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No Place to Hide, Dept.
In the 4th inning Friday, the game was scoreless, the outcome completely up for grabs. Ex-star Ricky Romero, a left-handed pitcher, had faced the minimum through 3 innings. He got set to face the Mariners the second time through. He battled Michael Saunders to a hotly-contested leadoff walk.
Then, first pitch, he threw Kyle Seager a jam pitch, above the hands and inside, off the plate:
Seager hit a majestic, towering shot into the second deck. 2-0 Mariners. Felix Hernandez never looked back.
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Not everybody reading this has played baseball. If you stand up beside your desk right now, and hold an umbrella in your extended hands, you'll notice that the end of the umbrella inscribes an arc as you lower your arms. The natural place to hit a baseball (powerfully, with extended arms and centrifugal force) is on this arc, from high and outside too low and inside.
That is even more true for lefties than it is for righties. Lefties have more looping swings, and smoother pitching motions. That means that left-handed hitters are more dangerous on down and in pitches than right-handed hitters are.
It also means that up and in is the "safe zone" against lefties. It's like the eye of the storm. If you are a MLB pitcher, you've got to have this pitch.
So you throw it, first pitch, and it's not even a strike. The batter hits it into the second deck. Where do you go from here? Ever see a high school football team go on the road, and lead the game off with its favorite play? The quarterback gets sacked, the running back gets injured, the ball comes loose, and you're down seven to nothing. The crowd going wild. What do you do now?
Kyle Seger isn't on a hot streak because he's catching a lot of mistake pitches. He's been through the league the first, second, and third times. His KBIZLT (keep the bat in the zone a long time) swing is creating a 150 OPS+ problem for the American League.
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Transition Year
Dustin Ackley has been hot too. Several of the amigos here have compared his new approach to Ichiro's. That makes sense. When Ackley hits the ball with his knees the other way, he has got a real knack for catching the top half of the ball and sending 95 mph missiles all over the place.
If he were to pursue this approach, he would probably get his average well up over .300 and then his natural power would take care of itself later on.
He hasn't actually been pursuing that approach very consistently. Most of the time his "Ki" is still hurling itself greedily into the NCAA rightfield bleachers. Remember when we were tracking Michael Saunders' stops, fits, and starts as he went through that transition? Ackley is at the very beginning of that. He's directing his ki up the middle --- > once in a while.
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He had a thoroughly discouraging line-drive RBI single in the fourth inning.
Bases loaded, Ackley's career stats are insane. (Check me on that.) When he knows he's going to get a strike, and is not in a state of confusion, his talent rises through the fog.
In the 4th inning Friday, bases loaded, nicely winning by 2 to 0, Ackley has a chance to shed some blood. Romero tossed him an 86 mph pitch waist high and ....
... Ackley took it. Think you can take it from there? Dr. D could hear the dugout groans all the way from Seattle.
Second pitch, just in case we missed the point, Romero tossed another 86 mph pitch waist high and over the plate. Ackley took that too. The count was 0-and-2.
Through sheer dint of immense talent, Ackley worked the count back full, but it is as if he has to be taken by the throat before he truly begins to fight. The confusion hasn't lifted.
But the man's talent is obvious, and by the time he's eligible for arbitration with Boras, Inc. we expect him to be an outstanding player. The Mariners aren't going to wind up with Seager or Saunders type of net value that wins championships, though.
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CERA
Early this year, meaning "the first week," SSI did not like Jesus Montero's pitch calls. (neither did Joe Saunders.)
It seemed to right itself quickly. We haven't been talking about it much, but Montero's pitch calls radically changed, away from his over-use of the offspeed pitch and he seemed to quickly grok the need to establish a fastball before pulling a string. And the last two weeks, all the Mariners pitchers have been throwing coherent games, as I see them.
Here's a little data for you:
Before you run screaming out into the night, to think of reasons to discard the stat without consideration, why not stop for a moment and just think about it?
Shoppach's a solid veteran catcher who knows the AL game. Think you could do better than him?
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By the way, it took a real nice running catch of a bases-loaded (? check me) Montero liner, or the score woulda been 7-0, 8-0, or 10-0 tonight.
Seattle has been wayyyyyyyyyyy impatient with Jesus Montero. The ceiling for him has not yet been established.
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Gotta be fair though: Montero caught 10 of the 13 GS by Felix/Kuma, of 18 GS overall. Shoppach only has 3 started by them, of 14 overall.
I think that more of the cause for these differences lie more within this statistic, than within a better pitch calling.
Just saying ... if James Paxton has a 1.50 ERA and Danny Hultzen has a 5.40 ERA, and Hultzen's faced much better teams, we're still not going to say Paxton's a joke and Hultzen is legit. And if Montero is allowed to catch Iwakuma, and Iwakuma keeps rolling, that's to Montero's credit, right?
But yeah. Especially with the M's, the SP that a catcher draws is the #1 cause of the CERA's. Not saying Montero is two runs better than Shoppach; objectively speaking it may be impossible for any catcher to be more than 0.50 runs better than Shoppach.
Ted Simmons was brought up to be the catcher of the future and coincidentally the catcher of the present when he was 19/20. His defensive skills were much worse than what Montero's are now but every year he'd come to spring training having improved on a particular defensive aspect. Jack Buck would point this out for the first month or two of the season. "Simmons is much better at blocking pitches in the dirt" or "Simmons is actually pretty good at handling the staff" and so on. By the time he was 27 he wasn't a decent catcher but he was always a great offensive catcher. In my mind Montero is still one of the most valuable properties is baseball. Last year he wasn't so much stressed about the catching aspect of the game but the DH aspect of the game. Tough position is that DH, ask everyone but Edgar. I'm extremely bullish on Montero, he might not be the catcher of the future for the M's (Zunino) but he'll either be a great DH (backup catcher) for the M's or a very valuable trade chip for someone like Stanton.
Personality-wise, too....
Great, great 'put Merks. You can see all KINDSA parallels there.