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Felix looks completely finished. We need a Plan B on Felix and Gallardo soon.
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Jerry Dipoto talks about pitch tunnels. You will love this Baseball Prospectus .gif. LOVE it, or your money back. ... I think that by "tunnels" Dipoto is more referring to the idea of throwing a fast pitch and a slow pitch down the same tunnel, as Mark Melancon preaches. But still.
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If you didn't see it in the other article, there is a tsunami of "Groundballs Stink" momentum this spring. Here's J.D. Martinez talking about it again. Along the same lines, here again is Fangraphs' Travis Sawchik giving the OPS+ on fly balls as 139, and the OPS+ on grounders at 27. Of course line drives are highest of all, but the idea is that if you aim for a wedge of launch angle to include both Fly and LD, you get better results than does getting on top of the baseball.
Classic "antidote" to this is a high rising fastball. But Teddy Ballgame didn't consider it a viable antidote, and sixty years on they're coming around to his way of thinking.
One more really good reason to buy long on a certain Mitch Haniger. Also Juan Segura is adapting his launch angle to this new trend; see his flyball ratio trendlines.
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NOW THIS IS WHAT AN OWNER IS SUPPOSED TO SOUND LIKE.
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Just for what it's worth. James Paxton has given a whiff of "emerging maestro" scent in the first week or two. These are the vibes you get when a guy like this starts to become a pitcher - a guy who moves the ball around the zone, who has three different ways to use every pitch, yada yada yada. Not that James Paxton NEEDS to do that. He does not. But just every once in a while, you get a CC Sabathia thrower-to-pitcher transition BEFORE the guy loses his flameball. That's a Clayton Kershaw situation. 'twas the Randy Johnson situation.
If you start catching TV games and Paxton is doing a Fister-type location of his fastball in, out, up, down, then ... the Mariners are the second thing to watch this year, and K-Pax the main thing to watch this year. As was the case in Seattle from 1993 to 1998.
But we just talkin'. All Dr. D wants for the 4th of July is last year's Zeus. Strike one, and a foshball somewhere in there later. Plenty 'nuff for him.
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Bob Dutton's column gives 4 rookies who are generating buzz ... not with fans, but with Mariners shot-callers. It's a worthy read. We haven't talked about Casey Fien much, but the moratorium hasn't been intentional. Thing about Fien is that he gets crazy spin on his fastball, he and Aroldis Chapman being the top two. And his curve is super tight spin also. Don't underestimate Fien.
Enjoy,
Jeff
Comments
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3 strike outs, 5 ground balls vs. 4 in the air. The triple should have been caught, an error extends the inning, and pitching in 80 degree weather at 5100' elevation takes it's toll.
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The process. High 80s, low arm slot, no command. If anything he looked worse yesterday than he did all of last season.
Improved pitchability could still make him an acceptable BOR starter, but my expectations are way down and my concerns for the rotation are rising as a result.
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He has more 2 Homer Allowed games than ANY other full time reliever I can find. 12 of the 42 home runs he has allowed in his 277 inning major league career were the second homer of the game. For reference (because I can't find any sort of leaderboard for this kind of stat); Nick Vincent has allowed 2 out of his 19 home runs after allowing one earlier in the game, Evan Scribner is 4/24, Tony Sipp has a career 1.4 HR/9 over 406 innings, 4 of his 64 HR allowed were the second of the game, Jamie Walker once allowed 3 home runs in a game as a reliever, including those two, he allowed 8 of his 73 home runs after allowing a home run earlier in the game.
I took the time to check every game Casey Fien was left in after allowing a home run; opposing batters hit .285/.302/.774 and hit a home run in a whopping 14% of their plate appearances. Fien struck out 22.1% while walking only 2.3% so the problem may be a bit of over-aggression. When you remove plate appearances after allowing a home run, Casey Fien's opposing batter's statline becomes .246/.279/.395/.664 rather than the .249/.283/.425/.708 line he allows in real life. Frankly, it's the difference between being a marginal 7th inning guy and a being a legitimate set-up man.
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News you don't get anywhere else, babe.
Malcontent, how hard would it be to check Fien's results in those 2-homer games BEFORE the first homer? That would serve to check the idea of "once in a while he can't hit the broad side of a barn with his pitches" scenario.
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Batters went 2/9 with a sac bunt, 2 strike outs, and a walk. The first batter he faced hit a homer 5 times. To me, it's not about whether batters touched him up before hand, but rather, that he was able to convince his manager to keep him in after allowing the homer. The stats I listed before were his stats after allowing a homer in all games, not just the ones he allowed two in. All relievers are going to have bad days, but how is it Casey Fien, for years, was able to keep going out after allowing the homer. That's why I'm searching for some other reliever that made it to double digits in 2 homer games. Maybe Casey Fien missed his calling as a lawyer and is just really good at convincing the manager, "I'll get the next one!"
In fact, Ron Gardenhire seemed to pick up on his overchallenge tendency and allowed him less than 15 PA after allowing a home run from the end of 2013 through 2014. Then Paul Molitor took over and it doesn't seem like anybody told him (and especially not the Dodgers) about Casey's problem allowing a homer shortly after allowing a homer.
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Lets his anger get the best of him. ... first-class insights here amigo.
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Many possible explanations.
Could also just be random of course
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But why aren't there any other relievers that this happens to? I just checked last season's home run allowed leaders among relievers Brett Oberholtzer (8 times allowed 2 homers in a game out of 44 in his career) and Mark Lowe (3/47). It's weird, and you can kinda track through his game logs and find series of games 10-15 in a row every season between these 2 homer games where he's running ERAs around 2. After watching today's game, I am assuming when his command slips, he just starts aiming center zone and accepting the results. How he has convinced manager's to leave him in when he turns bp machine I don't know.