A Note to the Mariners

By Blaidd Drwg

Dear Wak and Z,
It is time to end the ridiculous experiment at DH you have with your Griffey/Sweeney Platoon. Neither Griffey or Sweeney looks like they can hit their way out of a paper bag and yet you insist on playing one of them daily and hitting them high up in the lineup. It is time to release Sweeney and offer him a coaching position if you want his “character” in the clubhouse and to put Griffey on the bench as a PH and occasional DH – he is washed up and everyone who pays attention, including your opponents, has figured it out. Nostalgia is nice, but not if you want to compete for the division. Once this is done, you can move Bradley to DH and call up Mike Saunders and put him in LF. Let’s face it you need to do something to wake up this anemic offense and Saunders can’t possibly be worse than the 500 OPS that your excuse for the DH position has put up.

Signed,
A Disgusted M’s season ticket holder

Running on the Red Sox – Part 2

By Blaidd Drwg

I didn’t get a chance to finish the last post due to technical issues, but there are several disturbing trends with the Sox catchers – in general, their ability to throw out runners with Wakefield on the mound is shaky at best, teams realize that it is easy to run against Wake, and there is a very disturbing trend downward in Varitek’s throwing abilities.

I didn’t understand the Sox resigning Tek – he can’t hit and he can’t throw anymore which generally makes him a paperweight on the bench. The Sox seem to have the same fascination with Wakefield – he isn’t particularly effective anymore and he seems to give teams more scoring opportunities by letting them run against him, but, thankfully, it looks like he will be heading to the pen when Matsuzaka comes off the DL. There is probably only one way to improve on the ability to throw runners out – go get a catcher who can actually do it.

Running on the Red Sox

By Blaidd Drwg

The 9 stolen base disaster the other day got me thinking – I always heard that the Sox, and Jason Varitek in particular, were easy to run against, so I thought I would take a look at just how easy it is to steal against them. The following chart represents the numbers for all Sox catchers over the last 16 seasons. Generally, all of the Sox catchers have been below average to terrible.

Year	SBA	CS	PCT CS	Rank	League Avg	MGR	Catcher(s)
2010	36	1	3%	29	25%	Francona	Martinez, Varitek
2009	151	23	13%	30	28%	Francona	Varitek, Kottaras
2008	96	32	25%	21	27%	Francona	Varitek, Cash
2007	107	32	23%	19	26%	Francona	Varitek, Mirabelli
2006	108	23	18%	29	29%	Francona	Varitek, Mirabelli
2005	87	29	25%	21	29%	Francona	Varitek, Mirabelli
2004	123	31	20%	30	30%	Little	Varitek, Mirabelli
2003	101	35	26%	26	31%	Little	Varitek, Mirabelli
2002	118	50	30%	20	32%	Little	Varitek, Mirabelli
2001	223	51	19%	30	31%	Williams/Kerrigan	Hatteberg, Varitek
2000	159	47	23%	28	31%	Williams	Varitek, Hatteberg
1999	159	58	27%	25	31%	Williams	Varitek, Hatteberg
1998	132	58	31%	18	31%	Williams	Hatteberg, Varitek
1997	171	53	24%	29	32%	Williams	Hatteberg,Haselman
1996	147	36	20%	29	29%	Kennedy	Stanley,Haselman
1995	80	41	34%	10	30%	Kennedy	MacFarlane,Haselman
1994	98	38	28%	23	31%	Hobson	Berryhill, Rowland

A couple notes about the chart – the League Avg column represents the percentage of baserunners thrown out in all of baseball for a particular year and the Catchers column has the starting catcher listed first (by number of games caught) and the primary backup catcher listed second. Notice the trend down in SB CS % – I keep hearing that teams are being more selective about the places they are choosing to steal (unless you are the Mariners this season) and those numbers seem to indicate that. I was surprised that the Sox were 29th this season in CS % with teams running all over them (the next most attempts against a single team is 18). The Nationals are last with a 0% CS rate, although their opponents have only attempted 6 SB against them, so for the purposes of this exercise, I feel pretty confident saying the Sox have the easiest battery to run against. This chart makes one thing obvious – historically, the Sox are generally in the bottom third of the league in throwing guys out. Really makes me wonder how many runs this has cost them over the years. So, where does the problem lie? Is it Varitek, is it the other catchers, is it the pitcher, manager or some combination of them. Here is the chart of Jason Varitek vs. the other catchers. In most of these seasons, the other catcher represent the battery of Wakefield and the catcher who is not Varitek.

	Other Catchers			Varitek
Year	SBA	CS	CS PCT	SBA	CS	CS PCT
2010	25	1	4%	11	0	0%
2009	43	7	14%	108	16	13%
2008	30	16	35%	56	16	22%
2007	44	12	21%	63	20	24%
2006	62	10	14%	46	13	22%
2005	22	8	27%	65	21	24%
2004	46	8	15%	77	23	23%
2003	40	12	23%	61	23	27%
2002	37	19	51%	81	31	28%
2001	172	33	16%	51	18	26%
2000	55	13	19%	104	34	25%
1999	35	12	25%	124	46	27%
1998	83	39	32%	49	19	28%

The Running…Rangers?

By Blaidd Drwg

I am sitting here finishing up a few things listening to the Red Sox vs. Rangers game on the internet and I just realized the Rangers have 8 (!) stolen bases against the battery of Wakefield and Martinez – 3 by Nelson Cruz (who had 0 going into the game), 3 by Elvis Andrus (who had 1 going into the game) and 2 by Vlad Guerrero (who had 1 going into the game), and have not been caught and they are only in the top of the 8th. You think Ron Washington saw something to exploit?

So many interesting facts about this:
– The Rangers have more than doubled their SB total for the season as a team- they had 6 going into the game.
– Victor Martinez is now 1 for 22 throwing out runners this season and has thrown out only 10 of the last 88 runners to try to steal against him.
– Teams are now 10 for 10 against Wake in trying to steal and 29 for 30 against the Red Sox this season.

The Sox have been historically bad about throwing runners out over the Varitek years, but this is getting ridiculous. Makes me wonder when the last time a team recorded 8 SB in a game.
——————

Postscript – The Rangers managed one more SB (Julio Borbon) and also managed to lose the game thanks to their pen. I still wonder when was the last time a battery gave up 9 SB in one game.

Ichiro on the Verge of Becoming the M’s All-Time Hit Leader?

By Blaidd Drwg

I was looking at the Mariners media guide this morning at the Mariners all time top 10 in offensive categories and I saw this in hits:

All Time Leaders
Edgar Martinez – 2,247
Ichiro – 2,230

Ichiro has 15 hits this year, which would put him 3 away from surpassing Edgar. I found it strange that I had not heard anything about this in the local press, so I did a little digging. Turns out, the Mariners Media Guide has a big error – the table should read like this:

All Time Leaders
Edgar Martinez – 2,247
Ichiro – 2,030

Ichiro, barring injury, should pass Edgar this year, just not this week.

Every year I read through the guide (yes, I am that much of a baseball geek) and every year I find a bunch of errors and typos, but never anything this bad. Note to the Mariners – hire someone to proofread your media guide, since it is what you distribute to the actual media.

Shame on Tony LaRussa

By Blaidd Drwg

The Mets and Cardinals played a 20 inning marathon last night, using a combined 19 pitchers and practically every position player on the roster. The Mets, despite only having one hit in the first 11 inning, managed to win the game 2-1.

Despite the game going scoreless for 18 innings, I really think Tony LaRussa gave up on winning – he not only used 2 position players as pitchers, but used them for 3 innings in the game, which ultimately led to the loss, and managed to have a pitcher play left field.

I really think that LaRussa was trying to lose the game just to get it over or at least hope that they would get lucky and win. Two additional head scratching moves he made:

– Why not bring in a starter? You have a guy who is scheduled to throw a bullpen session that day anyway, and you probably could use him for 60 pitches or so. You could also bring in they guy who is scheduled to pitch on Monday (Brad Penny) and call someone up to make the start in his place on Monday.

– He pulled Denny Reyes out in the top of the 14th after throwing just 15 pitches with 2 outs no one on and Luis Castillo up at bat. By bringing in Hawksworth at that point, I am wondering if it cost him the an additional innings’ worth of use from a real pitcher.

Maybe he really thinks that one game won’t make a difference so didn’t care about what the result was. I just really hate to see a team give up like that.

MLB Salary Collusion?

by Coltrane

The MLB players union is making noise about suing for collusion, but they’ll never win another collusion case again.

Using metrics such as WAR, player performance is now quantifiable to the point that it makes sense that each player sees similar offers from the individual teams. With more complete information the teams now know exactly what they’re buying.

Teams are now much less likely to pay $5 for a $3 gallon of milk.

The players are going to have to deal with the new reality.

—–

Postscript: I’m a day too late with this post. Here’s Fangraphs take on it from yesterday. I guess I should have read Fangraphs late yesterday.

Miguel Tejada Knows Where It’s At

by Coltrane

Miguel Tejada knows when say the right thing (at the bottom of this Jayson Stark excerpt):

At least they won’t need a tour guide to find third base.

Fortunately for Miguel Tejada and Placido Polanco, it will be located exactly where it’s been hanging out for the past 165 years.

But playing third base?

That’s the whole new excellent adventure facing both these men this spring.

“I love shortstop,” said Tejada, who has played 1,846 games in the big leagues at shortstop — and zero at third base. “But I love playing baseball more.”

Bill Simmons, Propeller Head

by Coltrane

Bill Simmons has signed on to baseball’s stat-head revolution. Here’s a fun article that discusses some of the more popular sabermetric work. The piece is a friendly way to introduce stuff that can be fairly intimidating. Stuff like OPS, VORP, WAR, FIP, UZR, and BABIP. Simmons is always entertaining, read it and be informed.

If this kind of work interests you check out the Fangraphs link to the right.

Ichiro Traded? Griffey to Retire?

By Blaidd Drwg

In case you missed it, Larry Stone wrote an article entitled “Five rejected April Fools prank stories (No, Prince Fielder is NOT coming to Seattle)” in yesterday’s Seattle Times. He was trying to be funny, but in reality, 2 of the 5 stories would actually make the Mariners a better team if they happened:

2) Mariners trade Ichiro for Prince Fielder in blockbuster deal – Oh how happy would I be about this, a genuine power hitter in the lineup and a guy who probably has not hit his best seasons for a guy who probably is on the verge of a serious decline. Fielder is going to end up eating himself into the DH role in a couple of seasons, but the way I look at it, he is better than Ichiro currently and he will still be a significantly better than average hitter in 5 season when Ichiro is league average or worse. Besides, you can replace Ichiro pretty easily for a season while Mike Saunders gets ready to be a full time MLB player. Trade a slap hitter for a masher? In a second.

3) Griffey announces retirement – oh, one could only dream. I am not a fan of Griffey (and I am not shy about it) and I don’t understand how a city could love a guy who basically said that he hated it here and forced the team to trade him. The guy needs to call it quits – he was overmatched last season, but his ego is causing him to stay on. Yes, he can still hit mistake pitches over the plate a long way, but frankly, teams aren’t afraid of pitching to him anymore. He was pretty awful last season, is batting under .200 in spring training and is probably going to get 450 – 500 plate appearances this season since Wak just has to have him in the lineup (an probably batting 4th). If this team is serious about contending, can you really waste that many at bats on a guy who will hover in the low .200’s all season in an already suspect lineup?