I would love to have seen ZZ Top back in the day. By the time I saw them in the mid-80's, they were well into the 'fur covered spinning guitar' stage of their career. They could still get after it a bit but it was mostly canned and rock-by-numbers-ish.
Blengino definitely likes twisting the knife when he can but in this case, I think he's right. It's been a problem for years. I like McLendon's approach, actually. He's telling them (paraphrasing), "they are putting that shift on you because they don't think you have the talent or the smarts to beat it by going the other way". Maybe that is starting to work for some of them but I'm not seeing it with Miller. He's taking a few more pitches, maybe, but he's still swinging like he's trying to pull that low and away pitch. I wouldn't be surprised to see him in Tacoma Monday. The club has another bat-first guy with good MLB experience hitting .384 down there in Franklin. I would send Miller down and tell him that he's not going to sniff the bigs again until the hits start falling the other way. It's not like Franklin's defense could be any worse than Miller's error laden offering of late. They got the depth - use it.
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I think ZZ does tour Japan, right? Like pancakes with corned beef hash and eggs on top. Which I plan to assimilate shortly...
Segue'ing off from a cute ZZ promo into a particularly egregious rant, even by my standards. Dr. D has a real peeve going, modern 'net rats talk about tolerating people who think differently (and then invoke TOS at the slightest irritation).
At SSI we walk the talk, bab-eh. Bring it! No whiners. You think different, type it in. The response will be tennis volley'ing, not punishment.
Ahhhhh ... just skip on to the next paragraph. Dr. D is just cranky because of too much time in the Field Gulls comments the last coupla draft days. You get 18,000 kinds of really angry treatment towards those who aren't part of the GroupThink ... then somebody posts a .jpg of a rainbow pony, or mentions something spiritual we are talking three words, and five guys simultaneously call for a lifetime ban. Inconsiderate to other commenters, don'cha know.
Ah well. Remind me to stick to the lead authors. Do you think those guys bring more Seahawk game than SSI brings Mariner game? :: shudder ::
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MtGrizzly, fellow F-500 denizen
Blengino on Miller and the M's: Brad Miller appears to be engulfed in the team-wide offensive malaise sweeping through the Mariner clubhouse. Player after player has abandoned the approach that allowed them to graduate from the Seattle farm system, becoming overly aggressive in a single-minded pursuit of pull-side power at the major league level. Miller’s walk rate has cratered, and he has become one of the most pull-oriented hitters in the game. His K and grounder rates are up, though he should see some positive regression in his line drive rate. http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/some-hitters-to-start-worrying-about/ - See more at: http://seattlesportsinsider.com/article/state-mr-magic-closer#comment-14...
1) Dr. D loves Tony's work. And, it's a bit of a window into MLB(TM) processes.
2) Isn't this pretty well against "baseball code," for him to be --- > jockeying with his old org like this on a national site? I thought radio silence was supposed to be the route to your next gig. Maybe times have changed.
He's really gentle about it, picks his spots, but I thought he was supposed to be studiously ignoring his old gang. Well, it's extremely info-taining, no doubts there.
3) Blengino is senior to the SSI Think Tank in terms of saber tools available to him ... not so as to say, necessarily senior to the Tank in terms of conceptual thinking and getting from point A to B on an individual conclusion.
He's got plenty 'nuff light bulbs on we don't, but I wonder if the reverse is not also true. Your thoughts?
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4) It is a very recent saber discovery --- > that good hitters blast away for .500, .600, .700 AVG's (not SLG's) if they pull the ball in the air. It's the 2014 evolution of the old "fly ball rate" craze.
Something tends to get lost in the translation. Earl would talk about looking to hit 2-0 and 3-1 pitches out of the park, to once in a while load up and go for it, when a batter's intuition told him he had an opportunity.
As opposed to what Justin Smoak does, and what Brad Miller has doing - to approach every single pitch as an attempt to "massage" the AB until that all-important 3-1 pitch arrived.
4b) The M's are still in the process of shrilling down. I think Tony's article was written a few weeks ago.
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Mo' Dawg, fellow scratch golfer
moethedog: The original Star Trek used to have all these Expendable Security Guards who were vaporized at the rate of two or three an episode. If Maurer's job lat night was to keep the Klingons off our bullpen, giving them one more day of rest, then he performed admirably. - See more at: http://seattlesportsinsider.com/article/baseball-prospectus-wbc-san#comm...
Well, maybe only one of us is a scratch golfer. But a 24 handicap is pretty much scratch.
He hit this one to 8 feet, thereby increasing Dr. D's enjoyment of the upcoming three or four games. You can juuusssssst about feeeeeeel the groundswell of a thunderous rotation --- > into routine mini-win-streaks --- > and a fun summer.
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It says here that Maurer is making nice progress. He's establishing the fastball, getting the bats started, then going off the plate gloveside with his slider and off the plate armside with the change. Young pitchers can look gruesome sometimes ...
| Rook | ERA |
| Collin McHugh | 7.16, it's down to now |
| Justin Grimm | 5.97 last year, 100 innings |
| Danny Duffy (!) | 5.64 in 2011 |
| Dallas Keuchel | 5.74 |
| Trevor Bauer | heh |
| Garrett "Hide the Women" Richards | |
| Gio, Mulder, Lee, 9,000 guys |
Brandon Maurer is one of those guys to whom the Good Ole Baseball Cliches apply in abundance. You got a Pitching Coach Cliche, this is the guy you want front and center. Not James Paxton.
Like Gordon and Jim remind us, Maurer is new to having good stuff. He's learning. But I'll take 100 of him. If the M's lose a few with him in the #6-7 SP slot --- > for me, that's intelligent developmental time invested.
BABVA,
Dr D
Comments
...here goes anyway.
Please, Doc, I beg you not to view this as any sort of slight to you as a person or as a baseball mind. Or to think that I'm knocking someone to make myself bigger. Neither is true.
But I must protest a bit on behalf of the sabermetric community. You have a tendency to assume that people who have held higher office than you in a given discipline are subject-matter experts who know more than you do...that they wouldn't have come that far without being really good at what they do. That is a WONDERFUL assumption to have...and it works probably 98% of the time, so I encourage you to remain optimistic and generous in spirit in that way.
But in the case of Tony Blengino...I think you are not correct to assume that. Without wishing to name names, I do feel it worth noting that I worked for a top notch organization for Blengino's stated profession and heard a lot of commentary about the Mariners (because they knew I was a fan of the club and it was interesting conversational fodder)...and when the Blengino hit piece came out (and that's what I believe it was) this January, they were primarily jawing at Blengino...not Z or Wedge (though they think there was likely some truth in some of the things Blengino said about how Z approach new information delivered by the analysis team). Please do not take that comment as gospel for what the official position of my former employer would be...it is just office chatter from people I respected who were better analysts than I was.
And, frankly, I concur with them on this...they don't think Z is blameless, or some sort of super-genius, but they don't think Blengino is a sabermetrician...and looking at the way he thinks through problems and the types of information he uses to lean on in his analysis...I don't think he is either. Blengino is a good old boy who is conversant enough in sabermetrics to get by in conversation with the big minds in that field, but not particularly adept at scientific/statistical analysis done on his own, based on my reading of his publicly available writings.
I do not believe Blengino is any more a subject matter expert than you are...in fact I would take your analysis over his 8 days a week.
This is a great example of it. I actually got into an argument with my bosses while working for the Yankees over whether Ackley had become too pull happy..I was certain he had...but then we pulled up the spray charts and...dang...nope! During his cold stretches, he was NOT more pull happy...funny how the memory convinces us of trneds that are not real trends. Miller has indeed gone pull crazy and starting whiffing and grounding out because of it...but it is not part of a wider trend within the Mariner organization. Other guys struggled at the same time...for utterly different reasons. Smoak thinks he's a home run hitter who can go yard up the middle...he is not and cannot (regularly anyway). Seager was standing too far from the plate and getting beat by the fastball away. Ackley was too passive for strikes. Zunino has poor pitch recognition skills because he's too young in playing time. Saunders constantly battles his desire to use a more comfortable, longer swing, rather than use a shorter stroke directed up the middle. They're all struggling...but they are not falling into the same traps. He just assumes they are because they are all fanning a lot more than they used to.
Not to mention his silly comment about Miller's LD rate regressing...why?? If he's got a physical reason to be grounding out all the time...why should his LD rate go up? I think it will go up...but not because it regresses...because he hits better.
I don't think Blengino is clueless...but I don't consider him a subject matter expert just because he had a title.