A baking and gardening journal. Mostly.
By Blaidd Drwg
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.
By Blaidd Drwg
It is somewhat rare for a player to call it a career while still performing at a high level. Mariano Rivera is a player who is doing just that. Mo is hanging it up after the season. He is going to be 44 in November and has decided it is time to spend more time with his family. Mo should end up his career with 1100+ appearances, 650+ saves, an ERA around 2.25 and a WHIP around 1, not to mention that he is arguably the greatest post season pitcher in MLB history. In 2018, you should be hearing Mariano Rivera’s name called at the podium in Cooperstown.
How good has Mo been in his age 43 season? How about 28 saves, 8.3 K/9 Innings, 4.83 K/BB ratio and a 1.44 ERA. Granted, his WHIP is 1.21 (which would be the highest of his career as a closer), but the guy is still one of a handful of guys I would want on the mound with the game on the line.
A few weeks ago, the Yankees were in town for their only time this season. Mo entered the game in the bottom of the 9th on the last game of the series, giving everyone one last chance to see him. This fact was not lost on several people sitting in my section – people who are Mariners season ticket holder and fans. There were several of us who gave Mo a standing ovation as he entered into the game, giving him the proper recognition he deserves. I couldn’t possibly dislike any team more than the Yankees, but Rivera has been something special for the better part of 2 decades and that needs to be recognized.
I decided to snap the picture in this post, trying to catch the delivery. The batter? Another old geezer – Raul Ibanez who is also north of 40. It is not every day in baseball that you get to see 2 40 year olds square off at the plate.
By Blaidd Drwg
I am convinced that there is something wrong (an injury perhaps) with both Felix Hernandez and Tom Wilhelmsen. One of the benefits of having seats behind home plate is that you get a good look at a pitcher’s delivery, and in both cases, the delivery looks off.
Felix Hernandez – He got pounded by the Angels again on the 20th and has not looked all that dominating his last few starts. Felix started off the season yielding just 11 earned runs in his first 64.2 innings (ERA of 1.53) with 64 strike outs and 10 walks. Then came the game in New York on May 14th where Felix tweaked his back (that was the last game in the 64.2 inning stretch). Since then, Felix has posted a mortal 24 ER in 45 innings (a 4.80 ERA) with 10 walks and 48 strikeouts. His strike out rate is up, but he has been getting hit with much more frequency.
I looked at fangraphs.com to see what kind of pitches Felix has been throwing and it seems he is throwing more fastballs, which indicates to me that something is not right – in the 9 games before the injury, he threw the fastball roughly 53% of the time and only exceeded that rate twice in a game – against the Angels on 4/27 and the White Sox on 4/6. Since that time he is throwing it about 57% of the time, but has thrown it over 60% of the time in the last 3 games. When your back hurts, you don’t have the flexibility to throw a breaking pitch as easily or as effectively and that means you rely on your fastball more. When hitters realize this they sit on your fastball. No matter how good the pitcher, hitters have an advantage when they know the fastball is coming and it doesn’t move like Mariano Rivera’s pitches. My observations on Felix have been the same – he is not getting the breaking stuff over the plate like he used to and it is exposing the declining velocity on his fastball.
My guess – Felix makes one or two more starts before ending up on the DL and effectively sinking the rest of the season for the Mariners.
Tom Wilhelmsen – He has been terrible for the month of June (11 ER in 7 innings) after being borderline unhittable in April and May (2 ER in 24 innings). It to judge what is going on with a relief pitcher based on pitch breakdown because the sample size is smaller and subject to randomness, but my observation has been that Wilhelmsen hasn’t been getting the breaking ball over the plate and once again, teams are sitting on his fastball. This has led to more fly balls and more walks. I can’t think of a specific point where he seems to have gotten hurt, so it might just be that his mechanics are messed up and it is all in his head, but whatever it is, he needs to get it squared away soon – the M’s bullpen does not have many effective weapons in their arsenal these days.
By Blaidd Drwg
Look, there comes a time when you have to send a guy down to the minors before you completely destroy his confidence, and that time has probably come for Brandon Maurer. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about his struggles with left handed batters. Well, he has pitched “slightly” better against lefties recently (they are “only” hitting about .325 against him over his last few starts) but he has suddenly lost the ability to get right handed hitters out also (they are hitting over .400 against him in his last few starts).
Right now Maurer is a mess. If you watch him pitch, he looks like he has no confidence in his stuff. His start on Tuesday night was a disaster and he has given up 10 home runs in 49 innings. It is time for him to go back down to regain that confidence. I would suggest something radical too – sending him to AA Jackson rather than AAA Tacoma. Why? Well Tacoma, and the PCL in general, is a hitter’s league. Maurer has been getting smacked around pretty badly and pitching in the band box that is Cheney Stadium will probably not help his confidence. Maurer wasn’t that great last year in Jackson anyway.
I know the Mariners don’t really have many options at this point, but I think I would rather see Hector Noesi stink it up out there than watch Maurer get destroyed, completely lose confidence in himself, get traded to another organization for a bucket of baseballs and come back in a few years as a serviceable major league starter.
UPDATE – The Mariners sent Maurer to Tacoma sometime between when I wrote this and this morning, calling up Alex Liddi. Supposedly they are looking at calling up Jeremy Bonderman, but Bondo is not on the 40 man roster, so someone either goes to the 60 day DL (Guti possibly) or someone gets DFA (either Ryan or Thames), to add Bondo.
By Blaidd Drwg
Once again, the Mariners are hitting like they can’t punch their way out of a paper bag. Thus far this season, the Mariners have scored fewer total runs than all but one AL team – the Chicago White Sox (actually they have outscored the Nationals, Phillies (just barely), Marlins and Dodgers, but that is the NL, so it hardly counts, but more on that in a moment). It is actually worse than that – the Mariners have outscored the Pale Hose by a whopping 2 runs and have played 3 more games than Chicago, so the Sox have actually scored more runs per game than the Mariners. It has been so bad that the Mariners have been outscored by the Astros (!!!) by 16 runs in the same number of games. That is the same Astros lineup that I ripped on earlier this season. At least the Mariners offense hasn’t been historically bad this year and they seem to be hitting about as well (if you can call it that) at home as on the road.
Sadly, the despite the vast improvement, they are still in sorry shape. Morales, Seager and Morse have been ok, Shoppach and Bay have been better than expected; Smoak has been drawing walks (but not much else) and hasn’t looked completely hopeless at the plate. Montero, Ackley, Ryan, Andino and Chavez have all been wasted at bats though in this lineup. The M’s have gotten so little production out of their #9 spot in the order that they might as well be a NL team. Here is how the #9 hitter compares to the teams in the NL who have scored fewer runs. Keep in mind that the AB’s for the NL teams come from a combination of the pitchers batting and pinch hitters. Just for the heck of it, I am including the Tigers, who lead baseball in runs scored. (Stats from baseball-reference.com)
| BA | OBP | SLG | sOPS+ | |
| Mariners | .168 | .235 | .206 | 63 |
| Nationals | .134 | .185 | .190 | 38 |
| Phillies | .201 | .242 | .329 | 107 |
| Marlins | .155 | .214 | .169 | 42 |
| Dodgers | .197 | .255 | .282 | 96 |
| Tigers | .292 | .317 | .456 | 180 |
Basically the Mariners are getting the same production from Chavez/Ryan/Andino in the 9th spot as National League teams get from their pitchers. That is not a recipe for success.
The M’s took the first step in trying to right the ship by sending Montero down to Tacoma, but they did call up a no-hit, all-glove catcher in Jesus Sucre, so that won’t help much. The next step is probably sending down Ackley and bringing up Nick Franklin. I think Ackley needs to get some time in the bandbox that is Cheney Stadium to get his groove back. The shortstop mess is probably not fixable this season, so we will probably get another 120 games of almost automatic outs from the bottom of the lineup.
My prediction – if the M’s don’t have a winning record on this home stand, Eric Wedge will be looking for a new job. I hear Don Mattingly might be available soon…
By Blaidd Drwg
Once you get past Felix and Iwakuma, the Mariners starting rotation has been a lovely collection Jekyll & Hyde type pitchers, making them more than frustrating to watch. Don’t believe me, here is what you have to look forward to (stats as of Monday May 13th).
Joe Saunders – pitches like Steve Carlton at home and Steve Blass on the road. Saunders may have the ugliest platoon splits I have ever seen:
| W-L | GS | ERA | IP | BB | SO | WHIP | ERA | BAA | |
| Home | 3-0 | 4 | 0.93 | 28.2 | 7 | 15 | 0.82 | 0.94 | .180 |
| Road | 0-4 | 4 | 12.54 | 18.2 | 11 | 5 | 2.52 | 12.54 | .424 |
Now I know it is early in the season and sample size issues still abound here, but if you watch this guy pitch, he looks like 2 completely different pitchers depending on the venue. Now I realize that both the home and road stats will regress to the mean, but it almost feels like Wedge needs to pitch someone else when they are on the road. That is how bad Saunders has looked in those 4 starts. Historically, Saunders was “not bad” at Safeco, which is why I am assuming they signed him, but I am not sure what is going wrong when his is on the road.
Brandon Maurer – pitches like Ricky Vaughn against right handed batters and Vaughn Eshelman against lefties. The guys over at USS Mariner had a good article about this recently. Here is the ugly truth:
| AB/H | 2B | 3B | HR | BB | SO | BA | OBP | SLG | |
| Vs RHB | 70/17 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 17 | .243 | .303 | .688 |
| Vs LHB | 67/24 | 7 | 1 | 5 | 7 | 5 | .358 | .419 | 1.135 |
It is not unusual to see a platoon split with a significant amount of variance for a pitcher against the opposite hand hitter, but this is pretty extreme. The issue, according to USSM is this:
Maurer has four pitches, but he’s primarily a fastball/slider guy. He throws his slider a lot, in fact. Among qualified starters, PITCHF/x only has three pitchers throwing more pitches classified as sliders than Brandon Maurer this year. As you probably know, the slider has the biggest platoon split of any pitch in baseball. There’s a reason every situational reliever in baseball throws a million sliders. It’s why the Mariners have a bullpen full of match-up guys who just come in and throw slider after slider.
The slider is not a good pitch to opposite handed hitters, but it’s great against same-handed hitters. Pitchers who throw a lot of sliders tend to have huge platoon splits. Brandon Maurer has huge platoon splits.
It is obvious Maurer has talent but he needs to learn how to get left handed hitters out at a somewhat better rate if he wants to be successful. The majors are not the place for that. He looks tentative against lefties when he pitches and I really think the Mariners need to do something about that before his confidence is completely shot and teams just stack their lineup with lefties when they face him.
Aaron Harang – well, now that I think about it, he has just plain sucked. If you want a positive spin on this, his ERA in April was 11.37 and in May it is 3.00. That should count for something.
By Blaidd Drwg
This may be the worst scheduling job in the history of sports. Take a look at the Mariners schedule for the past few weeks:
April 29th – May 1st – at home
….fine so far
May 2nd – off day
May 3rd – May 5th – at Toronto
…ok an East Coast swing
May 6th – off day
May 7th – May 8th – at Pittsburgh
…the off day after a 3 game set is odd, and I hate the 2 game series, but what can you do.
May 9th – off day
…oh look, another off day. 3 off days in one week. Remember this for later.
May 10th – May 12th – at home
…really, a 5 game East Coast road trip? WTF.
May 13th – off day
…another $#@#^@ off day!!!????
May 14th – May 16th – at New York
…another $%&#^@$*(&@#@ East Coast trip?????? How drunk were the schedule makers when they did this.
May 17th – May 20th – at Cleveland
…yeay, a 4 game set against the Indians, with 3 day games.
May 21st – May 22nd – at Los Angeles
…really? No off day, fly to LA and play 2 games.
May 23rd – off day
…you put the $@%&&@$ off day in the wrong spot you $@&$@#^ idiots.
May 24th – May 28th – back home.
The M’s enter a stretch where they play on 20 consecutive days starting on May 24th. Granted 15 of those are home games, but still, it feels like the schedule makers were on something when they came up with this. I give up. I know that there are a lot of moving parts in schedule making, but that is just crazy.
By Blaidd Drwg
Or do they?
Remember back a few weeks ago when I posted about the Mariners spring training stats and why you should not get excited about them. Well, 3 weeks into the season, the Mariners are 14th in the AL in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging. Remember when Brandon Maurer made the team with a nifty 1.50 ERA in the desert? He is currently sporting a 9.94 ERA in the bigs. Exactly why you don’t get excited about spring stats.
Rob Neyer wrote an interesting article about this very subject concerning Red Sox prospect Jackie Bradley Jr. It is a good read, but he has a great piece of wisdom about baseball’s March numbers:
Spring-training statistics are a lot of fun, but they’re merely a snapshot in time, and they describe the random nature of raw performance statistics as much as they describe fundamental abilities.
Basically making an assumption about how a player will perform over a season is about as useful as pulling a random block of 60 at-bats to do the same.
* I know that is not the saying, but it makes my point so I am going with it
By Blaidd Drwg
How bad did it get for the Mariners Tuesday night? Well they lost to Houston 16-9: This is the same Astros team that had not won since opening day and in their previous 7 games racked up these overwhelming totals:
Runs – 17
Home Runs – 2
Walks – 10
Hits – 46
So of course, Tuesday they hang 16 Runs, 5 Home Runs, 6 Walks and 22 Hits on Mariners pitchers. I have an upcoming post on just how bad Houston actually is, so check that out tomorrow.
The M’s also drew a stellar 10,700 for a game that was played on a nice evening, which was right about what I figured they would draw for the game, although I am sure that the number of people who showed up was far less.
In the meantime, I think that young Brandon Mauer may have just pitched himself back to Tacoma, as he gave up 6 runs in just 2/3 of an inning in his second start. After sporting a nifty 1.50 ERA during spring training, he now has an ugly 16.20 ERA in real games. This is why I put no faith in spring training numbers. He is 23, so I think it is time to send him down and bring someone else up before his confidence is completely destroyed. My guess is that Jeremy Bonderman is called up to fill the spot until May when we see Danny Hultzen make his debut.
By Blaidd Drwg
This isn’t really that interesting a story, but I found it to be rather cool that Mariners scout, Alex Smith, made an appearance in Bull Durham without knowing it for 25 years.
As it turns out, a real-world baseball card, Smith’s 1987 Durham Bulls ProCards release, got some screen time as a bookmark used by Annie Savoy as she decided to read Walt Whitman poetry to Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh.
And Smith, now the Northeast Scouting Supervisor for the Seattle Mariners, had no idea.
“I received your message, ironically on my birthday,” said Smith, who turned 50 on Monday. “What a unique, interesting gift to find out my baseball card was used in the movie. Never knew that! My initial thoughts? Pretty cool!”
Oh, the real reason for this post is to just include my favorite song from the movie: “I Got Loaded” by Los Lobos.
FlatbreadGarden 