The vision of THAT Joe Saunders being followed up by a similar Garland is one the made me lose sleep. Egads, that would have been ugly.
Didn't see Wedge's post-game comments, but I will agree that Saunders was out there banging away and sweating and grizzling all over the place. He was certainly trying. I'll give him that. He was also spurting oil everywhere. Or maybe he was grizzling oil everywhere. That's the way The Skipper sees it, and it ain't a subtle difference.
But Joe Saunders doesn't need his hand held. Just say that he didn't have it tonight, but he will be better next time out.
And Saunders will be better his next start.......or the one after that (see below). Soon, anyway. But he got lit up in ST and he didn't have pace or command last night. He's in a bad streak, I'm sure. He's had them before. Last year, in his nine May/June starts, he got lit up to the tune of something like .327/.367/.530. That was after a great 1st four starts. He had a good July, a terrible August and a decent Sept.
OK, he's streaky.
But what if he's streaking in the wrong direction to begin the year? Do you give him a 6th start if he stays in this form? We have that arsenal of magic arms banging on the Safeco front door.......how long would you let Saunders grizzle before you decide his future is more fizzle than sizzle? (Cute, huh?)
He'll get better, because he can't get worse. But even if he finds his career-average self, he's still a 1.4 WHIP guy.
I'm certainly saying "Go Joe!" But if I'm Wedge, I'm not gifting him a bunch of undeserved starts, and I'm keeping my hand on the Tacoma-Jackson Hotline. This team has a chance.
BTW, I'll bet you dollars to donuts that Shoppach calls his next game. No blame on Montero here. But I wonder if Wedge will wonder where all of the miscommunication originated.
moe
.
=== Bazooka Joe ===
Where were you?, during Blake Griffin's double airball from the foul line. Whoops! First one slipped, man. Watch me, now, I got the laces here. I'm gonna MAKE this one. ... WHOOPS!
Saunders needs plus-plus command of his fastball; in this game he didn't even have mediocre command of his fastball. He'd fall behind 2-0, and he'd bear down to try to hit his spot, and then the ball would sail two feet wide and two feet high.
Since the fatball was useless, it underlined the fact that his curve is a minus pitch and his change is a minus pitch.
If he can pitch worse than that if any major league pitcher over the age of 25 can pitch worse than that, I don't want to know about it.
..........
After the game, Sgt. Wedge praised Saunders to the skies. You really saw the bulldog out there tonight, dudes. Seriously, that's what he was talking. And so it becomes clear how Saunders got here.
That's okay. We don't begrudge Sgt. Wedge his homies. But Dr. D is already counting the days.
Don't get me wrong. Saunders isn't going to average 1.0 BB per IP very often. But we'll still be counting the days. The #4-5 SP situation is .... well, how long is Erasmo out again?
.
=== Brendan Ryan ===
Man on 2B, 1 out, first inning. Slow bouncer into the hole. The play that Derek Jeter makes 14% of the time and that Ryan makes 60% of the time. Ryan made it, and Saunders got out of the inning.
Next inning, IIRC, score 2-1 and there's a double into the corner, man on 1B. Ryan scrambles out to halfway down the 3B line, takes the relay, and fires a 150-foot screaming meemie Right. Onto. the Plate. to protect the lead 2-1.
The man is a genius.
.
=== Kameron Loe ===
Here's an inkblot test for you. Do you like sinker-slider pitchers? Judge your inner baseball compulsions by your visceral response to Kameron Loe.
His sinker, sinks more than most sinkers sink. His slider, slides more than most sliders slide. It's like a wiffleball where you're reversing the side the holes are on.
Dr. D endures sinker-slider pitchers. He doesn't like groundball "pitch to contact" guys, and he doesn't care for the slider as a concept. If Dr. D never saw another sinker-slider pitcher again, it would have no appreciable effect on his life happiness.
Some MLB(TM) employees, who live under constant crushing Atlantic Trench-level pressure, appreciate the chance at a ground ball double play, and appreciate the chance at 2.0 IP, 0 BB. I'm not operating under that pressure, and I don't like sinker-slider pitchers.
.
=== Oakland A's ===
Left 18 men on base, scored 6 others, and had several gunned down on the bases. All in all, I'd rather be in Philadelphia.
.
=== M's Offense ===
Didn't have quite as bad a night as the 8 consecutive duck's eggs made it look.
They had two no-doubter HR's; Jesus Montero thwacked two clean hits; and there were at least four or five balls hit very hard in the air that found leather. Kendrys Morales in particular smoked one just hard enough to hold up for Yoenis Cespedes.
The same balls in play, on another night, would have resulted in 3-4 runs.
Don't get me wrong; Milone made the M's fight for it, didn't walk anybody*, and the A's had 18 LOB's to the M's 6. The A's dominated, thanks to Bazooka Joe's tragedy, but the offense wasn't locked down quite the way you might think by the box score. (We'll say this, though: we thought the M's mailed in the 8th and 9th innings. Grrrrrrrrr.)
This is why no team, not even a juggernaut of the magnitude of the 2013 Seattle Mariners, winds up 162-0. Lot of luck comes into play on any given night. We'll have to settle for about 108-54.
M's still lead the division and can still go Wire To Wire Bab-Eh.
.
Comments
I didn't like the Saunders signing, even if he had been incredible last night. You both summed it up very well, better than Wedge trying to put the positive spin on things. I saw on MLB checking in last night that Saunders ball/strike ratio was not much better than 1:1. Thankfully, I didn't have time to check back in! Prefer to just read the comments here!
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/mariners/2013/04/03/slippery-baseballs-app...
This is what mal was talking about:
“It was hard,’’ Saunders said. “It felt like the balls had some funny stuff on them. Not to make excuses, you’ve got to make adjustments. It just felt like some of them were taking off.
“It felt like my arm felt good,’’ he added. “I felt like my command was actually better. It was just tough to grip the ball.’’
Now, believe me, I know what many of you are thinking. A’s pitcher Tommy Milone had no trouble getting in a groove after that second inning and shutting the Mariners down through seven. This isn’t the NFL, where you get to throw your own ball. Both teams use the same basket of baseballs.
But for some reason, the Mariners pitchers had trouble with them.
If it was just Saunders, well, I might roll my eyes a bit.
But we saw Furbush put Josh Reddick in the dirt with one pitch, then hit him in the back with the very next one. Then, he sent a ball soaring over the head of Brandon Moss.
I asked Kameron Loe, who gave up the two homers in the seventh, what he thought. Loe told me the baseball felt “really powdery” and like it had “a lot of resin” on it.
Furbush looked AWFUL. He was missing home plate by as much as Jaso's throws were missing second base the other night. I dunno if the "powdery baseball" excuse really works for me, but it's interesting. I thought this was at least as interesting, though:
Poor Jesus Montero was diving all over the place trying to get a handle on Saunders and his pitches. The two had some frequent exchanges in-game as they tried to get on the same page.
“I’ll have to take him out to dinner to kind of figure it out,’’ Saunders said. “But we’ve got to work on stuff. It was my first time with him, so it was a learning experience…it’s probably tough to call pitches for me because he didn’t know where it was going and I didn’t know where it was going at times.’’
One game, one bus running over Montero with the "old guy." Let's hope they can get on the same page, and that page is successful for poor Joe Saunders. Because a couple more games like that last one and he should be looking over his shoulder at the minor leaguers.
We'll keep an extra year of service time as long as the minor leaguer doesn't come up before the end of April, so there's a 3-4 week leash on bad performers - assuming the minor leaguers in question start off throwing the stuffing outta the ball.
We don't avoid Super Two unless the player doesn't come up til the trade deadline these days, so that's not really a consideration. Saunders, Maurer and Beavan have a month to prove they belong in the rotation, or they'll probably lose a spot.
Let's see Maurer do (much) better today.
~G
Some issue of resin or something on the balls all night, Baker mention it in his post game. Obviously it's no excuse, I'm sure we'll all be scrutinizing Joe's next start, looking for blood in the water. Joe gets the inaugural game against the newly AL Astros.
As far as confused signs, maybe Montero just doesn't work well with the old guys, I remember a game last year where he had to go out to talk to Milwood so many times, and then didn't catch him again for the rest of the season. "Listen, you're struggling, just throw your best pitch," ::Long glare:: "Sorry, I'm just used to working with everybody else on the staff."
I was a bit scared for Furbush out there, after his wild pitch he really pumped the brakes and threw the rest of the inning at a snail's pace. I'm glad to see it worked, but after a shaky spring and having a lot of trouble finding the zone in his first appearance as well, I'm a bit worried. Hopefully they get clean baseballs today.
Like G said, one game and already Joe Saunders is throwing the incumbent young catcher under the bus. Disgusting. Do you guys have any idea, the dominoes can that can fall in a clubhouse, once veterans start doing that?
Saunders is not known for 4 BB in 4 IP so I'm sure he'll be better. But it took him exactly one (1) game to move me from "dubious" to "can't wait until he's gone," and we're not talking about what happened DURING the game.
Best day of Carlos Silva's career here, was the day he left.
One game and he's already one of my least-favorite Mariners of all time.
I sure hope that Sgt. Wedge cleared Saunders up about whose fault that game was. If he lets that blame game go on very long, it's liable to be a long summer for Montero.
.............
Incidentally, I was perturbed during the game. Montero DID have a tough time figuring out Saunders' game. But Joe Saunders' job is to talk with Montero, not to the press.
I would also like to believe that option exists, to powerflush Saunders in May, but ... is that a viable option from the M's standpoint? He's making $6.5 mills this season and in Seattle Mariner dollars that's about three times as much.
Zduriencik would have noted carefully the postgame comments, as you did G, and if there IS any way to find yourself swirling the blue bowl, that would be it.
Montero and Wedge confirmed the powdery baseballs story. Maybe someone just knocked a rosin bag into the bucket that has all the balls or something. It's kind of odd that Joe Saunders is saying that it's his first time pitching to Montero? Seems like a weird oversight that the Mariners didn't even have them throw a bullpen together in Spring Training...
I don't doubt Baker's story ... my QUESTION is why the resin-balls didn't bother the A's.
Wonder whether the A's had some sort of hand lotion or something that counteracted the resin. Baseball isn't above such shenanigans by any means. Should be tougher to pull it off today with the humidity.
When a pitcher gets detonated, ANYTHING he says to call attention to his catcher in ANY way is the same thing as saying "If I'd had a real catcher, we'd have won."
Easiest thing in the world for a pitcher to say, "I shoulda thrown a different pitch in that situation."
Saunders is not going to have a magic 8 ball to tell him the right pitch NEXT time; on any given count he's got a 70-15-15 random mix. Batters will guess some right and some wrong. To claim that some other catcher woulda tricked the hitters is 100.00% pure baloney. It's basically a dice roll whether a batter guesses right, WHOEVER is behind the plate.
It's ESPECIALLY galling to watch a guy go to a 2-0 count and THEN blame his catcher for not getting him out of it.
V04 is the ICD-10 cause of death code for Pedestrian hit by bus.
Based on the text I read, the guy ACTUALLY getting thrown under the bus is Wedge.
If game 3 of the 2013 season is the FIRST time that Saunders ever worked with Montero (the #1 starting catcher for the Ms), then my initial response is ... so, what was that month of Spring Training about? Okay ... you don't know in early March that Maurer is going to make the roster ... Montero can't work with everybody, perhaps ... but Saunders?!?! This is the one guy you actually went out and paid semi-real money to bring in. The one guy other than Felix that was going to be in the rotation barring losing a limb was Saunders. And he doesn't work with your #1 catcher for a MONTH!?!
When I see "we need to go out to dinner to get on the same page", I don't read that as throwing him under the bus, I'm reading that as "Gee, why didn't we bother to do that BEFORE the games started counting?"
But a) Joe looked atrocious, b) the Montero comments didn't sound good AT ALL and c) one-pitch pitchers have no margin for error.
When a guy only has one workable pitch then it's very hard to see him succeed if anything goes wrong with it. We already have a one-pitch starter in Beavan. When he can pinpoint the fastball, he can survive and when he can't, it goes badly. If something goes wrong one game out of five then maybe that works. This would have to be Joe's 1-in-5.
But then there's the "we've got to work on stuff" comment about Montero and the way he said it. I agree with Sandy, if this is the first time they've EVER worked together, and not just the first time in a game that counts, then that's a de-merit for Wedge and some lost points for Gryffindor.
But even if it was the first time, like you said Doc... how does a guy who can't throw a strike get off blaming his catcher for ANYthing in that game? He should be thanking Montero for not letting half-a-dozen balls go to the backstop when all those runners were on base and making his ERA even worse.
I'm sure they do have work to do as far as getting on the same page for what Saunders would like to call NORMALLY, but in this specific game what's Montero supposed to call? "Whatever you think you can get over the plate and below the batter's chin is gonna be #1, dude. There is no #2."
Poor form by the veteran pitcher, both on the mound and to the microphone. Bad first impression. I remember AJ Burnett griping after he left the Yankees that it was their fault that he was such a bad pitcher there, because they were giving him bad advice. Funnily enough, he was great for Pittsburgh last year so maybe he was right about the advice - but then why did he spend 3 years listening to their advice and throwing the ball to the backstop or into the stands? He led the league in wild pitches two of those three years.
If somebody is telling you to do something that is bad for you, don't do it. When you're a savvy vet, that's sort of your job: know what you do well and do that.
If Montero doesn't understand what Saunders does well, then they should absolutely get on the same page, but in the meantime Saunders can call the game from the mound just fine. Or at least he would be able to if he had any pitch that would move in the general direction of Montero's glove. Or chest protector. Or body.
Last night, he had nothing. Let's hope it's different 5 games from now.
~G
Plus Sandy, is there no scouting report by which the coaching staff and battery speak about before the game? Funny how the first two games the catcher was the same. If I were Montero I would oil my glove pregame. Way to go Veteran!
"Uh, guys....those balls seemed fine to me and, evidently, the guys throwing for that other squad over there. Saunders is just whining. But it was a tough outing so let's just forgive him!"
Saunders should have just said, "Man, I was terrible! I'm excited to be a Mariner, maybe I was just too pumped."
Anything else, in this situation, was all-star level whining. If he had been here for 3 years, establishing a relationship with teammates, then I'll give him the resin thing. But not first time out. This was a "don't blame me" effort.
He may as well have blamed Morse for not hitting TWO taters again.
Saunders may well be a 100 ERA+ guy this year. But if this is his SOP then swallow the $6.5M now and send him on.
I'll give Wedge a break on his public kid glove treatment of Saunders. But behind closed doors, he better have said, "Knock it the heck off! Capiche?"
And if they hadn't had even a bullpen session together, then Wedge blew it completely....and should own up.
I thought Montero did a fine job protecting the umpire and backstop, btw.
moe
The one pitcher who matters the most vis a vis Montero is Felix. If Felix likes throwing to Montero, then Saunders, in my opinion, will be viewed as the outlier. If Felix expresses dis-satisfaction with Montero, then all bets are off concerning Montero's relationship with the pitching staff. But if it's only Saunders vs Montero, Montero is more important to the team long-term, particularly if Saunders continues to pitch like last night.
You don't throw your manager under the bus. Especially after the third game. And especially when he is the only thing other than your personal performance between you and your job going to a 23 year old.