.
PROPS to the M's 7-and-5 start. Granted, Oakland proved to everyone's satisfaction that we are not yet the Pride of MLB(TM). The Mariners are good, or at least they have been. Oakland, by contrast, is championship-worth. Or at least they have been.
While the Seahawks ascended from (1) their four-win seasons and (2) the NFC Championshp, they hit some staircase landings along the way. Just possibly, the Seattle Mariners are not destined to advance from "91 losses" to "Seahawk dominant" in one month.
But if we're talking about April 2014 being a staircase landing:
Objectively speaking, if the M's finished April at .500 ... and then got back WBC-san, Taijuan and K-Pax, they'd be AL West contenders. In theory.
It tells you all you need to know, right now, that not a single one of yer would be okay with a .500 April. Think 'bout it.
....
Props to Roenis Elias. Last year, Felix and WBC-san had to team with Aaron Harang, Joe Saunders, the teenage Brandon Maurer, and Jeremy Bonderman ... and those were the varsity starters.
Elias got 7 swings-and-misses off his fastball on Monday. The "effective wildness" reminds me of the young Randy Johnson. "If he doesn't know where the ball is going, how are we supposed to?," complained the hitters (and umpires) of the early 90's.
The component skills don't support a 2.16 ERA. But the funny thing is, Roenis Elias doesn't get phased by great hitters, and he doesn't get phased by being behind in the count. He never realizes when he's in danger, and so never pitches like he's in danger. The slashy fastball, and the cheeky slurveball, it ain't going to get him into the Cy Young race. But it certainly can get him a 100 ERA+, and you can add twenty points for novelty factor. First half, which is when we need him.
Yeah, it says here that it is Elias being "effectively wild" that prevents MLB(TM) hitters from anticipating him and planting the back leg on him.
He'll throw a curve ball inside to a righty, but not at a time when a curve ball makes any sense whatsoever. He'll throw a changeup high to a lefty, but it will occur when you expect him to be throwing a double play ball. Elias doesn't use MLB(TM) pitching principles; it's like he's throwing dice for pitch selection and then throwing them again for location. (Mike Marshall thought that pitchers should actually do this. We presume he meant, someplace other than on the mound.)
As to the Cuban thing...
You watch the kid stand inside the triple-deck stadiums and glare in at Albert Pujols, Shin-Soo Choo and the home plate umpire. You watch Jose Fernandez pitch, and Aroldis Chapman, and you think about El Duque's unreal postseason accomplishments, and you wonder... is that all you need if you want awesome pitching makeup? Could we send Erasmo on a life raft to the San Juans and back?
Nahhh... sort this list by recent year, and there aren't that many Cuban pitchers with Plus-Plus Makeup or 2+ ERA's. I think it's just Roenis, and that he should get the credit, not the sharks.
I mean, Doug Fister was never scared out there. James Paxton wasn't. I think the Cuban thing is overblown. Elias himself, though, he's quite a competitor.
....
Slops to Erasmo Ramirez. At SSI, we've been musing about his makeup. Dr. D is waffling back to the Anti-Erasmo position ... in the spring, when it didn't matter, he had an easy 20 K's and 2 BB's. Then, once the pressure was on, he threw one good game, and then imploded again. After exactly three starts, he's got Mike Blowers moaning "He better get something figured out."
This is not a pitching motion that should ever need to figure out anything. The flesh is willing, but the spirit is weak.
I think Erasmo will have several 14-win seasons in the bigs. Right now, I'm not betting on 2014 being one of them. I'm warming to the idea of an Earl Weaver role, preferably in place of one Joe Bye-ml.
He has been well-and-truly beaten out of a job by both Roenis Elias and Chris Young.
.
Props to Mike Zunino. He's only in the bigs because of his pitch calling and pitch framing. Most MLB catching stars were in the minors at his career-arc point.
He's also SLG'ing .590.
With an 0:13 EYE, the SLG will come down, but ... Zunino is hitting the homers in very repeatable ways, gentlemen. If he hits .219 with 22 homers, he's going to kick off a bunch of wins. The M's are 4-and-0 already when Zunino homers or triples.
.
Slops to Brad Miller. A 1:18 EYE ratio? That's every inch as weak as Tanner Scheppers' 7.88 ERA.
He is wayyyyy too good a hitter for that. Last year, when he had not the slightest clue where he even was, his EYE was 24:52. Now we're into nano-scopically small EYE numbers?
He is swinging at nearly half of all pitches that are not strikes. Dial it down, there, Crazy Legs. The enemy pitchers are good. Give them a little credit.
.
Props to the M's Outfield Defense. Last year it was comically inept, playing comically shallow. This year they've backed up, they've cut off the balls in the gaps ... and Almonte still comes in and cuts off line-drive singles.
Read it and weep: the M's have the #2 defense in the American League. This before they get their good pitching going.
.
Slops to the Rangers, Marlins, and Astros. Against whom are our next twelve (12) games.
Two weeks from today, the M's should be 15-and-9, give or take a game. Seriously. They better be. And then they'll have their lock-down rotation lock-d and load-d.
Props to baseball and life its ownself,
Dr D
So Walker replaces Beavan when he's ready. That's an easy call. Then Kuma replaces Erasmo. Then Paxton replaces??? It may be that Young becomes that #6 long man in the pen, pushing Erasmo to Tacoma along with Maurer and Beavan. That is some serious depth.
Maybe Walker replace the worst of ERam or Beavan. I could never imagine Beavan ever winning out on that one, but we'll see if it plays out. In the end, like you say, maybe both end up in Tacoma unless Young implodes, but he used to be a legit MLB-TM pitcher. He looks like he still is. I'm looking forward to our front line starters being in place all at the same time, then we'll see what we really have.
Maybe Walker will replace the worst of ERam or Beavan. I could never imagine Beavan ever winning out on that one, but we'll see if it plays out. In the end, like you say, maybe both end up in Tacoma unless Young implodes, but he used to be a legit MLB-TM pitcher. He looks like he still is. I'm looking forward to our front line starters being in place all at the same time, then we'll see what we really have.
looks like the keeper at this point after Kuma, Walker and Paxton all return, until the league catches up with him. After that depends on who's looking best.
The game 2 Beavan/Ross contest looks like a long shot for us; Ross has had an impressive start to the season. (Aaron Harang has had 3 starts for the Braves and has a 0.96 ERA and a 0.804 WHIP in 18.2 IP. If Noesi starts for Texas he'll probably get a complete game shutout. Everyone gets better when they leave Seattle.)
Felix, Iwakuma, Paxton, Walker, Young. Roenis Elias takes over as our second lefty out of the pen. Erasmo Ramirez takes over as our longman. The rest of the pen is Rodney, Pryor, Furbush, Farquhar, and Leone (yes, that means Medina and Wilhelmson need to go away)
1) I want to believe in Chris Young, I really do. I can see a track record that says he's always pretty much done this. I read here that his 86 really looks like 92 to the hitter. But still, when he throws it up there and they launch fly balls at that rate, I cringe. I hope he proves me wrong.
2) Oakland. I watched enough of the A's-Angels game last night to be assured by the Anaheim announcers that Oakland arrived coming off a three game sweep of the Mariners. Felix doesn't make it on their radar screens? Anyhow, after two years of swinging and missing badly on Oakland, maybe the collective 'professional' baseball mind has now flipped the whole thing over so that they see too MUCH in the A's? Love their depth, and Cespedes may finally find his way...but how long can Dr. Frankenbeane keep piecing together anonymous starters?
I'm saying that, when healthy, we meet or exceed their talent level. Or maybe that's my overestimation.
That Brad Miller bulked up a bit in the offseason hit a handful of homers in Arizone during spring training and all of a sudden started thinking to him self... "Yeah! I am the next A-Rod! 50 homers here I come!" The kid needs to take a deep breath and dial swing back from 11 down to an 8 or so until he gets his timimg and feel back...
Having said that a great way to help him take that breath would be to call up Lil' Nicky (LoMo's tight hammy means he goes to the 15 day DL and Nick comes up) and let Brad have a few days just watching. Plus that was Nick can work in some at 3rd base and maybe a game or two at DH and RF. Nick is incredibly hot right now, might as well see if he can maintain it in the majors! If nothing else maybe he comes up and hits a little bit and increases his stick further... continuing to beat up on AAA pitchers isn't helping anyone at this point... He is one of our top 10 hitters in the whole organization,,, he needs to be doing that hitting for the MLB team, even if he doesn't get to play more than 4 times a week...
But I have no idea where to ask this Doc.
Your buddy Tony Blengino has an article up today at fangraphs detailing the comeback of Michael Pineda and sorting through other pitchers with similar injuries. The name Jim Palmer came up. I wasn't old enough to see him in his prime, only the decline phase. Just looked at his baseball reference page and am very curious how in the world was he so effective with such terrible K/9 and K/BB ratios??? A Cy Young award performance with 4.5K / 9? Was he really all that great, or just a fantastic innings eater on a very good team?
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-potentially-historic-comeback-of-mich...
That isn't to say he was not a good pitcher - my own attempts to account for the impact a pitcher does have on batted balls in play suggested that Palmer was a really solid inning=eater...ran a career defense neutral run average (+) of something like 118...which makes him a bubble candidate for the HOF in the same vein as, say, Tom Glavine.
But the dude pitched in front of some of the greatest team defense anyone has ever witnessed. At the same time, they had FOUR players on their roster who were in the top 15 all time at their respective positions for defense.
Mark Belanger (SS) regularly won 3-5 games a year WITH THE GLOVE
Paul Blair (CF) regularly won 2-3 games a year with the glove.
Brooks Robinson (3B) is the greatest defensive third baseman of all time (!)
Bobby Grich (2B) was not only a pretty good hitter, but also a top-10 all time firleder at the keystone.
On top of that, you had a series of role players who generally fielded their positions well - everyone from Don Buford to their collection of veteran catchers to some of the pitchers...and then you had Boog Powell - not generally recognized as a good fielder, but was fantastic around the bag at first (just not very rangy - kinda like Justin Smoak).
They also played in old Memorial Stadium - which went through periods of being pitcher-favoring relative to other parks.
And - to be fair to Palmer - the game was different then...league average K rates in the early 70s were around 5.5/9 IP...today it's like 7.3 or 7.5.
Great answer :)
Didn't realize the K/9 rates were so low at that time. I would always glance at the season total K numbers and they look similar to the leaders of the 90's, but huge IP difference of course. Dang, even Bob Gibson in his historic season was only at 7.9. I see Koufax topped 10 several times. The difference between him and league average must have been similar to Randy Johnson.
Re: the fangraphs story as much as I dislike the Yankess I can't help but root and be happy for Pineda. Hope he comes all the way back and stays healthy.
I believe that it would be an original situation for the M's, the years 1977-2014 inclusive, to take an above-average major league SP out of the rotation because they didn't have any room for him.
Young's velocity is just about back to 2004-07, when his ERA+ numbers were (in order) 107, 108, 117, and 128. Tough to kick a 3.0 WAR starter to the curb.
Robbie Ross is an interesting starter. Would be a bummer to go down to him and then get Darvish the next day.
Does anybody know what channel the game is on? Original schedule says Root, but on Monday they said "Next broadcast is Wednesday." Did the game get taken by ESPN or something?
Aaron pitched two complete game shutouts for us last season, and had some other very strong starts as well. Give him time to regress. Noesi has been nothing but horrible for us, but I'll bet we could find a 2 inning/0 earned run outing in that body of work as well.
If the Mariners really want to "sell" Nick Franklin as a shortstop, they can give Crazy Legs a couple of months in Vermont to "gain perspective" ...
The naysayers would fret about having no Latin glove wiz behind a glove-first SS. But like James says, if there's a crisis, the AAA ballclub is always one night away.
/promote
Thanks for bring him up Matt. He's the forgotten Oriole, and it's a real shame because that dude could play. As an O, he had a lifetime OPB of .385. A heckuva ballplayer. We all know about Earl's saying that you win with pitching, defense, and three run homers. Well. we focus on the homer and forget that it takes two guys getting on base ahead of him. Buford had two .400+ OBP seasons - so what Earl was really saying is "Pitching, defense, Buford, another guy, and a jack." Of course, in 1971, Buford himself hit 19 jacks to go with his .413 OBP. 19 homers and yet only 54 RBIs. I guess there were times when Donny didn't want to wait around for the three run homer.
Here's an oddity. Three straight seasons with exactly 99 runs scored.
Agreed - Franklin is one of our top half dozen hitters right now, today. Put slow-mo LoMo on the DL train and then send him to Tacoma to regain his hitting form on a rehab assignment. Franklin spells Miller, DH's some against RHP, and pinch hits. Start him practicing at 3B and the OF. If he tears up MLB pitching, he becomes more valuable. If not, back to AAA for more time at SS.
I humbly think you're wrong Matt: If Palmer had Buford, Belanger and Brooks, Felix had Guti (for a while), Ryan (for a while) and a pretty good 3B, too.
In their 1st 9 full seasons (I'm not counting this season for Felix) their ERA+'s looked like this:
Felix Palmer
98 98
112 152
123 134
171 126
174 149
109 155
124 105
121 161
And Palmer's teams got to 4 WS (winning 2) AND he had those THREE Cy's! In his 1st three full seasons, Palmer's WHIP exceeded 1.2 exactly twice. Felix has been above that 4 times in 9 seasons.
If Palmer was "catastrophically overrated" then Felix is, too.
Its pretty cool that these two blokes, who were Z's plan D and F stopgap and fallback options, have turned in some darned good starts. This season would have an entirely different complexion if these two were putting up Harang and Saunders lines.
Props to the unnamed scout who found Young and convinced upper brass to take a flier on him.
Props to Z and Mac (Lendon not Namara) for basing spring training pitching results on who was throwing the ball best, and not on who was supposed to be throwing the ball best.
Slops to everyone because Taijuan Walker isn't pitching today. Taijuan Walker does not need a rehab assignment. The only rehab Taijuan knows is he assigns strikeouts and opposing batters habilitate themselves back to the dugout.