=== Dowwwnnn Towwnnnn ===
The M's with 11 more hits today, and they had 11 additional fly-ball outs. Guess how many went over the fence.
Nine homers in 22 games leaves them on pace for 66, full season. Paul Konerko has one less homer, 8, than the 14 Mariners' players have as a group. This won't work.
The M's are shaking out into something like their expected profile, with a 124 ERA+ and a 82 OPS+. If you could get that OPS+ to, say, 93, you'd have a shot.
But if you hit 66 homers, that OPS won't be 93. If you hit 100, it won't be, either. The M's don't need a great OPS+. But they do need 120 or more home runs -- they need to hit them twice as often as they have the first month.
The M's HR-per-fly rate is ... wait for it ... 4.0 percent (10-11% being average). The punch line: the M's are an extreme flyball team! At 1.04 grounders per fly, they're 26th in the majors in groundball ratio, average being 1.2 to 1.3 and the Braves being at 1.6.
...........
Dunno what the solution is, but there better be one.
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=== FGut ===
Had a .440 BABIP for several weeks there. But BABIP won't help you if you snag the Golden Sombrero and fan four times. Guti covered us in April. Congrats, you got a mulligan on the offense for the first month... now, let's not confuse a mulligan with an ability to play golf...
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=== Jose Lopez ===
Read somewhere that he has 7 more out-of-zone plays than does Chone Figgins. Check me on that.
Lopez is going to be a very plus glove at 3B, and when he has his Tejada seasons, he's going to cash in big. That's the saving grace for May: Gutierrez can't hit .345 all year, but Lopez, Figgins and Bradley are going to shortly double their OPS+'s.
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=== Milton Bradley ===
You can't see it in his overall stats, but he appears to have gotten into his cleanup-hitter groove. Last three games = .360/.460/.550 as he posts two singles, two doubles, and two walks.
More to the point, he's covering the plate, laying off close strike twos, and ripping into pitches he can handle. Bradley led off Wednesday's 8th inning with the score back to 5-5 and delivered the Double Tap. He laced a double into the gap, off-field ... took 3rd on an out ... scored the winning run on an out. Won the game for us.
In the 9th, too, he came up runners 1B and 2B, two out, and laid off a close pitch to load the bases.
..........
If and when he does re-light the 1.000 OPS firecracker, it will be a month before others notice the liftoff. Won't be a month for you. Probly happened this week.
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Adam Dunn was the solution at DH, though the path not taken. Even so, Adam and the seven dwarves doesn't work either, but it steps in the right direction. For now, I'd take a hot Sweeney at DH and part-time 1B against lefties.
When you look at a number like that...your apparent first reaction is "gee...this team is HORRIBLE at hitting home runs"...my first impression is "gee...this team is getting HORRIBLY UNLUCKY!" 4.0 HR/Fly?? I know it's April and Safeco's average HR/Fly is like 9.5%, not 11%, but 4.0% HR/Fly is unsustainably unlucky. They're not squaring up the ball, but some of that is bad luck...missing the fat part of the ball by a quarter inch and getting a deep fly instead of a moon shot. This is especially true for J-Lo, Gutierrez, Bradley and Rob Johnson.
it's like saying Adam Moore's .167/.189/.222 line, 14 OPS+, is unsustainably bad. :- )
It is, but what is it going to revert to?
...............
The M's aren't going to hit 66 homers, obviously. It's almost impossible for a team to hit fewer than 100. But it sure isn't impossible for the M's to finish #14 in SLG by a long ways.
...you can still slug 14th and be an average offense.
Just out of curiosity, I wonder where the Nationals are on Dunn right now.
or whether it means 18th in a 14-team league. :- )
100 homers and the M's are going to finish 18th in slugging.
That's a funny way to put that. I don't think they're going to wind up that far down. I think they'll hit about 125 to 140 HRs by the time it's all said and done. Rob Johnson, Jose Lopez, Franklin Gutierrez, Milton Bradley...all hitting a ton of flies and getting very little to show for it thus far...I believe when the year is over the HR list will look like:
Gutierrez: 28
Lopez: 24
Bradley: 21
Kotchman: 15
Johnson: 14
Ichiro: 10
Griffey: 8
Carp/Sweeney: 7
Byrnes/Langerhans/Saunders/etc: 5
Tuiasosopo/Hannahan: 4
Moore/Bard: 4
Los Dos Wilson: 4
Figgins: 2
That's 146, Doc...not 100.