Somehow it ought to be against some Impermeable Universal Law to pair Peter O'Toole in a movie with John Goodman. My heart sinks..........
Other Stuff:
1. Egads I hate seeing Saunders in the lineup right now. I don't care if a righty or lefty is pitching or if it is a T-Ball game, he makes me cringe. Sorta' like Goodman. Just let me see Romero get a 25-game shot. Either that or send him down and give me Endy Chavez. No, wait. Well not Endy. Gimme' Gillespie then, or Blash. Or PIzzano. Or Buhner. No more Saunders in RF, please.
2. The Felix who ups his K game is the one you've been wishing for Doc. Enjoy the show, bud.
3. Props to Zunino for being a great receiver and pitch-caller?
4. Good fro Franklin. Well, for 1 AB. Just keep letting him DH. Let Hart rest Smoak.
5. Take a deep breath, all. It's a long season.
PS: I know Saunders isn't THAT bad against lefties, he might be better than Buhner, if we rolled him out there tomorrow. He's hit .241 and slugged just north of .410 vR since '12 and hit 39 doubles in 621 AB's, but he's taking us nowhere and I can't remember when he delivered when needed. So while he isn't THAT bad, he's still decently feeble. Even with Morrison out, let's not see him out there anymore.
.
He has his strengths and weaknesses. You see, he's ... [long, uncomfortable pause]. ... ... a Mariner. Post-Piniella.
Quickly, Dr. D!
...
STRENGTH: Felix misses another 17 bats.
After four games, his wiffff rate is over 16%. To put that into proportion, 12% is the theoretical maximum, like a .370 batting average is the theoretical maximum. (Well, I'm taking a bit of poetic license on this point. But that's okay with me.)
Can he sustain it? Analyzing his strike zone stats doesn't tell you anything, because they're all good:
- He throws an insane number of 1st-pitch strikes...
- ... which don't get hit
- Batters swing at 44% of balls outside the zone, a number that would make Brad Miller blush
- Batters almost never* swing at strikes ...
- ... in part because Felix doesn't throw the ball in the zone very often (41%)
- etc etc etc
To my eye, what is going on is that Felix is taking the Lindy McDaniel Theorem (start on the plate, then go off the plate) to its ultimate conclusion. Here, the yellow pitches are those with 2 strikes. Stare real hard and see if YOU can find anything to hit in there.
We were watching real close ... the only thing that looks different to me, is his fastball command this year. It seems to be a command thing. Felix starts them off with a 93-MPH fastball that is located like Jamie Moyer, and nobody swings at such a pitch on an 0-0 count. He's always ahead in the count because of that -- for example, batters are hitting .132/.132/.184 this year against his simple straight fastball.
Once he's ahead, you can see from the chart above how he tortures them. On 0-1, any overhand curve is a guaranteed tip your cap poached strike, and on Wednesday he threw 11 curve balls, 11 for strikes.
........
So, are you going to cut Felix a lot of slack for being "gassed" after 98 pitches? If he's going to throw every fastball per the Shin-Soo Choo idea, as if it were the last pitch of his life?
We've seen it happen before ... Shigetoshi Hasegawa one year just couldn't miss the glove, fired an 0+ ERA at the All-Star Break. Esteban Loaiza did it one year.
If Felix threw these pitches all year, he would indeed maintain a 12K, 1BB* ratio the whole time. Ben Sheets did that for a short time.
You think he will? Is he just out of his mind, or is that the point to which Felix has developed?
.
Yu Got Lucky, Dept.
STRENGTH: The Mariners swung the bats great on Wednesday.
The M's had 7 hits in the first four innings, most of them hard-hit .. in the 2nd inning, for example, Mike Zunino socked a hard line drive RBI single, and Almonte had a line-drive single the other way, and so on.
They had another several hard-hit line outs:
- Miller lined out hard to CF
- Cano lined out to deep CF
- Saunders nearly tore Rios' glove off in deep RF
- Brad Miller hit a tough 3-2 offspeed pitch for a tee shot fly out to RF
- Dustin Ackley hit a double on two hops off the wall, that happened to be pointed right at the CF
After about the 6th, things slowed down. But for five innings or so, the M's at-bats were world class. Combine that, against Felix' jaw-dropping performance Wednesday, and you're going to win >90% of the time. McClendon's right; the 5-percenters happen.
.......
STRENGTH: the best performances have come against the highest-paid competition.
So: How come the Mariners hit so well against Jered Weaver, C.J. Wilson, and Yu Darvish, but badly against the A's?
Best case analysis: they were braced for a tough fight against the stars, and are well capable of hitting tough when they're ready for a fight. But the A's guys snuck up on them a little bit -- subconsciously, they took Sonny Gray a little bit more lightly than they took Yu Darvish.
Should that cornball SSI theory be the actual case, we'd be in for a treat. The M's offense would jell into a very tough unit after it found its sea legs.
........
STRENGTH: Probability Theory. The M's are 9-and-5 per Pythagoras, there, Duncan.
They've scored +55 runs and allowed +42; every blinkin' game they lose is close, and every game they win is like 7-1. Baseball theory is implacable on this point. This state of affairs will force the .600 win-loss record into alignment quite shortly.
... or not,
Dr D
Comments
M's are ranked fourth in Major League Baseball according to Fangraphs. The defense resurgence is lead by Seager, who leads all ML third basemen with a +3.0. Almonte is third among all center fielders at +3.9, and Saunders is 3rd as well at +2.9. Zunino leads the AL and is second behind Posey at +1.9. Even Brad Miller is sporting a +1.5.
This is a much improved ball club.
We lost a few of these sorts of games last year, then rolled into Cleveland and got swept out of a series we could have won if they stopped playing games in the 8th inning (or thereabouts) or got one extra hit, and suddenly our season was over.
We never recovered.
I hope Lloyd can get them to have short memories. That game shoulda been ours. We were the MUCH better team for 8 innings. We need to be the better team for 9 today, and going into a weekend series with the Sailfish that we should own.
Gotta pick ourselves back up off the mat, Rocky-style.
~G
Rodney isn't Farquhar or Wilhelmson. He's been here before, a lot, and he still has nasty stuff. I was worried last night about his contriol going in, because it had been a while since he pitched. We need to keep him loose and in a groove.
As soon as Blash looks ready to hit MLB(tm) pitching, I expect he'll come up and then have the RF spot until and unless Austin Wilson is better. Ackley will likely have to fend off Tank O'Neill in a year or three, and James Jones and Almonte will start dukin' it soon, also. Saunders and Romero will likely cover RF until it's time for the Blash Splash.
Blash now has 12 BB to 10 Ks, 12 hits, 7 for XBH (4 2B, 3 HR) in 44 ABs (58 PAs). Apparently he liked playing with the big club in ST; he's showing every sign of having figured out pitch selection and producing enough he can't be ignored. --- No sooner does Spec note he hasn't got a hit against a LH, than Blash takes a LH Cub prospect (with a decent rep) deep!
The bullpen isn't terrible. The guys down there are decent pitchers. Rodney will be fine most nights. But, it seems like the bullpen needs that fireman guy - someone that can come in the game in a tough situation - runners on and no outs or maybe one out - and defuse that situation.
I wonder where the Mariners rank the last few years in inherited runners scored. Does anyone know where to find those numbers?
Main Mariner page at b-ref is here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/SEA/2014.shtml
Next to the red "Team Pitching" tab is a blue "More Stats" tab. That takes you here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/SEA/2014-pitching.shtml
Scroll down to "Team Relief Pitching" and about midway you'll see IR | IS | IS%
Back up at the top of the stat tables you'll find "2013 Pitching Statistics" and where it applies the year before and the year after will always be clickable there -- so you can easily go backward and forward in time getting the same page of stats.
M's are at 31% this year and were at 33% last year.
Some columns have the league average, but those columns don't. Turns out the average in 2013 was 29%, which you find here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2013-reliever-pitching.shtml
So they were in the bottom third in that category last year, but are pretty much in the middle this year.
Thanks for the b-ref tutorial. It's a great site, but a bit of a labyrinth at times.
The numbers are interesting. Just looking at IS% doesn't quite tell the whole story. You have to look at IR, IS, and IS% in context. Last year, the Nationals had the worst IS% in both leagues at 38%, but they had the lowest number of inherited runners at 120. That's a pretty remarkable number actually, as it is 56 runners better than the next best team, Pittsburgh, which had 176 inherited runners. Cleveland had the very worst total at 308 and Seattle ranked fourth with 273 inherited runners. Seattle was also second in the raw IS category with 90 inherited runners scored.
What these numbers don't tell you is how these numbers came to be. One has to dig deeper to figure that out.