...............
Thanks for keepin' the chair warm, Mr. Montero, but the catching situation now has somebody else on the hot seat. If he wants to win the most games possible, that is.
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=== Thought #1 ===
Olivo arrives in the clubhouse, and the Red Sea parts for Olivo's passage. He taps Montero on the shoulder, and everybody moves down one chair -- Jaso and his 115 OPS+, 6:8 EYE lefty bat to "deep freeze."
Right now you've got Dr. D confused about what comes next there, Hector
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Q. What happened out there? Noesi fanned 7 and gave up only 3 hits. To the Rangers. Not much was hit hard after the first inning.
A. For one thing, his fastball command was there.
He slowed his tempo a bit on the backstroke, and finished nose-to-leather a little bit better. There were subtle differences in his motion, which we could side-to-side ... ahhhh, it's kinda late and the differences ain't much.
Noesi was underlining his little "pause at the top" Nippon-style hitch to slow his backstroke, something of which Moe will approve highly. You want a slow, smooth takeaway. Noesi was rushing it a little bit in his April starts, especially as he turned the corner into the throughstroke. On Tuesday, his tempo was nice and chill.
But mostly it looked like he's starting to find his release point. He got ahead in the count, and then threw to both sides of the plate, and when he does that he's going to put ANYbody, Babe Ruth or anybody, on the defensive.
.
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My son and I got into a food fight a coupla days ago. Watching John get irate is sort of what you'd imagine it being like if you saw Blake Beavan throw a fastball by Troy Tulowitzki.
He was disgusted with the M's, jumped all over me why do you watch these guys, this is ridiculous, yada yada yada. I go, if the Seahawks are going 6-10 but they got the rookie Tom Brady and stuff like that, do you watch? He re-raises, gloating that nobody but Seager's any good, you make a fool out of yourself by thinking they're anything but a mortal lock to lose 100 games....
He's bigger than me now, which instantly prevents me from offering him a graceful out ... what would you know about baseball, I sez, charmingly. You know too much about baseball, he sez, which is why you think these guys could ever win.
We hurl 12 kinds of invective back and forth, hurl cushions and chips and salsa, and by the time we're both seeing way too much red to think straight he goes LOOK DAD. THIS AT-BAT RIGHT HERE. CARP'S GOING TO STRIKE OUT. I'M TELLING YOU.
I go, yeah, one at-bat decides it all, sarcastically. He goes Yeah! 'cause it's the same thing every time. You think Carp's good. Everybody else in the world knows he's going to strike out right here.
As I recall, the count's three-and-one. I shift my grip from my dance partner to my temper and we both stop to watch the pitch.
Carp swings and BLASTS the pitch hard and far, over the center field fence. My wife and daughter, heretofore enjoying the carnage, collapse into banging piles of rubble.
The curtain comes down on the rest of it. If you haven't thrown hands with a younger, stronger and quicker version of yourself, you're definitely missing the finer things in life. We've both received sufficient first aid to be able to talk and type and stuff.
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Dr. D, sitting in the GM's seat, DOES and DOES NOT:
Does NOT throw up his hands and say "well, we knew were were going to be Texas' girlfriend anyway." There are 122 games left and when it comes to pain, he'd rather give than receive. Rather, he does a Billy Beane on the clubhouse soda machine and tells his club This Stops Now.
Just FYI.
................
Dr. D DOES remove Brandon League from short relief. For tomorrow's game. This is not a knee-jerk response. It was more than two weeks ago that SSI called for League's jettison.
It would have been nice to see it before the entire ballclub was in a power dive, but we sympathize that Wedge has political issues to manage.
He doesn't have those political issues any more, now does he?
Think Selig would O.K. a game or two with this helmet for the UNC kid? Hey, think of the merchandising.
......................
The Detroit Tigers won 95 games last year; the Rangers won 96 and the Yankees 97, forming a stellar Orion's Belt of megateams in the American League.
The major changes that they've made have not been to swap a great 300-lb. pitcher for a great catching prospect. By "changes" the Detroit Tigers mean "additions." Such as adding a $200,000,000 Prince Fielder to hit cleanup, and to call up Drew Smyly to strike out 9 men per game in their #5 rotation slot.
This situation is not unlike that of the NBA's Miami Heat. In the NBA, they only get one ball, but in baseball, there are nine lineup slots...
..........
The Tigers are 15-15 having lost five of six to the Mariners. Had the Tigers beaten the M's 5 of 6, in Tampa Rays fashion, the Tigers would now be 19-10 and essentially tied with the 20-10 Texas Rangers for the best record in baseball. The M's have grabbed the Tigers by the lapel and slapped them off the top rung down into a .500 record. And they're bloomin' lucky they won that single game...
The Placeholder Mariners v0.9 have been frustrating, but they haven't been lame. Night after night, Dr. D wrings his hands helplessly and wishes for the day that Seager, Vargas and Felix are joined by the organization's best baseball players.
.
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=== Previously on L.A. Law ===
In the late 1980's, Bill James demonstrated that batting orders don't matter. In a Strat-O-Matic sense, anyway. Later, others followed this. The pioneering idea was never altered much.
If the Texas Rangers were to move Nelson Cruz to leadoff and drop Ian Kinsler to #6, they'd lose 20 R in the leadoff slot and lose 20 RBI in the #6 slot. But! Guess what else ... you guessed it. The Rangers would gain 20 RBI in the leadoff slot and gain 20 runs scored in the #6 slot.
James, in one of his inventive studies, created a "worst possible" lineup including Josh Hamilton* hitting 9th and stuff like that, and simulated 1000's of seasons, finding that the difference between an optimal lineup and the worst one was about 5%. He concluded, "If the difference between the worst and best lineups is 5%, what do you think the difference between two reasonable lineups is? That's right. It's nothing."
Sabertistas have refined and super-refined this paradigm, finding microns worth of difference, putting the best hitter #2 vs #3 and so forth. Dr. D has never been interested. Butterflies like that get lost in the maestrom of real-world chaos.
.
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=== Chapter 1: M's take a 4-0 lead ===
The Mariners, coming off a brutal thrashing at home, must have enjoyed their TSA shakedowns. They came out on Tuesday afternoon cool, focused, and apparently on an 8-game winning streak.
Chone Figgins expertly worked a 6-pitch walk off Max Scherzer. Dustin Ackley hawked and spat squarely in BABIP's ugly face, knocking a medium-strength groundball back over second base. Jesus Montero grinned and knocked a medium-strength groundball between short and third.
In the third inning again the Mariners practically swaggered their way to a 4-0 lead. Ackley walked - his 5th, thanks - and then Ichiro (infield hit) and Kyle Seager (seeing-eye grounder) showed BABIP that it hain't seen nuthin' yet. The box score would show 15 hits; SSI's mainframe would see just one more game in which the Seattle Mariners lasered the ball to all corners of the globe.
Michael Saunders took one deep off the left-center wall to make it 4-0. Is he swinging better? Any time Michael Saunders goes 400 feet the other way, you have Dr. D's permission to call it a good swing. But we'll split that out.
The M's came into the game with a .243 line drive rate and a .265 BABIP; the gap is supposed to be 100. The gap won't be 100 on Wednesday morning, but it will be more than 22. As a result, the Detroit Tigers are one loss sadder but wiser.
.
=== Chapter 2: Jimmy, Your Payroll is Showing ===
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=== 30,000 Foot View ===
The story of the game wasn't League's blown save. Tell ya something: 97 MPH is serious cheese from a sidearm pitcher. Brandon League can close my ballgames.
Story was that the Mariners should have scored more than one run. By "should have," we don't mean that they blundered away the game with bonehead plays. By "should have," we mean that more balls should have missed fielders.
If games were scored by average MPH off the bat, the M's would have again cruised. The bottom of the 4th was one such. Dustin Ackley doubled sharply, and moved to 3B on a wild pitch.
Justin Smoak hit a ball that I didn't see; I miss about 0.2% of all live pitches at the park, but on this one I looked away for a second. My teenage son John stated that it was the best defensive play he'd ever seen, a 110-MPH* blast with glove specialist Casey Kotchman playing wayyyy in on the grass, trying to cut the run off a fast runner at the plate. A line drive like that, with the infield in that far, and you are talking at least 10:1 odds against the defense surviving.
The very next play, Seager singled up the middle for the RBI ... except that the shortstop dove, flung desperately to 1B, and Kotchman made a play that looked, from the third deck, like the best diving foot-on-the-bag play I've seen in about five years.
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=== Catching* ===
As Millwood threw, I wondered about the framing again. But check this little baby. The ump was actually trying to bail Millwood out. And when Furbush entered the game, it's funny how Montero's pitch framing suddenly looked so much better ...
Montero weirdly had three pitches bang off his glove, no bases gained or lost. Dan Wilson thought highly of Montero's feet behind the plate: "that pitch bounced way in front of the plate, real tough to block, but Jesus was all over it." And like that.
The 3rd SB attempt on Montero, and the third SB that wasn't even close. They're not running wild, like several SB's in a game, but it bears watching.
cERA, Montero's up to what, 3.75 -- that's Millwood (a #5 starter) in the Texas crucible, Hector Noesi (a #4 starter) against a weak lineup, and Millwood throwing terribly against a LH power lineup. Charlie Furbush came in there Tuesday and Montero was just flat having fun out there.
.................
Q. Was Noesi really that good?
A. Good, fo sho, though not shutout good. In the second, Casper Wells rented a jet ski and ran down a thunderbolt from Seth Smith. I got your +10 runs LF glove right here, babe. That play was sweeeeeeet.
Two or three other balls were hit hard and deep. The A's could have gotten 2, maybe 3 runs with a bit of luck. Let's not sell the start as Pineda-like.
On the other hand, c'mon. Noesi was ahead in the count all day, jammed them at will, was totally in control.
...........
Noesi has a Death Valley-deep 29% grounder rate after two starts ... in Texas those airballs blew him away. In Safeco the airballs were buffered. You see the general principles in their sharpest relief, in these reductio ad absurdum situations. Noesi threw a huge flotilla of airballs, got detonated in Texas, and threw an 8-inning SHUTOUT in Safeco.
That said, Noesi has a live arm, and he was real sharp Saturday.
.
Q. How live is his arm?
A. In early (cold) April, Noesi's fastball velo is #10 in the American League:
There are times, in sports, when you just forget about wrapping yourself around the axle of what the other guys are thinking. And you just go do what you do good. Jesus Montero has no way to call pitches like a 10-year veteran. But he can bring his own game and force the other lineup to deal with him. In chess we call this "The Initiative," dictating action rather than finessing it. Both approaches have their places in sports. . Q. The changeup is Noesi's #2 pitch? A. SSI has been saying that the slider and the curve, in 2011, were high school pitches, but that the changeup is pretty decent. Jesus Montero dialed in on the change. You can see why SSI is not averse to this understanding of Hector Noesi's current capabilities. You just got a 3-D visual demonstration of the toolbox prospectus. Go wit dat. .Oak
FB
47 (55%)
73 (70%)
CH
19
21
SL
12
8 (for show)
Curve
7
3 (for show)
