a pretty big spread between 6.2 WAR and 3.9 WAR, so let’s eliminate anyone with a WAR below 5.0. That leaves us with this:
While Iwakuma’s total numbers are good, he really has been pretty pedestrian since about mid-June, so let’s take him off the list. Besides, Felix is really the guy you would rather have on the mound for the Mariners anyway. I am going to eliminate Sanchez for a similar reason – he isn’t the best pitcher on his team. That leaves us with Chris Sale, Max Scherzer, Felix Hernandez and Yu Darvish.
Here is how they stack up:
W-L
ERA
SO
WHIP
ERA+
Chris Sale
10-12
2.97
199
1.055
144
Max Scherzer
19-2
2.88
209
0.940
146
Felix Hernandez
12-9
3.01
200
1.132
122
Yu Darvish
12-6
2.73
236
1.025
151
While Felix is having a good season, he hasn’t been dominating, so he probably finishes #3 or #4 in the voting with Chris Sale occupying the other spot. Sale has been outstanding, but voters will be turned off by his 10-12 record. That leaves it as a battle between Scherzer and Darvish. Both pitch for teams that are heading to the playoffs. Scherzer has benefited from outstanding run support, but he has also been pretty dominating in his own right – his WHIP leads the AL (Darvish is 3rd), he is giving up just under 6.3 hits per 9 innings (Darvish leads the AL with 6.1 per 9), he has a 4.5 to 1 strikeout to walk ration (good for 5th in the AL, Darvish is 8th at 3.9) and has the highest WPA of any starting pitcher in the AL. With how close the stats are between Darvish and Scherzer, it is going to come down to wins for the voters and that 19-2 record looks awfully nice, so Scherzer would win the award.
I am writing this a couple days in advance, so hopefully I remember to go back and update it.
With about a month to go in the season, the playoff picture is starting to take shape.
In the NL, we have all but decided who is going to be in the playoffs:
The Braves have a 13 game lead on the Nats in the NL East
The Dodgers have an 8.5 game lead on the Diamondbacks in the NL West
The Pirates/Reds/Cardinals (all three teams have virtually identical records) have at least a 15.5 game lead on the Brewers in the NL Central.
The Pirates/Reds/Cardinals have at least a 5 game lead over Arizona for the 2nd NL Wild Card
Really the only thing left to figure out is who ends up relegated to the Wild Card game. Heck, according to ESPN.com, the only NL team with at least a 6% chance of making the playoffs other than the Pirates/Reds/Cardinals/Braves/Dodgers is the Diamondbacks at 18%. Interestingly the only other team with more than a 1% chance of making the playoffs is the Nationals at 5.8%.
At least there is a bit more drama in the AL. There are 5 teams that have a real shot at the Wild Card spots – The A’s/Rangers (whoever does not win the AL West), Red Sox/Rays (whoever does not win the AL East), Indians, Orioles and Yankees. Each one of those teams is at least within 3.5 games of the 2nd Wild Card spot. The Royals were making it interesting, but have faded after losing 7 strait and will have to wait until next year.
On the flip side, I wanted to congratulate Houston on officially being the first team completely eliminated from playoff contention (assuming they lose Wednesday night). In the era of 2 Wild Card spots, to be eliminated before the end of August is something of an accomplishment. I guess it isn’t hard when you have won 33% of your games, have the worst run differential in baseball (by a bunch), have given up the most runs in baseball (quick, name any Astros starting pitcher – I bet you can’t) and have the worst home record in the game.
As for the Mariners – they are on pace to win 73 games (remember when people were picking them to be a wild card team?) I know that Coltrane disagrees with me, but I think that Z gets fired if they don’t win at least 77 games. For those who were overly optimistic about the M’s during spring training, I want to revisit something that I posted earlier this year:
… I would project that the Mariners will probably put up about 4.25 runs a game this season, accounting for the “improved” lineup and the fences moving in. That would be about 688 runs for the season, which means that they would have been 12th in the AL last season instead of last. That might mean that this is a 77 win team instead of a 75 win team.
The Mariners are currently on pace to score 636 runs (3.92 runs a game) which means that my prediction of 4.25 was optimistic. I did peg them as a 75-77 win team, which, barring a big run at the end of the season, is going to be just about where they end up. Now repeat after me: “I will listen to Blaidd Drwg when it comes to the Mariners…”
I do like Raul Ibanez, he has had a decent career and seems like a genuinely nice guy. He is, however, a horrible fielder. Teams have been taking extra bases on him all season because of his terrible arm and he really should be playing DH at this point. The August 6th game against the Blue Jays may have been a new low for his defense. In case you have not seen it, this is just embarrassing:
The trade deadline is always interesting in baseball, but this year just seemed plain boring. Sure there were a couple of bigger trades and I am happy with the move the Red Sox made in getting Jake Peavy for Jose Iglesias, but beyond that, it was the moves that didn’t get made (and one that did but I can’t figure out why) that were odd.
The Diamondbacks, just 2 ½ games out of first place, traded Ian Kennedy to San Diego. Granted, Kennedy’s 5+ ERA has not looked great this year, but there are things to consider – his stats suggest that his ERA should be about a run lower than it is and he is probably better than whoever the D’Backs are going to plug into their rotation to replace him. It is possible that the D’backs see something in Kennedy that scared them into making a deal with one of their division rivals, but they effectively dealt a decent starting pitcher for a LOOGY (Joe Thatcher), a mid-level prospect and a 2nd round draft pick. Not a great haul. What am I missing here?
The Mariners decided to stand pat despite having a few moderately tradable commodities. It seems that management is trying to keep fans by winning a few more games than they would if they dumped Morales/Ibanez/Perez. Well, I am not sure that winning 80 games will keep the fan exodus from happening any more than winning 70 games will. I suspect the reason is that they are trying to win at least 76 games – so they can make the bullshit argument that they improved over last season and that the 3…er 5…er 7 year plan is still working. The M’s are effectively out of it – 12.5 games back of the A’s for the division lead and 9.5 back of Cleveland for the 2nd wild card spot. Even if they get close to .500, they are still going to be playing to a mostly empty stadium come September, so why not deal Ibanez and Morales (they are both free agents at the end of the season) for something more than a bucket of balls and just play the kids and see what happens.
Disclaimer: This is purely speculation on my part.
Somehow I missed this in the daily transaction report on Saturday:
Seattle: Optioned RHP Hector Noesi to Tacoma (PCL). Recalled RHP Brandon Maurer from Tacoma.
I thought that was a little strange – replacing a back of the bullpen guy with a guy who has potential to be a decent MLB starter. I thought it might be that the M’s needed a long guy because Noesi had seen a bunch of action, but that was not the case. Noesi last pitched 2 1/3 innings on July 24th. Maurer last started on July 24th – then it occurred to me why this move might have been made. The M’s are on an East Coast swing. The trading deadline is Wednesday. They have Joe Saunders scheduled to go tomorrow. I would bet dollars to donuts that the M’s are actively shopping Saunders and will yank him from his start if they end up with a deal in place. Maurer is the insurance policy – if they make a deal, Maurer starts. If not, I bet he goes back to Tacoma on Wednesday.
We are just days away from the trading deadline and the question for teams on the fringe of contention is “to sell or not to sell?” Basically, do we trade our fringy marginal veterans to a team in contention for something more than a bag of warm peanuts.
The Mariners are one of those teams; they currently sit 11 games back of the A’s for the division lead and 8.5 games back of Baltimore for the wild card. While teams have come back from further out, the odds are highly unlikely (ESPN has the M’s playoff chances as 1.1%). Considering a heavily negative run differential – only two teams have a worse differential in the AL: Houston and Chicago, I think it is time to sell. What do the Mariners have to sell though? Really not a ton. You don’t want to move any of your young guys, so Ackley, Ramirez, Franklin, Miller, Zunino, Smoak, Seager and Saunders are off the table. Felix is pretty much untradeable because of his contract. So who does that leave? Here are the most likely candidates:
Kendrys Morales – he is a free agent at the end of the season, so he is a likely candidate. He is having a good, not great season and plays marginal defense, which probably means he heads to an AL team as a DH. I would guess he is going to end up in Tampa, Cleveland or New York and they will probably be able to get major league ready talent for him.
Raul Ibanez – he seems to have found the fountain of youth, but he is 41 and I doubt that he can sustain his home run prowess for too much longer. He is a terrible defender and teams constantly take advantage of his weak arm. His defense is so bad, that he has virtually negated his offensive WAR value – baseball-reference.com has him at 2.2 oWAR and -1.5 dWAR. He is a nice story but not a long-term benefit to the team. This is the classic case of buy low-sell high. His likely destination is the same list as Morales.
Brendan Ryan – he can’t hit but he does have great value as a late-inning defensive replacement, so the M’s could probably flip him for a grade-C prospect at this point.
Endy Chavez – He can neither hit nor field and is at best a 4th OFer, but he keeps sticking around the majors for no good reason. The M’s can probably get a warm body for him.
Joe Saunders/Aaron Harang – they are both the kind of pitchers that tend to get traded at the deadline; back of the rotation guys who teams are willing to overpay for because they want a veteran back of the rotation guy down the stretch run.
The Entire Bullpen – yep, I would move any of these guys because, frankly, relievers are a fungible commodity, but your most likely candidates are Oliver Perez (love those lefties) and Tom Wilhelmsen.
Buster Onley seems to disagree:
The chief officers of those franchises must assess what surrendering in July would signal to the fan bases, because once the Royals trade Ervin Santana, or the Mariners trade Raul Ibanez and Kendrys Morales, that means they’re telling their fans that they’re willing to give up any chance of a comeback, and they’ll see the evidence in the attendance.
—
Teams that sell off in July are telling their customer base: We don’t have any chance.
That’s a hard thing to sell for the Royals, who haven’t been in a postseason since 1985, or the Mariners, who have been almost irrelevant for the past decade and seem to be building something in the past month. Keep that in mind over the next six days, as you scratch your head about some decisions that confuse you.
Well, I am not sure that you would actually see it in the Mariners attendance if they traded any of their veterans. Let’s face it, people are not coming out to the park to see Raul Ibanez or Kendrys Morales and you are not going to get an attendance boost because Saunders or Harang are on the mound (but you probably would get a boost from their potential replacements on the mound – Taijuan Walker or Danny Hultzen). I don’t necessarily trust the Mariners attendance figures, since they go by tickets sold and not butts in the seats (and there are a good number of season ticket holders that don’t show up for the game) but they haven’t exactly been going gangbusters with their attendance, drawing just a shade under 22,000 per game and they have yet to sell out a game this season (although I do believe they have officially sold out the game on August 10th). Heck, they never topped 26,000 in any game against the Red Sox in July, and the majority of fans in attendance that series were in Red Sox gear. Here is a nice scatter chart of their attendance this season:
It has been a while since we have had a graph on the blog.
In case you care, here is what the attendance looks like based on the day of the week:
Day of the Week
Avg Attendance
Sunday
25,613
Monday
19,640
Tuesday
14,853
Wednesday
17,475
Thursday
19,160
Friday
24,538
Saturday
30,814
What will cause the attendance to decline isn’t the team signaling it has given up, it is the same thing that it is every year – the team just isn’t that good and will fall completely out of contention, meaning that 5,000 people will show up for the weeknight games in September.
The M’s lost last night to end the winning streak, though they’re still 8-2 over the last ten games. They’re threatening to be relevant again!
But really, I’m posting to write about stenographer movies again.
It occured to me that most of the movies fell into one of a few groups:
New hires. What A Bunch Of Idiots:
Mr. Jack Hires a Stenographer (1916) (Short)
The New Stenographer (1911) (Short)
The Substitute Stenographer (1913) (Short)
Stenographer Wanted (1912) (Short)
His New Stenographer (1928) (Short)
The New Stenographer (1914) (Short)
Stenographers Wanted (1912) (Short)
The New Stenographer (1908) (Short)
Wacky Stenographers/ Problems With The Stenographer:
Stenographer Troubles (1913) (Short)
Oh! You Stenographer (1911) (Short)
Politically Incorrect Stenographer Movie Title:
The Colored Stenographer (1909) (Short)
I’m Guessing It’s A Brazen Advertisement Packaged As A Short Film; The Title Is Too Long As Well:
The Stenographer’s Friend; Or, What Was Accomplished by an Edison Business Phonograph (1910) (Short)
There Must Be Babes Involved:
Mutt and Jeff and the Lady Stenographer (1911) (Short)
Dad’s Stenographer (1913) (Short)
Who Knows?
The Stenographer (1914) (Short)
The Ranch Stenographer (1913) (Short)
The Good Stenographer (1916) (Short)
The Stenographer’s Strategy (1916) (Short)
Poor stenographers! Only two or three titles that suggest any level of compentency! Stenographers need to band together to protest these films that promote negative stereotypes!!
Last night I was lying in bed thinking — what’s the most unlikely movie title?
Answer: The Stenographer.
Nobody would want to watch that. That is, unless the heroine had huge bazingas.
You know what else is unlikely? The Mariners are 2nd in the majors in home runs. Raul Ibanez is approaching the single-season record for home runs by a player over 40. (He’s hit 24. Ted Williams holds the record with 29.)
The Mariners have won seven in a row and now sit five games under .500 at 47-52.
Will it continue? Probably not. It’s fun though, right?
———
The complete IMDB list of movies with “Stenographer” in the title:
Public Stenographer (1934)
The Stenographer’s Friend; Or, What Was Accomplished by an Edison Business Phonograph (1910) (Short)
The Stenographer (1914) (Short)
Mr. Jack Hires a Stenographer (1916) (Short)
The New Stenographer (1911) (Short)
The Substitute Stenographer (1913) (Short)
Stenographer Wanted (1912) (Short)
Mutt and Jeff and the Lady Stenographer (1911) (Short)
Stenographer Troubles (1913) (Short)
Oh! You Stenographer (1911) (Short)
His New Stenographer (1928) (Short)
The New Stenographer (1914) (Short)
Stenographers Wanted (1912) (Short)
The Colored Stenographer (1909) (Short)
The New Stenographer (1908) (Short)
Dad’s Stenographer (1913) (Short)
The Ranch Stenographer (1913) (Short)
The Good Stenographer (1916) (Short)
The Stenographer’s Strategy (1916) (Short)
Notice that they’re all “Shorts”, except for the 1934 blockbuster “Public Stenograher”.
IMDB synopsis: “A stenographer who works at a large hotel finds herself caught in the middle of a major swindle.”
Fan synopsis: “The wisecracking and attractive public stenographer Ann McNair spends most of her time continuing to fend off the greedy hands of her employer. On her way to get a new job Ann has a car breakdown on a desolate stretched road. Ann is eventually aided by the handsome James “Jimmy” Martin Jr., who initially courteous acts like all other men in her life. Eventually Jim is in love with Ann. So it seems that Ann at long last drops her hard-boiled veneer, towards Jimmy in particular. Written by Robert”
Last night I was lying in bed thinking — what’s the most unlikely movie title?
Answer: The Stenographer.
Nobody would want to watch that. That is, unless the heroine had huge bazingas.
You know what else is unlikely? The Mariners are 2nd in the majors in home runs. Raul Ibanez is approaching the single-season record for home runs by a player over 40. (He’s hit 24. Ted Williams holds the record with 29.)
The Mariners have won seven in a row and now sit five games under .500 at 47-52.
Will it continue? Probably not. It’s fun though, right?
———
The complete IMDB list of movies with “Stenographer” in the title:
Public Stenographer (1934)
The Stenographer’s Friend; Or, What Was Accomplished by an Edison Business Phonograph (1910) (Short)
The Stenographer (1914) (Short)
Mr. Jack Hires a Stenographer (1916) (Short)
The New Stenographer (1911) (Short)
The Substitute Stenographer (1913) (Short)
Stenographer Wanted (1912) (Short)
Mutt and Jeff and the Lady Stenographer (1911) (Short)
Stenographer Troubles (1913) (Short)
Oh! You Stenographer (1911) (Short)
His New Stenographer (1928) (Short)
The New Stenographer (1914) (Short)
Stenographers Wanted (1912) (Short)
The Colored Stenographer (1909) (Short)
The New Stenographer (1908) (Short)
Dad’s Stenographer (1913) (Short)
The Ranch Stenographer (1913) (Short)
The Good Stenographer (1916) (Short)
The Stenographer’s Strategy (1916) (Short)
Notice that they’re all “Shorts”, except for the 1934 blockbuster “Public Stenograher”.
IMDB synopsis: “A stenographer who works at a large hotel finds herself caught in the middle of a major swindle.”
Fan synopsis: “The wisecracking and attractive public stenographer Ann McNair spends most of her time continuing to fend off the greedy hands of her employer. On her way to get a new job Ann has a car breakdown on a desolate stretched road. Ann is eventually aided by the handsome James “Jimmy” Martin Jr., who initially courteous acts like all other men in her life. Eventually Jim is in love with Ann. So it seems that Ann at long last drops her hard-boiled veneer, towards Jimmy in particular. Written by Robert”
Jeremy Bonderman is a nice story this season because he is coming back from about a dozen surgeries. That story is now unfortunatly finished as the M’s DFA’ed him today and called up Lucas Luetge.
The M’s need a starter for Thursday. My guess is that they will call up Erasmo Ramirez for the rotation slot. You can bet that if it is Taijuan Walker, Blaidd Drwg will be playing hookey to go to the game.
FlatbreadGarden 