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While we baseball fans wring our hands about the lost Sonny Grays and Justin Verlanders of the big-game world, there's another sports coach in town who feels very little hesitation about adding Stars to his roster. If you ever get frustrated about a local sports team getting just a leeeeeetle too "responsible" with its resources management, hey. Switch internet channels and wallow in the football team across town.
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HOUSTON, YOU SHOULD HAVE A VISUAL
Leake takes the mound and ... no surprise to the seasoned Denizen, that we'd hardly ever seen him pitch. He was loose and jangly, like he avoids fried foods that angry up the blood. He don' look back 'cause somethin' might be gainin' on him. If that isn't what Satchel Paige looked like, it certainly was what Jered Weaver looked like when tossing water balloons at the So Cal homecoming party.
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TICKER TAPE
√ Mariners deal for a starting pitcher who takes the slab, steps up to his 3 runs, and delivers a victory. X's and O's, baby.
√ Cleveland, who we don't play, wins their 8th and 9th in a row. They'll tear up the Angels, Royals and Twins for us and then they'll be tired so we can very easily dispatch them late.
√ Yankee$ lose. Badly. To Boston and Doogie. They're feeling like the Antifa guy who kicked a tear-gas canister back at the police and took undue retribution for his efforts.
√ Pesky rodent Angels storm back from 6-2 and 9-4 to tie the game 9-9 .... yeahhhhhhhhooooNNOOOOooooo a stolen base, error and wild pitch undoes it all. That's so Angels-y.
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G-MONEY SEZ
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Leake is a groundball pitcher in a league with juiced baseballs giving flyball pitchers headaches, so that's useful. Seattle has a normally-good-fielding infield, which will also help. Moving to the AL won't help him as much, but he's still better than some other options (most of which the Ms have tried already). His hits-per-9 have ballooned in St. Louis, though. Perhaps that's defense, perhaps juiced balls also get through the infield faster, perhaps he's just catching too much of the plate with adequate-but-not-overpowering stuff.
The Cardinals paid for a 3-WAR pitcher who only gave them 1 WAR. The Mariners got the discount and are trying to pay for a 2-WAR pitcher they'll actually get.
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WHO WON THE TRADE
See Jeff Sullivan's recap. In essence, the Mariners gave the Cardinals Rayder Ascanio, and the Cards gave back $0.75M in international slot space. That space is valued at $3-4M, so this trade is a wash.
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Just the Fa'ax, Ma'am Dept.
With the Mainframe back from dry dock, having received a few well-placed swings of Eye-Gore's noggin against its side paneling, I think this is relatively accurate. As of Thursday for the race for WC2. Bold face teams are in the top 4. The M's better get some mojo back on for the Orc series:
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TWINKIES +6
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PESKY RODENT ANGELS +4
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James currently has Mike Leake listed as the #65 starting pitcher in the major leagues; last week he was #66. Exactly one year ago, Leake was #49 in the league. One year before that, Leake was number #30. One year before that, he was #36.
James Paxton is #51. As far as James' rating system is concerned, it's not that big a deal whether the Mariners are using Leake, vs. Paxton, during the stretch run of the 2017 playoffs. Of course James is aware of the lockdown potential. He is emphasizing the "sure" return of 4-5 starts.
Also, once you realize that Mike Leake has been a #30-65 starter in the bigs for several years now, and realize that he has 14 Quality Starts this year (#28 in baseball), the M's enemies probably hope that Leake IS fading down the stretch of 2017. Here is his velocity graph this season. The right one-third represents 2017. He was 92 early in the season, 89-90 now, which makes strikeouts tougher:
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Me poor bairns ... they kinna take much more o' this ... I cannot change the laws of (starting rotation) physics, sir! But can a team in a 7-way demolition derby afford to have a door taken off with four laps to go? the M's are in surprisingsy resilent position for the Wc2 :
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SitRep 8.30.17
With a contemptous wave off of the Twins as no issue, which forms the height of boundless wisom on Dr. D's part. Unless and until the Twinks get to that Sept. 22 four-gamer with the Tigers and play well in it. I personally don't expect 'em to, which is loosely speaking allows us to treat the scanrio as if it was a past event. so
Twinkies +5
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pesky rodent Angels +3 today vs A's ... @stRangers, @A's, @Mariners, Astros, stRangers, Indians, @Astros, @Sox x4, @Mariners ...(whoo doggie)
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POTD up shortly. Meantimes, here's a clean sheet for first reactions. Here are two from Gordon, the SSI fear-nothing juggernaut on MiLB-for-MLB maneuverings
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G-MONEYBALL 1
Whenever you can pay a #4 guy $16 million a season I guess you have to do it, especially on this team. We'll see how much money STL is kicking in, and losing Rayder is fine.
That severely curtails next year's spending though. Leake is next year's big free agent acquisition - which just puts more pressure on Seattle's young players to pick up the slack. Fingers crossed that Moore or Marco can do that.
Sonny Gray still has 2 more years of arb eligibility, btw, and hasn't given up more than 2 ER in any game since joining the NYY. Seattle's choices are like Game of Thrones romances.
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Guillen number being simply --- > the number of baseball runs that score because of home runs. The graph moves from post-WWII to present.
Has it seemed to you like there's more dead time in baseball? What % of the time is the baseball rolling around in fair play? Are we reduced to hoping for a set of four pickoff throws to 1B as the highlight of the 8:00-9:00 hour?
No, we're kidding. "Three True Outcomes" (homer, strikeout, walk, which are "pure" tests of pitcher vs hitter) are fine by Dr. D. They'd better be, though, because ice cream is fine but if they're stuffing it into you by the gallon you'd better have your favorite flavor.
Mike Leake, huh?