All You Need is Luck
My kingdom for some luck

The Mariners are 5-7. It feels like 2-12 but it's really not that bad.  Getting blown out by the Astros has the emotional impact of half-a-dozen losses, but that's the great thing about baseball: no matter how badly one or two games go, the ups and downs should even out over time.  It's hard to be unlucky over 162 games - our record should approximate our talent level and on-the-field output by the end of the year.

Over the first 2 weeks of a season, though, it's absolutely possible to slip on a banana peel or walk under a ladder and have some things not go your way.  The Mariners have FELT unlucky, but how unlucky have they really been?

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In the batter's box: 

The Mariners as a team have a .239 BABIP.  As as TEAM.  That's with our top-2 performance in HR production.  Balls that do not clear the wall are finding every scrap of leather and stray fielder on the playing surface. 

Not every BABIP performance is a blip - Jesus Montero has a .207 balls-in-play average but he's running a 45% flyball rate with a ton of Texas Leaguers and enough cans of corn to feed a small army.  Justin Smoak, on the other hand, is having great at-bats and...well, smoking the ball right into the webbing of some smirking infielder.

We're missing about THIRTY hits so far to get to a .300 BABIP.  Now, we aren't going to get to .300 with Safeco as our home park - the last three years we've run .276, .282 and .283 - but that's still 20 or so hits in 12 games, and several of the "unlucky" catches have come with runners on.  We've lost 3 games by a 3-to-4 score, so how different is our record with a couple extra hits in those games?

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On the mound:

Here we haven't been unlucky so much as out-of-sync.  We haven't walked anybody - and I mean ANYBODY.  We're 2nd in the league in lowest-walks-allowed, and that's skewed against us by having played more games than anyone else.  Maurer and Beavan aren't suffering because they're wild, nor were Luetge and Loe.  They're suffering because they're in the zone TOO much.  We're the worst HR-sacrificers in the league thus far. 

Other teams are posting a .220 ISO against us. 

How we hit other teams: .221/.295/.382/.677

How other teams hit us: .268/.310/.488/.798

Their .283 BABIP is pretty fair, too - they're doing what they SHOULD do against us.  It's not a failure of defense or balls just falling into gaps.  Opposing teams' production is what it should be based on what we've given them to hit.

Which means we're giving them too much to hit.  I really hope we learn from Iwakuma's performance last night.  I wouldn't mind hitting a couple of batters either, or at least moving their feet. What others have said about the rocking-chair effect that other batters have against our pitchers so far has been true, and I hope we change that.

But if we decide not to I'd at least like to give them fewer fat pitches in the zone to hit.

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Dumb Luck:

- Saunders injuring himself while playing great ball.

- Morse breaking his pinky on an inside pitch.

- Maurer being unable to get out of the first and decimating our pen right when we don't have a long-man.

- The juggernaut that is the 'Stros (kidding...sorta)

- etc.

 

Is it all luck? No.  There are several Mariners who are making life much more difficult on them than they have to (Montero, Ackley, Maurer, Beavan, et al).  But there are several Mariners who are killing it.  Morse and Morales have been as advertised (and needed).  Guti has been back as an offensive force in a big way these first two weeks.  Saunders was playing well.  But random chance has taken out a couple of those hitters, and stolen a game from The King.  The kids who are struggling are gonna have to man up and make their own luck to make up for that loss over the next couple of weeks.

We didn't lose our co-ace to a mound-charging incident for 8 weeks - it could be worse.  We're not the only team whose fortunes are being affected by luck, but we are going to need players who are young and who have been beaten up by the luck dragon before to start to come through.  "There is no fate but what we make for ourselves," as Sarah Connor once carved into a roadside picnic table.

We'll need to start dictating our own fate, starting today.  It's time for our luck to change.

~G

Comments

1
M's Watcher's picture

I get the unluckiness/BABIP numbers, but Wedgie's job is to put players in a position to succeed. He cost us at least one of the Chicago games by not lifting the entitled Ibanez for a pinch hitter against a tough lefty, and keeping him in LF for the game-losing sac fly. He seems to be continuing to support the veteran entitlement, and not wanting to shame them by pulling them at key points of the game.
Ryan's blown squeeze bunt still drives me nuts. When you can't hit, become an effective bunter. This concept goes back to little league, and Ryan is supposed to be a pro. He wasn't unlucky to bunt it back to the pitcher. It was just poor execution. I'd think Miller or Franklin could do better. When is the trade deadline, and don't some teams need a glove SS?

2

to say that the Mariners would have won the game with a pinch hitter for Ibanez. Almost every hitter sucks coming off the bench, the average line is something like a .600 OPS, but even if it was Albert Pujols coming up there would have been a 60% chance of failure. Protecting egos seems lame until it's your ego getting bruised and your own flagging self confidence that gets on the easy of personal performance. Ibanez didn't have a great shot at succeeding in that situation, but neither would a pinch hitter.
The same goes for Brendan Ryan's bunt. I sincerely doubt that Miller or Franklin would have put a better bunt down. Why? Because Ryan has had years more practice and more in game experience doing it than the offensively minded prospect pair are ever likely to achieve.
Feel free to disagree with in game decisions and be disappointed in poor performance, but let's not hang anyone on marginal plays that legitimately could have gone either way.

3
M's Watcher's picture

Polonia would have made a better throw home than Ibanez on the game losing sac fly. It was a shallow fly to left. There is no way Gillaspie scores if there is any arm at all in LF. Nothing marginal about it.
BTW, for his career, RHB OPS .841 against Veal vs .501 vs LHB. I'd take the cold RHB off the bench.

4

Though, after watching the replays, I'm pretty sure it would have taken Josh Reddick to make the play at the plate. The throw had no umph at all, but it was accurate, and while the play wasn't particularly close, a stronger throw 3 feet to the left or right of the plate would have had the same result. Also, Ibanez had the only Mariners XBH besides Saunders home run. Starting a bat first player has it's risks and rewards.
For their careers
Gutierrez as PH: .211/.250/.289/.539
Bay as PH: .227/.261/.364/.625
Jesus Montero as PH: .000/.200/.000/.200 (only 5 PA, and Gutierrez has the most PA at 41, but...)
AL Pinch Hitters in 2012: .206/.289/.338/.627 And presumably, they had the platoon advantage most of the time.
Ibanez vs. LHP: .261/.314/.419/.733

6

since Ibanez could offer anything better than atrocious numbers against left handers. Wedge has no trouble bringing a cold lefty pitcher in to face a lefty hitter. He does it all the time. Why can't he see how the reasoning works both ways? Why does the warmed up right hander get yanked for the Loogy (just today, LaFramboise came in cold and walked the lefty hitter), and no one is dissed, but Raul is somehow more "deserving" to hit than a right handed pitcher in that situation? I love what Raul did today, against the righty. I would have liked to have seen what Bay could have done with the bases loaded Thursday, against the lefty.

7

Montero with a huge RBI that flares in behind the second baseman, Ackley with an RBI that finds its way up the middle, among other things.
Seriously, BABIP is playing into the kids' situation here, big time.  It could turn around at any time, such as now.  Actually, such as "yesterday" :- )
..............
What a pleasure to jump on SSI and READ :- ) smokin' Mariners material.  Not that we hadn't, in the comments, in the guest posts, etc.  But the new G-Money "column" is liable to be the best one in the blog-o-sphere.

8

Relievers can come into a game and throw harder, they don't have to worry about blisters (as much as starters). not having seen live pitching is a disadvantage. Not having thrown live pitching is an advantage.

9

Often enough for me to think that not having thrown live pitching is that much of an advantage. They're throwing that frisbee and it's missing the low and away corner. It's a lot to ask a pitcher to come in and throw strikes to the first guy they see. And that's WITH the advantage. Imagine coming in, and a righty masher or bat control artist instead comes off the bench. Alluva sudden, with the bases loaded especially, he's got to have control, and deal with the kind of hitter that turned him into a LOOGY in the first place. I think I'd relish throwing that kind of thing at the opposing manager.

10

.206/.289/.338/.627 was the batting line for AL pinch hitters last season. Managers almost always pinch hit into platoon advantage. Sometimes they don't, and sometimes the other managers switch pitchers, but that stat probably represents something like an 80% platoon advantage, maybe higher. And yes, the LOOGY might come on and walk the only batter he sees, and sometimes a pitcher walks the 3rd batter he sees, and sometimes they walk the 10th batter our the 20th batter. Throwing strikes has little to do with a batter. Almost any batter would say it is more difficult to pinch hit or DH.

11

Wedge has given Raul two opportunities in crucial moments to prove he can outhit the typical pinch hitter of last season. I'm not sure how many more futile ABs it will take before Skip decides he doesn't "deserve" it any more. He may be done, for all I know. If not, he's already playing a losing hand. Ibanez hit .197 vs. lefties last season, .211 the year before. The trendlines are not in Raul's favor. Knowing this, I'd take my chances with the mystery AL pinch batter. You are correct that the typical pinch hitter of last season was pretty bad. But Raul vs. lefties is even worse. And it's not like his last two managers hadn't figured this out already, as his % of ABs vs. lefties have been plummeting since 2010. It's pretty much been established by all involved, whether crunching numbers or going by the hunches, that Raul don't hit lefties anymore. An entire season at new Yankee stadium and one home run against a lefty last season, home or away (Matuz, playoffs).
Now, that was indeed a memorable home run in Yankee Stadium, and here's what I know about baseball and what a home run can do for you: At recess, I was always among the very last chosen on a team. One day I hit a slow grounder past another terrible player and into right field. Since RF always has the worse player there, it turned out to be a leg hit home run. That memorable home run put me at least 4 spaces up the ladder as sides were chosen ("Pick Rick, he hit a home run.").

12

Wedge does have to be aware of his relationships with players, obviously, but it seems to me that this one's over the line.
Players would get ticked off at Earl Weaver for pinch-hitting, but Earl's attitude was, "There were 24 other players on that bench who knew what the right move was."  Then you pinch-hit Raul for Bay the next time.

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