Bob Seger had skills and range in his younger days. I wonder if he would be willing to trade his guitar for a bat and glove and play 3B for the Mariners?
The Kyle Seager experience is over for now as he was shipped back to Tacoma. Seager managed to actually be worse than Chone Figgins in his 22 MLB at bats, posting a whopping .136 BA with no extra base hits and 7 strikeouts. It should have been worse – he had an infield single against Texas that was scored a hit that really should have been an error. You know you are off to a bad start when Chone Figgins looks like a better option; heck I think Bob Seger might have been a better choice at 3B for the Mariners.
I know that the Mariners were trying to catch lightning in a bottle when they called Seager up from his hot start in Tacoma, but what made them think that a guy with 60 PA in AAA was ready for the big club?
In other Mariners news, it seems the never-ending LF tryouts has moved from Bradley to Saunders to Peguero to Halman and now to Carp. Good luck to Carp – you probably have about 100 AB to figure out if you can hit your weight.
A mini factiod from a piece authored by Bill Barnwell on Bill Simmons’ new website, Grantland. The piece is about the “dangers” of signing different types of NFL free agents. The excerpt below highlights the potential drawbacks in signing free agent veteran running backs:
…that’s two impact backs in the past seven free-agent classes. Running backs simply don’t last long enough — running backs who put up a 1,000-yard season since 1983 have only been able to repeat that performance an average of 1.5 times over the remainder of their careers.
Emphasis mine.
I’m of the suspicion that the probability of a running back following his first 1,000 yard campaign with a 2nd 1,000 yard season is something like 30%.
Old friend Joe Posnanski came up with a list of 14 random baseball facts recently (Hey, even the best professional writers get bored). A few of the gems from his list:
14. Johnny Damon has as many hits as Ted Williams (2,654 hits).
Number 14 isn’t all that exciting by itself, but it becomes more interesting when you couple it with this bit from his commentary:
I’d say if you put together the best team you could find of hitters who DID NOT get 3,000 hits, it would beat the team of players who DID get 3,000 hits.
Team with 3,000 hits:
1B: Stan Musial
2B: Eddie Collins
SS: Cal Ripken (or Jeter soon)
3B: George Brett
LF: Ty Cobb (or Rickey or Yaz)
CF: Willie Mays
RF: Hank Aaron (or Clemente or Kaline)
C: None (Ivan Rodriguez only one with 2,500 hits)
That team is amazing. But look at the non-3,0000 hit team.
Team without 3,000 hits
1B: Lou Gehrig
2B: Joe Morgan (or Hornsby)
SS: Honus Wagner
3B: Mike Schmidt (or A-Rod)
LF: Ted Williams (or Barry Bonds)
CF: Mickey Mantle (or DiMaggio)
RF: Babe Ruth
C: Johnny Bench (or Yogi)
I think I will take the less than 3000 hits team, thanks.
6. Aubrey Huff’s next double (344) will move him ahead of Mickey Mantle on the all-time doubles list.
I guess this should not have surprised me – for all of the complaints about modern parks, the old, old Yankee Stadium was just as bad – despite a center field that was larger than most parks short of Yellowstone, it was less than 320 feet down the lines and had shorter power alleys than most parks, which probably lead to less doubles and more HR for the Mick.
5. Dan Quisenberry led the league in saves more times than Mariano Rivera did (5-3).
Not surprising. Saves are overrated, but it might just be another indicator of just how good the Quiz was.
1. Ron Kittle hit more home runs per at-bat than Lou Gehrig (1 every 15.39 at-bats vs. 1 every 16.23).
I forgot how much of a masher Kittle was – did you know he once had a 50 HR season in the minors in the early 80’s, back when it was rare? He also hit 40 HR’s in the minors the year before. Joe Pos’s section on Kittle is a great read.
That is the question. I decided to take a look to see how much of a home road split there has been for the Mariners over the last few seasons; seasons that are stringing together one of the most inept offensive streaks in baseball history (we are talking dead ball era bad).
The first thing I noticed today was the park factor for Safeco this season is 100, which means that the most historically pitcher friendly park in the league is playing neutral this season, which is a huge surprise. Here are the splits for the Mariners between home and road over the last few seasons:
HOME
ROAD
R
HR
BA
SLG
OPS+
R
HR
BA
SLG
OPS+
2011
156
32
.220
.330
72
145
23
.228
.332
78
2010
239
35
.235
.322
68
274
66
.236
.356
84
2009
313
76
.255
.395
85
327
84
.260
.409
96
2008
337
59
.271
.398
87
334
65
.260
.381
91
2007
386
77
.283
.418
96
408
76
.290
.432
106
2006
353
81
.267
.422
88
403
91
.277
.432
102
2005
354
63
.260
.390
87
345
67
.252
.393
92
2004
313
71
.255
.385
83
385
65
.285
.415
98
I picked 2004 as the starting point for this since that was the year I became a season ticket holder (has it really been that long) and I wanted to see if my memories of these teams fit the reality of the numbers. Looking at these numbers, the team was pretty consistent between 2004 and 2009 – they were about 12 – 17 % below league average hitting at home and hovering right around league average on the road, then they fall off a cliff offensively; interestingly enough in years 2 and 3 of the Z-era (he can’t take any credit or blame for year 1, those were mostly Bavasi’s players). The numbers indicate that there is a significant enough split between the home and road stats that maybe the Mariners should consider moving the fences in a few feet to try to generate more offense, although I doubt that it would at all help the current offense – they just can’t hit regardless of where they play. I also think that the honeymoon period for Z is long over – he came to Seattle with the reputation of being a great evaluator of talent. His Evaluation has driven the Mariners offense directly into the ground and produced a season and a half of the worst offense since WW2.
To answer the question, should the fences come in, I would say yes!
It is all over the news in Seattle – for the second time in 8 games, the Mariners had an opposing hitter take a base on balls with just 3 balls. Ok, as a former umpire, I wanted to put my 2 cents in on this one.
It happens. You occasionally make a mistake on the count – every umpire has done it. You have a ball/strike indicator in your hand and you occasionally advance it too far or not enough or just forget on a pitch and you have the wrong count. It has happened to me multiple times but only once do I believe that a runner took a walk with less than 4 balls. In that case, I was the only umpire, it was a long at bat and the opposing coach did question it, but didn’t put up any argument when I said I had ball 4. In this case, I find the mistake excusable.
What is not excusable is the situation that happened twice to the Mariners, I am just trying to figure out who is more at fault – the umpires or the Mariners bench.
There are 4 umpires in a MLB game. They all have a ball/strike indicator which they keep independently. You generally have to look at it to reset it for the next batter. How the heck did none of them notice that the hitter only had 3 balls, not 4? In both cases, the home plate umpire had 3 balls on his indicator and assumed it was a mistake after looking at the scoreboard. NEVER LOOK AT THE SCOREBOARD. You are paid to get it right, the scoreboard is there for the fans. If you think the count is wrong, consult with the other umpires. Seeing the umpires blatantly miss a call like that twice in the span of a week drives me nuts. They will consult on home run calls, they will consult on close plays, why not on the count? Are they afraid of looking stupid?
While the umps are supposed to get it right, the Mariners bench coaches should be fired for what I see is a lack of attention to detail. Every MLB has someone on the bench charting pitches. That person should have noticed it. There are at least 10 guys on that bench who are supposed to be watching the game. One of them should have noticed. I am even more disturbed by Wedge’s comments about the 3 ball walk to Abreu:
“I was OK with that,” Wedge said. “I figured it worked against us last time, let it work for us this time. … I was fine with (Abreu) not being up there 3-1 with the next two guys coming. I felt good about Felix facing those next two guys. I was hoping for a double play, but we got a strikeout and a popup.”
Does this mean he noticed and just didn’t care? If that is the case, he shouldn’t be managing a MLB team. Baserunners are bad if you are on defense, even with Felix pitching. It changes the dynamic of how a pitcher approaches a hitter and that could lead to trouble. Is it any wonder why the Mariners are sinking quicker than a deflating balloon*?
* I almost used the Indianapolis, but I pulled it back since I did not want to make light of the deaths of 900 US sailors in the worst single naval disaster (and probably failure in military intelligence) in American history. You probably only know the Indianapolis from “Jaws”, so if you don’t know the whole story, read about it here.
A quick question: Which of these fine hitters would you want in your lineup?
BATS
PA
OBP
SLG
OPS+
Player A
L
245
.359
.335
100
Player B
S
115
.313
.356
91
Player C
L
148
.243
.372
73
Player D
R
52
.314
.408
104
Player E
L
42
.333
.257
72
It would be pretty easy to eliminate Player C from this list – the OBP is awful, despite having one of the “better” slugging percentages on the list (and that is still pretty lousy). Player B wouldn’t be the worst choice and player E does not have enough plate appearances to make a call on. Players A and D would be the logical choices, but I would be cautious of Player D – small sample size. I have also intentionally left out Batting Average. You might say that Player A is the no-brainer when I add that he has 44 walks in those 245 PA and Player D only has 3 in 52 PA.
The list of players (in order of appearance): Jack Cust, Milton Bradley, Carlos Peguero, Greg Halman and Mike Carp.
The Mariners recently announced that Cust and Chone Figgins would see reduced playing time. It is funn, because it is hard to lose playing time when you are only in the lineup maybe twice a week anyway. I can’t make the argument for that being a bad thing for Figgins, but it does not make any sense to me to reduce Cust’s playing time if you are trying to win.
His power numbers are way down this season, but Cust has the highest OBP on the team, leads the team in walks (one ahead of Justin Smoak, who has roughly 100 more PA) and really is better than his .215 BA. Besides, the only Mariner with more than 100 PA and a higher OPS+ is Smoak. Adam Kennedy figures to take the bulk of the AB from Cust at this point.
Considering Bradley is gone, Carp is back in Tacoma and the Halman/Peguero platoon should produce somewhere around 20 walks this season and, if we are lucky, hit over .220, why not play Cust on a regular basis?
It seems to me that the team is adopting a “let’s play the kids and if we win, great, if not, we will call it a rebuilding year” mentality, which is fine, but let Jack Cust go to someplace where he can produce.
Ryan Franklin - I will miss the chin hair and the roller coaster of bringing him into the game.
I saw on ESPN this morning that old friend, Ryan Franklin, was released by the Cardinals. Two years ago, Franklin saved 38 games, had a 1.92 ERA and was an All-Star. In 2010, Franklin saved 27 and had a 1.03 WHIP. This season? Franklin had 4 blown saves in 5 chances, a 1.84 WHIP and 8.46 ERA.
This got me thinking – unless you are talking about a guy like Mariano Rivera, most closers are pretty fungible. In most cases, you will see a closer go down or start to fail for a team and the team is able to find a replacement in house who is as good or even better than the guy who he is replacing. That fungibility is something that causes me to scratch my head when the Red Sox go out and sign Bobby Jenks for $6 million a year to be a setup guy or the Yankees paying $10 million to Rafael Soriano to do the same.
Here are the teams that currently have a different closer than it started with in 2011:
Team
Original Closer
Current Closer
A’s
Brian Fuentes
Andrew Bailey
Angels
Fernando Rodney
Josh Walden
Twins
Joe Nathan
Matt Capps
White Sox
Matt Thornton
Sergio Santos
Blue Jays
Jon Rauch
Frankie Francisco
Phillies
Jose Contreras
Antonio Bastardo
Nationals
Sean Burnett
Drew Storen
Cardinals
Ryan Franklin
Fernando Salas
Astros
Brandon Lyon
Mark Melancon
Half way through the season and that is 9 out of 30 teams that currently have a different closer than they started the season with and that doesn’t even count the Phillies again who actually had to replace their replacement closer, Ryan Madson, who got hurt, Kansas City who replaced Jokim Soria for a week when he couldn’t get anyone out (Soria is their closer once again), or the Phillies, Giants and Mariners who all had their projected opening day closer (Lidge, Wilson and Aardsma) go down with an injury in spring training. In just about every case on the list, the current closer is putting up comparable or better numbers than the guy he replaced.
Are you sensing a theme with the Phillies yet? They have managed to survive the loss of their closer and his replacement and still have the best record in MLB. Yes, their starters help that greatly, but they still need to protect those 8th and 9th inning leads. Generally, every team has a couple “closers in waiting” stashed either somewhere in their bullpen or in the minors that can be called up at a moment’s notice.
Frankly, the save is probably the most overrated stat in baseball. In most cases, a closer is coming in for 1 inning with no one on base and a couple run lead. You have to be pretty bad to blow that. For the 6-8 games a year where you need to “save” the game (i.e. coming in with the tying or winning run on base) with your closer, the difference in success rates between Mariano Rivera and Ryan Franklin is not as great as you might think.
Dave Cameron recently suggested that the Mariners should consider trading Michael Pineda. While I don’t necessarily disagree with him, I do think that his expectations on the players in return are a little, how would you say it, generous. Cameron writes:
The Reds have an excess prospect at nearly every position the Mariners have a massive hole, and could offer something like a package built around a switch-hitting catcher with power (Yasmani Grandal), a line-drive hitting first baseman who might be able to play left field or could DH (Yonder Alonso), a third baseman with legitimate power (Todd Frazier), and throw in a decent back-end starter (Travis Wood) to help the M’s compensate for losing a member of their rotation.
Michael Pineda - The next Mariner Ace or trade bait?
Of the guys he lists, John Sickles ranks Alonso as the Reds #3 prospect, Grandal as their #5 prospect and Frazier as their #7 prospect. As much as I think this would be a windfall for the Mariners, I seriously doubt that the Reds would be insane enough to move 3 of their top 7 prospects for a guy who, while he has the makings of a great pitcher, has thrown just over 100 innings in the majors. I would think that the Mariners would have to move at least one prospect in addition to Pineda in a deal like that.
Something else that Cameron writes bothers me a little:
Alonso, Frazier, and Wood could step right onto the big league roster, and given who they’d be replacing, the M’s might actually be better this year even after trading Pineda away.
Lets look at these players individually:
Alonso – He has a 298/363/476 slash line with 1 1/2 seasons under his belt in AAA. He doesn’t hit for much power (despite being 6’ 2” and 240 lbs) and doesn’t have great command of the strike zone. He would replace the revolving door that is at DH for the Mariners, but I doubt that he would be significantly better than Cust/Carp/whoever else. The one red flag for me, he is from Cuba and his “listed” age is 24. He might really be 24 and have some room for improvement, but if history holds for Cuban defectors, we could be looking at him at his career peak right now.
Grandal – Another Cuban (the Reds sure do like them, there is a bit of irony in them constantly taking Cubans and that can be found here, just scroll down to the newspaper article) who has put up some impressive numbers in the minors (897 career OPS). I would temper my expectations about being able to plug him in the lineup right now (and Cameron admits that) – he has exactly 27 plate appearances at AA (and only 1 walk in those 27 appearances) and his MiLB stats last season came from playing in Arizona and Bakersfield – 2 places the ball travels a bit. I really doubt that a guy with 300 PA in the minors and very limited experience at AA would be able to out produce the hack Miguel Olivo they are putting out there most days (and I am not a great fan of Olivo). I would guess he is probably 2 years away from the majors at the earliest.
Frazier – He is 25, has some mid range power, has improved his walk rate dramatically so far this year, but looks like he might be a slightly above average MLB hitter based on his stats in AAA. There are some health concerns on Frazier, but the biggest concern to me would be his fielding – he is a bit of a butcher with the glove, sporting a .950 fielding percentage at 3B in his AAA career. I have a feeling he is probably destined for the OF if he makes it to the majors. That being said, his bat is probably better than Chone Figgins or Adam Kennedy at this point, but how much would defense suffer if he was plugged into 3B right now? Besides, the Mariners have Alex Liddi in AAA right now and he basically would be Frazier with more power and a slightly better glove, so why bother at this point.
Wood – He is a relatively young, power arm who is better than anyone the M’s currently have in AAA, so he probably would be roughly equivalent to Jason Vargas with more strikeouts.
I know this is just one suggestion for a deal that could be made, but if you were Z, would you make it?
Mike Cameron was hitting more like Candice Cameron at the time of his release.
A couple of seasons ago, the Red Sox made what I thought was a great move in signing Mike Cameron to a 2 year, $15 million dollar contract. At the time, Cameron was 36, but was still playing gold glove defense in CF and had posted an OPS+ of 110, 111, 104 and 121 in his previous 4 seasons while averaging around 140 games per season. The Sox were going to shift Jacoby Ellsbury to LF and have 3 potential gold glovers to cover the outfield expanse in Fenway.
A lot of people didn’t like this deal – Cameron was too old, he strikes out too much, he doesn’t hit for a high average, etc.
Well a season and a half into his contract, the Red Sox have designated him for assignment. They got 81 games of injury-plagued substandard baseball (and a whopping 71 OPS+). Cameron could not get it together in Boston when he was healthy and he wasn’t healthy for most of his stay there.
I doubt that anyone will rush out to sign a 38 year old hitter who looks done, but he probably wouldn’t be a bad pickup for a team trying to contend as a 4th OF/late inning defensive replacement/power bat off the bench. That is, once of course he clears waivers and becomes a free agent, meaning that any team that signs him would only be responsible for the pro-rated part of the MLB minimum salary, leaving the Red Sox on the hook for most of the roughly 4 million he is owed the rest of the season.
Updated 4:05 PM – This just in from boston.com:
Cameron, who was designated for assignment on June 30 by the Red Sox, has been sent to the Florida Marlins along with cash in exchange for a player to be named later or cash, the Red Sox announced moments ago.
My guess – the Sox are giving the Marlins the cash to pay Cameron’s remaining contract. If not, this move makes no sense for the Marlins.
It is Felix and League. Ichiro not only failed to be voted as a starter for just the second time in his career, he failed to make the team at all (and isn’t in the “final player” vote) for the first time. Since Felix is scheduled to pitch in the Mariners game on the Sunday before the AS game, he would be ineligible to pitch in the AS game. I suspect that he will be replaced on the roster by Michael Pineda.
Two strange selections for the AL – Alex Avila managed to win the vote for starting catcher. This is not a bad thing – Avila is having a terrific season and it means people noticed. Aaron Crow was the lone KC selection. He is having a great season as a set up guy, but honestly, either Alex Gordon or Billy Butler would be better choices.
FlatbreadGarden 