News

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As we've mentioned a time or three, you can get about $30 per month's worth of value for $3 per month at Bill James Online.  One of the Disney "Lands" at the site is the weekly column ... this week it had James' scouting report, er, notes 'scuse me, on the Mariners' visit to Fenway.

It's behind the pay wall, but BJOL sez us that they don't mind excerpts with credit, so .... here are a few of the things that impressed the Founding Father about the M's on Tuesday ...

The Mariners are physically impressive.   

Blake Beavan is a beast; he looks like he is 6-7, and his shoulders are huge.  (He is 6-7, listed at 240).  Saunders, Smoak and Seager are all physically very impressive—big, strong kids, Carp and Ackley to an extent as well.

Dr. D remembers during the 1989-1992 period, how the M's front office used to complain about the Oakland Bash Brothers' clubs being so physically superior to the Mariners' teams of that time.  "They are physically impressive, and they can back up that impression with performance," one of them said.  Think it was Armstrong.  That was the phrase, physically impressive.

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In October of 1961, the Soviets set off a hydrogen bomb that, for all intents and purposes, set the limits of power for such a weapon (due to fallout affecting the initiator).  When the Russkies lit up the 55-megaton "Tsar Bomba", the fireball alone blazed 5 miles in diameter and the mushroom cloud blossomed 200,000 feet into the air, about eight times the height of Mt. Everest.  The cloud was 25 miles in diameter.

Picture a single bomb going off in Seattle, and blowing to smithereens all concrete and brick structures in ... Tacoma.  Mammals being terminated by the heat in Olympia.  Wooden houses in Portland being wiped out.  Windows being broken in northern California.  

The TNT equivalent would be represented by a cube about 1000' by 1000' by 1000', twice the height of the Space Needle.  That's one H-bomb; obviously 30 or 40 of these would put any country in the past tense.  The U.S. has 9,600 warheads.  By the grace of heaven, you and I sat there all last week not worried in the least.  

In related news, the Seattle Mariners lit up the 34-megaton starting pitcher "Felix Bomba" on the Twinks Saturday night.  A few post-blast damage reports:

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Felix' spitball, er, his changeup, had a runs value of -4.55 coming into the game.  Meaning that 100 changeups resulted in a -4.55 reduction in enemy runs scored.  In this particular game, he threw 38 changeups (!!) and those changeups resulted in a -2.25 reduction in runs scored, over those 38 pitches.

Give me one pitch anywhere in baseball, and I'll take Felix' dry spitball.  Bobby Murcer said he'd rather hit a 500-MPH fastball than Gaylord Perry's hard spitter.  At least that way he'd have a chance.

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Though the Twinkies have a terrible record, their offense isn't all that bad.  They're 22nd in the majors in wRC+, right next to the Angels.  They've got Denard Span, Joe Mauer, and Josh Willingham's OPS+ is 185.  They've got six players who draw good walks, have lots of lefty hitters, rank decently in AVG, OBP, 2Bs and SB's.  They ain't the Red Sox but Felix didn't blow away the 2010 Mariners out there.

=== Figgins ===

Is cutting his zone nice and tight, is taking good swings, and .... the reason his production is not too swift?  He gets no walks.  Chone Figgins with an 0.33 EYE can't succeed, period.  No version of Chone Figgins, such as Brett Butler or Luis Polonia, can succeed with an 0.33 EYE.

Of course, the 0.33 EYE goes up when Figgins starts hurting pitchers.  He started hurting pitchers tonight.  In this chapter of the story, Figgins has to do his damage with doubles, triples, and homers.  If there's another chapter, if, then that one will include some BB knights and paladins.

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=== Pre-Game ===

Lemme keep it short and sweet so that my bleacher bum's road rage -- inflamed by the train-wrecked rally in the 7th -- won't get all over yer :- /

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For his changeup, Felix uses a grip that we haven't seen other pitchers use.  He seems to keep his index finger on the ball more, as opposed to making an "OK" sign with it.  He places his middle and ring finger actually on the seams, and he seems to otherwise throw it just like a fastball.

So when Tom Wilhelmsen asked Felix to teach it to him, Felix said "I dunno man, I just throw it."  Wilhelmsen probably figured that Felix was guarding secrets.  My own guess would be that Felix actually does just throw it - that there's nothing much to explain.  It just so happens that that grip, with Felix' particular hand shape, works a serendipitous little miracle.

Check out this velocity graph for Felix:

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The orange line is the changeup, and the green line is the fastball.  See how they are converging over the years?  You can see it even better on this page.  And now, in 2012, they have finally converged completely:  F/X classifies all of Felix' fastballs and changeups as one pitch!