M's 4, Rangers 3 - Ten Minute Replay a

The concept of beauty is a favorite area of study.  Every person, including children, criminals, and everyone in between, appreciates and needs beauty.

I believe that everything beautiful possesses two key elements:  (1) it pleases one or more of the five human senses, and (2) it satisfies, impresses, or appeals to man's higher and nobler values.

A lime popsicle pleases the senses, but is not beautiful.  The Sistine Chapel pleases the sense of sight, and also calls to our attention how much effort and mastery a single man can put into a project.  It suggests to us that we could do the same.  It's objectively beautiful, whether or not the art style is to our taste.

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=== Inning 1 ===

The umpire begins the game with two howlers during a Andres Blanco AB.  Unashamed of himself, he then stubbornly walks Blanco on a very close pitch.  This starts Bedard's evening with a serious handicap:  two men on, nobody out, against the Texas Rangers.

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Michael Young works his own count to 2-2, and then Erik Bedard responds with a magnificent curve that slices the bottom of the zone on its way through, striking out Young.  

The umpire, as though sounding an unintended flat note in a symphony, again interjects an element of mediocrity into an unimaginably-high level of human endeavor.  He changes the outcome from "strike" to "ball" and bids the struggle continue.

Bedard gazes out blankly into space.  He allows his rage only the briefest moment's inward expression before snuffing it ruthlessly, and then he accepts the unfair situation.  

On 3-2, he throws yet another fine pitch, a fastball in onto Young's hands.  Young, himself a great warrior, smashes a long fly ball to the left-center warning track.  

The fly ball showed both the best and the worst of Michael Saunders.... Saunders was shaded well to right, and covered three Wa. State counties getting to the ball.  However, he slowed up long before he got there, gingerly reached out near the wall, and snow-coned it, almost dropping it.

He's fast and rangy, but is not yet comfortable in CF.  He is a courageous and graceful man, but he does not handle himself with grace or courage when near the CF wall.  He lacks the ability, not the desire, to do so.

Saunders' UZR/150, by the way, has him at 13.3 runs saved per season in center field, exactly where Dr. D assumed it would be.  This is more a comment on Safeco than on Saunders.

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=== Inning 2 ===

Justin Smoak gets an Ogando fastball Right! On! His Hands! and squares it up... with the label of the bat.

Smoak is so strong that the ball lines well out past the DP combo, and Smoak has the first of three (3) hits on the night.  He'll finish the game with his OPS+ at 168, third in the American League.

The electric-but-wild Ogando hits Jack Cust, loading the bases, and goes to 2-0 on Michael Saunders.

.........

Riddle me this.  3 on, 0 out.  2-0 count.   Do you, the pitcher, give in here?  What is worse, to risk a grand slam, or to risk another base yielded on a walk and a 1-0 deficit?

Ogando gave in.  He aimed a 94 fastball right down the middle, out and up, hoping that Saunders would hit it at somebody.

Saunders did what, do you suppose?  He hit it right at somebody:  right at the popcorn vendor behind the 3B dugout.  Incredibly lame.

Ogando grinned in delight, threw another pitch right down the middle, and Saunders fouled it back over the 3B dugout again.  He struck out with the bases loaded.

........

Langerhans worked the count to 3-2.  The RHP Ogando shrugged, threw a gimme pitch right down the middle (check GameDay), and the LH Langerhans foul-tipped it into the glove.

That, my friends, is why Jack Zduriencik has so much work to do.  And, I'm coming to agree, why it might be so nice to get Guti back.

.........

Brendan Ryan hit a ball right on the screws into the right-center gap, but ... Michael Young jumped up and grabbed it.

"Line Drives" have a 75% chance of becoming base hits.  THIS kind of line drive is over 90%.

The M's should have scored more than 4 runs on the night.   They had 13 bases and the Rangers had only 8.  The game wasn't really as close as it felt like it was.

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=== Inning 3 ===

With two runners on, Justin Smoak gets a 95 mph fastball in on his hands, in off the plate ...

He pulls his hands in like Edgar Martinez, gets the barrel of the bat onto the ball, and rips a one-hop double into the stands.

Dr. D rewound the play many, many times.  Only a few hitters in baseball can pull their hands in and keep that kind of strong "hitter's box."  Ken Griffey (a better player than Smoak, of course) could never do that with consistency.   Most great LH hitters can't; their swings are too loopy.

Justin Smoak is 18 kinds of gifted.

The ground-rule double costs the M's a 2-1 lead and typifies their bad luck on the night.

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Comments

1
FNietzsche's picture

Hey Dr D, have you ever read Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? 
Persig's central thesis is that Western civilization's scientific materialism has one glaring flaw, that being the inability to define or quantify "quality" (or beauty in this case).  It can be defined by proxy, as in saying it is "pleasant to the senses", but then you run into the problem of now defining "pleasant", ad infinitum.
All of us clearly recognize beauty when we see it, but we cannot define it objectively using the tools of our Western reductionist philosophies. 
Baseball is a beautiful game.

2

I missed the first part of the game.....But if on a 3-0 fastball Saunders can't be WAY aggressive, Grand Salami/14 rows over the RF fence aggressive, then perhaps he's never have the RF power/20+ tater upside I hoped for.  The fact that it was dead-centered FB makes it worse.  I am depressed.
Nice to see Cust get a hard rip last night.  Alas, a line drive single does not indicate the rumors of his demise were premature.  I am depressed.
I wish some OF/DH type was hitting .408 in AAA Tacoma.  Wait!  Some OF/DH type IS hitting .408 in Tacoma.  Ah well....He's merely AAA fodder.  Pay no heed.  No potential upside there.
BTW, has anybody watched Ackley lately.  He hasn't had a hit in weeks.  All the same...I'm anxious to see him.
Doc,  Kudos.  Yuo were all over the Bedard upside...and you were there a year ago.  Bonus points to you.
And, as usual.....Smoak=Olerud

3

Smoak at the plate is a thing of beauty. What others have to be taught he seems to do instinctively. One would expect that by mid-season teams will have figured out how to make life tougher for him, but a few hitters transcend the normal struggles of early-career MLBers. Justin could well be one of those. For now, I just enjoy watching a young, stud hitter on my team. God alone knows what the morrow may bring, but today we have the privilege of watching what he has already become.
For all our sufferings as Mariners fans, to be able to see a stud hitter and a stud pitcher (Pineda) emerge in the same month on the same team is quite special.

4

It's also interesting how many concepts we have that (1) children can easily use and that (2) defy 'correct' definition.
Love the idea of 'quality' as it relates to beauty.  
An example of this:  Dr. Emanuel Lasker, world chess champ 1894-1921, was also an important philosopher of his day.  He debunked many famous tactical combinations because they contained an extra move and lacked economy.
To him, beauty definitely required 'quality.'  Would agree that Asia right now tends to have a more-developed sense of the beautiful.
...........
Think we'd all agree that baseball contains a lot of beauty :- )
Might be an interesting article, to ask what each of us considers beautiful in baseball... to me, the initiate Pineda's courage against people like Miguel Cabrera qualifies...

5

Don't know if I would nick Saunders for lack of aggressiveness; he knew what was coming and let it fly, but simply could not catch up...
Depressing to me too, the way that Ogando simply said to Saunders and Langerhans, "Okay, let's see if you guys can hit or if you can't"...
He did the same to Brendan Ryan, BTW, at 97 mph, and Ryan slashed a thunderbolt that Young barely snagged...

6

Would you credit Oley for having the kind of power potential that Smoak has, or are you figuring Smoak for 20, 25 dings?
:daps:

8

Great question, doc.
A quick perusal reveals:
In his first 124 MLB games and almost 500 PA's (he should go over 500 tonight), Smoak has 21 doubles and 17 HR's.  His OBP, this year, is .402. (That translates, btw, to 27 doubles and 20-21 HR's over a full 650 PA season...Doubles generally increase over time.
In his 3rd full year ('92), Olerud played 138 games and had 537 PA's.  He had 28 doubles and 16 HR's.  The next year he exploded with an OBP of .450+ and 54 doubles.  but, more to generally whacked, he averaged over the next 10 years 29-40 doubles and 15-22 HR's, and was in the .400 0BP (+ or - a bit) every year.
Smoak....30-40 doubles each year (some year he'll hit 45), 20-30 HR's each year (will peak even higher), OBP .375-.400. 
Pretty Olerud-ish numbers.

9

As a Coug, I'm the biggest Olerud fanboy around but Smoak's upside is far higher than Ole's ever was.Olerud was a master of controlling the strikezone with average power. Olerud's skill was a 5:6 K:BB ratio (better than even Edgars). That is super human. Smoak has Branyanese power with a pretty good eye. He's going to hit a lot more extra base hits than Olerud ever did (Skydome's carpet aided Olerud in the doubles dept.)

10

more to generally, whacked should just be "more generally"
 
sheesh

11

Coug,
 
I'm with you.  But Olerud had plenty of pop.  Over one 13 year stretch he averaged almost 54 x-base hits a year.  Smoak will average more than that (currently on pace for 67-70)....But I'm not sure that he rings up .400 OBP's year after year like Olerud.
If Smoak turns out to be an Olerud, I'l be plenty happy.  I think he will.  Anything better is gravy.  He'll probably get there too.
By the way.....He should be hitting third.
moe

12

Wait till next year in Kansas City.  Mike Moustakas slugged .630 between AA/AAA last year, but Eric Hosmer is better.  Hosmer is torching AAA at 21 at a .430/.518/.581 pace with 40 hits and 18 walks (vs. 15 K) in 25 games. [You know, Anthony-Rendon-with-the-springboard-metal-bats kind of numbers.]
Plus, Alex Gordon is finally healthy and found his stroke, Billy Butler is a stud and they have some solid pitching coming up, too.  And their third-best hitting prospect (Wil Myers) only had 54 XBH and 85 walks in A ball at 19, though he's struggling a bit at AA as he moves from C to OF.
Oh, and they have the #5 pick and could end up with local legend Bubba Starling.
Watch out.

13

Definitely if you just consider it as two immediate-impact rookies appearing at the start of the same season on one team. Imagine on top of that having a 27-year old catcher ready to emerge as one of the all-time greats at the position, a 24-year old Rick Burleson at short in his first full season of starting, a 25-year old Cecil Cooper fighting for playing time...
As I'm sure you well know, Boston had not finished below .500 since the year before their magic 1967 season, nor had they finished in the lower half of their league/division. Still, they had not won a thing since that glorious pennant 8 years in their rear view mirror.
And yet when they DID win the AL, they had to face a historically great team still on the rise, only falling in game 7 to your fav team Cincinnati.
Two years hence they would post consecutive .600+ seasons with Rice/Lynn at the core, but alas another great team, the Yankees of '77-'78, barred the way to better glory. That same Yankees team barred the way for my favorite team, the Dodgers, who were able to vanquish the Big Red Machine in both of those years, but were thwarted in their quest for a World Series title by Reggie Jackson's three-homer game and his hippy-hippy shake on Bill Russel's throw.

14

Especially for first basemen.
First Round:
#3 - Eric Hosmer, aforementioned dominant AAA 1B who will be in the bigs shortly, ranked the #8 prospect in the game prior to 2011.
#7 - Yonder Alonso, who has severely underachieved as a college bat still trying to be a plus bat in AAA.
#11 - Justin Smoak, current lynchpin in the Ms offense and one of the top hitters in the league so far in 2011.
#13 - Brett Wallace, or Fat Todd Helton as I call him, who is also ridiculously hot to start the year for the Astros.
#17 - David Cooper, over-rated college hitter who took a page from Alonso's playbook and is scuffling in the minors until this year in AAA.
#18 - Ike Davis, who caused me to scream at the Mets for drafting him because he ALMOST fell to us.  CRUSHING it for the Mets, their version of Smoak.
That's all in the top 20 of the draft, and most of em have been - or will be - WELL worth it.  Special thanks to the Reds for drafting Alonso instead of Smoak...although if they'd drafted Smoak, Cliff Lee would have pitched for them at the deadline last year since they have Votto and would have loved Lee. 
Smoak was meant to be a Mariner. ;)
I was mad about missing about missing out on a great hitting class in 2008, and potentially the best first baseman draft ever. Adding Smoak has corrected that in a big, big way.  Hosmer looks to delight shortly and Ike has come hard-charging outta the gate, but right now Smoak looks to be even up coming out of the first turn.
Since we didn't have a horse in this race 12 months ago I'm ecstatic to be at the front of the pack now.
Go get em, Justin.  
Though we're gonna need some more bats to keep up with KC.  The Royals with their current collection and the Rays with the one they'll finish building in this year's draft should make them into contenders in a couple of years...
Ackley, Franklin and hopefully Rendon will help us pace em, right? At least we have one piece firmly in the heart of the lineup. More to follow.
~G

15

I was a HUUUUUGE Olerud fanboy and watched him play every chance I got and Olerud had gap power. He hit line drives into the gap and occasionally hit one of those line drives over the fence. We agree that he was a great player. Olerud walked because he didn't swing at bad pitches and had the bat control to foul off pitchers pitches.
Smoak brings a completely different skillset to the table. Smoak has hit 4 or 5 HR's that were more impressive than anything I ever saw from Ole. Last week he took a Verlander FB over the left centerfield wall in Comerica, into a stiff wind. Probably hit that ball 440 ft. That is crazy power. Smoak walks because pitchers are afraid that he puts one in the upper deck if they make a mistake.
I don't think the two players compare very well to each other. They were successful for different reasons. Olerud's gave focused on making the pitcher work, Smoak's gave revolves around hitting bombs.Olerud is similar to Edgar, while I haven't found a comp for Smoak that I like.
A player like Olerud is often underrated because they quietly have a solid season without putting up stellar power numbers. Players like Justin Smoak are often overrated because they hit a lot of dramatic HR's.
BTW, what does a guy need to do to keep me from these silly hard to read boxes that I need to fill out before every post.

16

As an original Dodger fan myself, that play is forever etched in my mind among the many incredible "breaks" the Yankees seem to get...  I will never ever forget that play...

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