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Welcome back Doc...
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Howzit gow'n, 'migos :- )
The day-night surgical doubleheader was called after 5 IP in the first game, so had less impact on my blogging OBP than expected. Though woozy, we've got a quiet coupla hours here and are in the mood to ... gulp ... blog for fun, rather than for blood. Apologies ahead of time for the appalling lack of quality the next several days. Just pretend this isn't SSI.
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Q. The A's kinda had the better of that series. Maybe the M's just looked good against the Angels?
A. I got no idea where Billy Beane gets all these pitchers, do you?
In 2013, Sonny Gray had 9.4 strikeouts per game, 2.8 walks, 0.6 homers -- 1.1 homers is average-solid, now -- and a 2.70 FIP. Shandler said "he's a star, if not yet an All-Star. UP: 3.00 ERA."
Dan Straily had 7.3 whiffs, 3.4 walks and 0.9 homers. Shandler noted his stratospheric Base Performance Index, and said Buy Buy Buy. "UP: 3.00 ERA, 200K." I mean, think for a second: if Taijuan Walker (!) has that line this year, in 150+ IP, you'll take it, right?
Jesse Chavez' Three True Outcomes last year? 8.6 / 3.1 / 0.5. And he had a notably brisk game against us, by his own standards. GRRRRrrrrrrrrrrr HOW do they DO this?
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Jered Weaver threw the ball like he ever did. So did C.J. Wilson. Mike Trout isn't a fake. Josh Hamilton is focused on tightening his strike zone, and his triple portion of baseball DNA didn't go away overnight. Pujols is on the way back up ...
No, look. Before the season started, we'd have taken a 3-4 road trip. Four wins against three losses woulda been awesome. Instead of that, the Mariners went 4-2 and, if not for an ump's blown strike call, woulda been 5-1. Their run differential is 34-18 after Sunday's game.
Baseball isn't conducive to 153-9 records. It's a shame to lose before the off day, but still, par at Augusta is still a nice score, right Mo' Dawg? M's actually shot a 67 on this road trip, after the bogey'ed 18th.
It was a "message" road trip. Big time.
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Q. What's with Erasmo? Like Grizzly sez, he couldn't get a swing-and miss to save his life.
A. From a technical standpoint, he had no changeup. By "no changeup" we mean, he threw 3 of them in the strike zone all day.
Which is like saying Erikkk Bedard pitched a game without his curve ball, or ... well, you see where we're going with this. He had NO changeup, and the fastball was mushy (-2 MPH and poor command, as though he was in the 53rd minute of an overtime NBA game).
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Q. What do you mean, from a technical standpoint? What other standpoint is there?
A. Around the Mariner blog-o-sphere, there have been several recent attempts to define "makeup." Let's turn to Dr. Emanuel Lasker, friend of Albert Einstein and 27-year world chess champion, as he accuses Grandmaster Seigbert Tarrasch of being unworthy of a chess championship match:
"He will never be champion. He has not the temperament for it. He
lacks the lust for battle, the passion that whips the blood when the
fight is hot, the full-throated battle that breeds heroes and despises
petted favorites" - Dr. Emmanuel Lasker, on a more-talented but
less-successful rival chess grandmaster
Now, if you're thinking that you're smarter than Lasker, or thinking that you put more value on brainpower than he did ... think again. That's free advice.
But even a chess champion understood that "makeup" refers to --- > a man's emotional reaction to being challenged to a fistfight.
When threatened, you can respond by becoming:
- Angry
- Sad
- Frightened
Fight, flight, or freeze.
A pitcher with great "makeup" responds to "a hot fight" by getting more competitive.
Think about Michael Jordan. It wasn't the extra practice time he put in, that gave him the great makeup (he didn't put in extra practice time). It was that he loved to compete.
If everything started going against Jordan, including the ref's and his own teammates, he did not become scared. He also did not start saying "Why me?" He became angry, and channeled this into an intense desire to crush his opponents.
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Q. What does any of that have to do with anything?
A. The less I see of Erasmo Ramirez' makeup, the less I like it.
This guy gets into a tough spot -- such as today -- and he'd rather be anyplace else than in the ballpark.
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Q. Meaning you'd do what with him?
A. I dunno. A year of Earl Weaver'ing?
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Q. Is there any other way to look at this issue?
A. Ummmm ... that Ramirez had a bad start?
:: sheepish ::
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Q. Did Dr. D enjoy Chris Young's performance as much as the Shout Box did?
A. He sure did. Especially in light of the following ultra-sophisticated sabermetric table:
- Felix Hernandez
- Hisashi Iwakuma
- James Paxton
- Taijuan Walker
All you're talking about doing, is choosing between Erasmo Ramirez, Chris Young, and Roenis Elias as your #5 FIVE starter. If Chris Young throws like this, he'll make one whale of a five starter, behind the two hotshot kids.
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Q. What happened after Young got in there?
A. :: woozy ::
:: wrap it up before you keel over, Jeff ::
- 22 pitches
- 21 of them were fastballs
- Almost all of them were painted
- Velocity UP compared to last few years ... 86 MPH real, 94 MPH apparent (so they say)
- Movement was straight up in the air, like a rising cutter
- He's exactly like Bartolo Colon, as anybody could tell from a glance at the two men standing side-by-side
Here, check this BrooksBaseball.net visual representation of Young's location. This is an "inside/outside" zone that imagines the LH batter to be standing as a RH batter ... I'm not even understanding my own grammar. That's never a good sign.
But
- In the green circle, is Young working the black
- In the blue circle, is Young pounding the knees
- In the red circle, there are only 4 pitches, and two of them are "poached" strike ones
- The other pitches, Young missed away from the danger zone, not into it
So you've got a guy with an 86 --- > 92 fastball, and superb command of it, and hellacious angles, and ... um, plus makeup. Young's a battler.
Y'feel me? Bartolo Colon.
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Two more charts to bask in Young's glory. The first one, to illustrate Young's backspin, totally perpendicular to the ground, resulting in a 12" rise and a cutting action that bites in on LH's:
And the second one, to illustrate the point that --- > 1 fastball = 3 pitches = Bartolo Colon
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Q. So he's going to finish 6th in the Cy Young voting at age 40?
A. No, but he looks like a sugar-sweet pickup to go #5 behind two Cy pitchers and two Baseball America dream kids.
Hey, right now all three #5 candidates look like a 100'ish ERA+. 100 ERA+ in the 5 SP, that's a slick use of a roster slot.
Enjoy,
Dr D
Comments
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He just wanted sympathy points so we'd overlook his cornball antics and assume the bad grammar was caused by hospital food and hourly nurse checks. BAH...you're not fooling me, Doc. :)
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Being bedridden allows a blogger to get his priorities in order, y'know? :- )
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Apologies for the incomplete post. The server has its own med team hard at work ...
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Sonny Gray comes at no suprise. I think he got lost in the shuffle in the 2011 pitching heavy draft. Perhaps passed up for the flavor of the day. His stock certainly fell between 2010 & 2011.
And [man]. You're right. Beane seems to come up with a new all star pitcher every year. He has superb methodology. Unfortunately the A's style of baseball isn't suitable for mass consumption. To be honest though, I think the A's have been a second fiddle team for the better part of two decades. They seem thouroughly incapable of pushing it over the top. And the A's have had some excellent teams to gamble on. Recently, I think Tampa Bay has been the best model for the budget end of baseball.
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I wouldn't bullpen Erasmo. If he doesn't have the change up, he's a dead man walking and I'm not sure how many of those he would throw coming out of the pen. Dude needs to start, either in Tacoma or Seattle.
It'll be interesting to see what hitters can do with Young's stuff once they see him a third time through the lineup. They were obviously having a lot of trouble with the angles yesterday.
Two of Ramirez, Young and Elias are going to get demoted soon. I hope one of them can separate himself from the pack.
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Just like Doc, I also recover nicely after a sponge bath or two.
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Doc.s point remains a good one. After the heady thrill of a opening sweep of the Angels the trip to Orclank is somewhat less-than-hoped-for. But 4-2 is still a very nice start, especially a 4-2 that has given us a dominant Paxton (see 'ya tomorrow) and a crazy-legged SS and a never-a-dull-moment CF.
It's the first round at Augusta. We're at the top of the leader board and we've found a groove.
You know the old line of a confident golfer, "Where's the first tee and what's the course record!" Well that's nice, but let's remember not to swagger too much.
Get me a hot Seager and Hart/LoMo with a bat (or just roll the dice with Romero) and then we can swagger a bit. And remember, most of us have been praying for a bit of a reason to be optimistic. We're there. Enjoy the ride.
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On the lack of change ups... I wonder how much fastball command and a slower fastball had to do with this choice?
Also, and maybe I just missed them, but it sure seemed that Erasmo was pounding the lower zones - and only on few occasions trying to beat guys going up the ladder with fastballs... and if he isn't going up the ladder with fastballs, then the change thrown for a strike is just an ordinary change-up... cuz it isn't working off of the fastball.
Also, on Erasmo's lack of aggressiveness, I wonder if the lack of command took away his aggressiveness and his confidence... as it was not too long ago he was coming back from injury, and he did not have command then either.
I am sure we won't know ansers to these without seeing him pitch a couple more times... I just hope he gets a chance.
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He's always been a fighter. He has a couple problems:
1) His way of being a fighter and not giving up looks like bland-faced sweating to a lot of people. Michael Jordan had a GREAT AngryFace. His AngryFace made grown men wet themselves. Erasmo has more of a Japanese disposition out there, blank-faced, searching for zen in angry moments. He's a fighter, I promise - I've seen enough of him getting worthless strike zones in the minors or pitching at altitude where his changeup doesn't dive and his curve and slider are useless to know that. Being a sweater doesn't make him less warrior-like. His problem yesterday was the next problem.
2) Without his changeup, Erasmo is bringing a knife to a gunfight. Erasmo has two weapons: control, and his changeup. When he has both those things working, he's nasty. When he only has his changeup but is missing his fastball control he can gut it out. Yesterday he didn't have either. As Matt noted, he had TWO (2) swings and misses all game. When you can't throw pitches where you want them AND you can't change speeds to make people swing through stuff in the zone, it's gonna be a long day (or rather, a short one on the mound full of anguish and annoyance).
We watched Moyer have long days. Erasmo's need is not to get more of a warrior mentality - how do you go to war with a dull butterknife against the As? Especially when your pitching coach walks out, tells you to throw a strike and let your defense handle it... and then that pitch sails over the wall. Erasmo has to figure out how to gut out 5 innings and keep his team in the game when he has nothing. Minor leaguers would bail him out. That doesn't happen as often in the bigs.
So until he figures that out, the problem with Erasmo comes down to this: how often is he gonna go out there with nerf weapons against the real thing?
# of times Erasmo hasn’t gone 5 innings in a start: 6-of-23
# of quality starts: 11-of-23
As long as he keeps a 2-to-1 ratio in that, he can compete for the #5 spot in the rotation. Now, to be fair, I believe Beavan kept a 2:1 or better there too when he was starting - it was his 5 innings of 5 run ball that chewed us up. Can Erasmo limit runs on his mediocre days? I believe so, but we'll need him to if he's gonna get that pitching slot.
Erasmo has the ability to save the pen even when he's having a bad day, because he won't be using a lot of pitches to be terrible. He can go deeper and eat his own bad day rather than making the team suffer... assuming we're out of it. That ability is less useful if we're gonna be in every game.
Erasmo needs his better stuff next game, at home. I expect him to have it. If not, well... Taijuan's back soon. ;-)
~G
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That's a very interesting question, considering 1) the predictability of his game and 2) the idea that hitters could get acclimated to his unusual angles.
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Want to see something wacky and wonderful? Check out Young's career splits on pitches 1-25, 26-50, ... 101-25 etc. He could have less variation on "3rd time thru" than any other pitcher in MLB. Who'd have expected that?
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SSI is a big believer in Craig Young's "Rule of 27." Wasn't it the 4th time thru the lineup, last time round, that we were chipping our teeth over Felix being left in?
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If I'd had that line 30 years ago, I would be president of the U.S.A. Man, what a great line. Neuro-linguistic programming baby.
That one line contains so much. For me, it's going to be extremely effective. mwahahahaha
:daps: Mo
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100 cpoints