I saw this in the transactions on espn.com this morning:
Twins: Placed 1B Justin Morneau on revocable waivers.
Generally, once you get past the trading deadline, teams do not announce when they have put a player on revocable waivers (and will usually put their entire team on waivers just to see who gets claimed). Basically, the way it works is that you put a player on revocable waivers for 48 hours. If anyone claims him, you have 3 options:
1) Work out a trade with that team
2) Let him go to that team for nothing in return. (The other team assumes the entire remaining contract for that player)
3) Pull him back off waivers. (You then can’t trade him until the season is over)
If there is more than one team that makes a claim, the only team you get to negotiate with is the one with the worst record at the time of the claim. If no one claims the player during the waiver period, you can then trade him to any team you would like, just like you could before the trade deadline.
Seeing this makes me think there is a deal in place for Morneau and he might be on the move. We shall see.
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.
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.
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.
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.
What looking down the barrel of a loaded gun is like.
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.
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.
The baseball draft has passed, and, while it will be a few years before you know how well your favorite team did, there are a ton of great “hindsight” stories that have come out of the draft. Dave Schoenfield hit on a few of them in a recent article. Here are a few of my favorites:
1966: Reggie Jackson falls into A’s lap
In one of the more famous draft blunders, the Mets’ had the No. 1 pick and passed on Arizona State outfielder Jackson to select a high school catcher named Steve Chilcott, who would battle injuries and never reach the majors. “It was a position pick,” said Joe McDonald, a Mets executive at the time. “We did not feel we had an adequate catching prospect in the organization.”
Position pick my butt – the real story behind this was that the Mets were concerned about Jackson (who is actually half black-half Mexican) having a white girlfriend. Keep in mind this was 1966 at the height of the civil rights movement.
1966: Braves draft Tom Seaver
The Braves? Yep. Atlanta selected Seaver in the now non-existent January secondary phase of the draft (for players who had previously been drafted). Seaver, pitching at USC, had been drafted the previous June by the Dodgers, but didn’t sign after the Dodgers turned down his $70,000 asking price. The Braves took him with the 20th pick of the January phase, setting off a weird chain of events. The Braves signed Seaver for $40,000, but commissioner Spike Eckert ruled Seaver was ineligible to sign because USC had already played two exhibition games (Seaver didn’t pitch). But the NCAA then declared Seaver ineligible, because he had signed a pro contract. So Eckert ruled that any team willing to match the Braves’ offer would enter a lottery. The Mets, Phillies and Indians matched, and the Mets won the lottery.
This one is little known. Talk about a big SNAFU – the signing disaster probably cost the Braves a couple of pennants and is directly responsible for the Mets winning a couple of them and for one of the most memorable teams ever – the 1969 Miracle Mets. Yes, Seaver was that good. It kind of made up for not drafting Reggie.
1976: Trammell and Morris … and Ozzie (sort of)
In 1976, the Tigers had one of the great drafts ever, selecting Steve Kemp in the January phase and then Alan Trammell (second round), Dan Petry (fourth round), and Jack Morris (fifth round). Trammell and Morris aren’t in the Hall of Fame yet, but both could get there someday. No team has ever drafted (and signed) two future Hall of Famers in the same draft. The kicker: They also drafted Ozzie Smith in the seventh round, but he didn’t sign, and the Padres selected him the following year.
I had no idea about this one. That is one hell of a draft even if Ozzie did not sign. I don’t think Morris is a HOFer, but he was one heck of a 5th round pick.
1988: Dodgers draft Mike Piazza … in 62nd round
Maybe the most famous late-round pick, Piazza was the Dodgers’ final pick that year — the 1,390th pick overall out of 1,395.
Yep, 5 players drafted after him and the Dodgers only picked him as a favor to his father. Spent 4 seasons in the minors raking the ball and got called up in late 1992 and stuck around the majors for another 15 seasons. Had a career 59.2 WAR according to baseball-reference.com, and posted a higher career WAR than any player taken in the first round of the 1988 draft. Only Robin Ventura was close at 55.9. The next highest was Brian Jordan at 32.7. How did no one scout this guy?
Jim Caple runs a section of his Off Base column on espn.com titled “Box Score Line of the Week”. Each week, he picks and interesting performance and writes about it. It is usually some pitcher absolutely getting his head beat in. This week, he had tons to choose from:
Arizona starter Ian Kennedy allowed 10 runs last Thursday (4 IP, 13 H, 10 R, 10 ER, 2 BB, 4 K), while Pittsburgh’s Jeff Locke allowed just one hit but also walked seven batters on Sunday (5 1/3 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 7 BB, 6 K). But it’s the relievers who put in the real effort this week, thanks in large part to all of those extra-inning marathons.
Mariners reliever Blake Beavan faced the minimum number of batters in 6 2/3 innings Thursday (6 2/3 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 4 K), which might have been the winning line had it not been for the Rangers’ Ross Wolf, who also pitched 6 2/3 innings of relief (6 2/3 IP, 7 H, 1 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, 1 K) on Saturday. Which also might have won had Miami’s Kevin Slowey not pitched seven scoreless innings in relief on Saturday (7 IP, 8 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 0 BB, 8 K).
But even he lost because of the Mets’ Shaun Marcum, who pitched eight innings in relief the same game. He lost the game, but he wins this week’s award:
8 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 7 K
That was the longest relief outing since Scott Sanderson in 1989.
In case you were wondering, Sanderson came into the game in the 10th inning against the Pirates after Calvin Schiraldi, Steve Wilson and Mitch Williams failed to hold the lead in the 9th. Sanderson’s line was 8 IP, 7 H, 1 R, 1ER, 2 BB, 5 K. He lost the game on a HR by Jeff King in the bottom of the 18th.
Interesting to note in that game – the Pirates managed to tie the game in the 9th without a hit, thanks to 4 walks, a wild pitch and a sac fly.
Either way, it was a freaky week for relief pitching.
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.
FlatbreadGarden 