Was there anybody more skeptical that Ackley would/could figure it out in Seattle than me? Hard to imagine. However, I was wrong. He seems to have whooped his internal swing-demons....at least for right now, right here in Seattle. I lost my shirt on that bet. But I'm good with that. As Bill the Cat frequently said: "Ack! Ack!"
I will point out that he's making his big impact to RF and not to LF. I did get that one right.
Morales is concerning. But the investment was low (and a smart roll of the dice) and it is Sept. 1st: Call ups are going to occur. An interesting question will be just how readily Lloyd will sit a struggling Morales for Smoak or Romero? Worth watching. I wouldn't be surprised if we see Smoak at 1B and Morrison DH'ing against a RHP early this week.
Chavez? Check his coffee, man. What's got into it. But you've got to ride him, vR, as long as you can. .302-.342-.421 = giving him more swings at RHP. But .069-.121-.103 vL (with a .077 BABIP) means you never let him hit against LHP. Ever. Denorfia was picked up for exactly that role. Sigh...But that spaghetti isn't sticking right now (.246-.303-.320 this year...with a .309 BABIP). I wouldn't keep throwing it at the wall for too long.
But we may see Romero get the RF vL AB's for a bit, at least long enough to see if his smoking Tacoma bat travels back to Safeco with him.
Sooner or later Lloyd will rest Seager.....does Miller get those 3B games? Romero? Neither has played 3B since last season, and then less than 5 games. Taylor last played 3B in '12.
Is this a role for Kelly?
My bet for Miller is that he gets lots of reps in ST in the OF. He may be destined for a Zobrist/Bloomie type of role. He and Kelly, who I still quite like, give you tons of real flexibility. Bloomquist next year? Don't know.
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Maybe you're getting tired of talking about Dustin Ackley? You'll eat it, and like it. As long as this dude keeps swinging like this, it's All Ack All The Time Bab-eh.
Silent Panda had pointed out, brilliantly, that Ackley's 2014 funk had lasted --- > only an alarmingly short time. He started the season, in SSI's judgment, by driving his "ki" in the correct direction about 2/3 of the way.
Giddy with success, he got greedy again. But this time around, he popped back into form -- and this time even more sharply -- after only about 5 weeks' adjustment:
| Time frame | AVG | OBP | SLG | Remark |
| Mar 31 - May 20 | .265 | .320 | .440 | Some thought this was the baked cake |
| May 21 - Jun 30 | .153 | .217 | .198 | Siiiighhhh |
| July & August! | .315 | .350 | .515 | This would be the baked cake |
We recall Bret Boone finally (appearing to) jell, about 1994 or something, and the early Bill James writing "He hit seven home runs in September. He might hit seven a MONTH, from now on."
Dustin Ackley hit 6 homers in August, and has more RBI in his last 40 games than he did in the first 85. That isn't because the runners are plenty, in the 8-9-1 slots of the Seattle Mariner order. The Mountain Man is practically giving us a Nelson Cruz performance out there.
.....
Kendrys Morales was, we said a week ago, starting to look like he was getting his timing. A week later, he looks like he's still out there in the snipe hunt. He's going in circles, and they're not spiralling in. As with you amigos, Dr. D is starting to wring his hands about Morales' power, also.
He's gifted. He could come around at any time. He better, is 'cause they're not going to take him out of there. Hey, remember, it's just a one-game playoff.
.....
Brad Miller has been tantalizing the last two weeks, going 7-for-17 with three doubles. It seems like every ball has left a vapor trail off his bat, and his strike zone control is excellent. Sunday, he dipped the knees and rifled a shot over the shortstop's head that would have killed him if it had struck him in the chest.
.....
When the Mariners got Denorfia, SSI said "color us 99 kinds of skeptical." In the AL, in Safeco, he has so far hit .224/.250/.286 with 2 walks and 16 strikeouts. That's in right field, folks. Cole Gillespie, never mind Ty Kelly, could do plenty 'nuff better. On Sunday, our "designated swiffer" was 0-for-4 with three ugly whiffs.
But! When the 1995 Mariners lost Junior to a broken wrist, the scrubeenies stepped up, played over their heads ... it seemed like it was a different no-name hero every night. Alex Diaz played CF and hit .346 during the August run. Remember him?
Endy Chavez is reminding me of that. He's playing much better than he has any right to do. And did you know he's hitting .303/.354/.395 in the second half?
Speaking of Brad Miller, and speaking of right field...
Enjoy,
Dr D
Comments
Hart has a .922 OPS in 70 AB with Tacoma, with 4 2B, 2 3B and 4 HR with 13 SO and 7 BB. Saunders has a .952 OP in 55 AB but his rehab time has been interrupted twice.
for the World Series, we can certainly put Miller at third and RF for short stints. But definitely give Seager some rest. And more Romero, less Denorfia, please. Finally, Morales is a rally killer on the base paths. He has to go bonkers to overcome the liability of his wheels. I didn't like that pickup from day one, and I just hope my skepticism over Kendrys ends up in the same waste basket as yours toward Ackley. Nice work, Boras. Take note, all you ball players who struggle with greed.
Chavez is on one of those hot streaks. Ride him. Zunino is wearing down, so...more Romero against lefties, please. The best and brightest of this site have been saying all season he needed to go to Tacoma and learn stuff. Brother, did he learn it. He outhit Smoak, and everyone else down there. If Oakland can ride a dude like Voigt, we can ride Stefan against lefties.
For his first few years as GM to be considered a reasonable success, Z has always needed one of Ackley-Smoak-Montero to become a good MLB hitter. If Ackley has finally come around, I am good w/ Z as GM going forward. I do note he picked the right one to keep in the lineup and the right two to flush to the minors. M's are consistently good at picking the best guys to play - it's just been a lack of overall talent pool that has hampered them.
If this series shows they are not quite at the level of a team like the Nationals...that's fine. They don't have to be this year, they just need to get into that weaselly "one game playoff" that all the smart people are so fond of scoffing at. And we'll see where the dice roll from there. Go M's!
I know we're big on Miller earning his utility stripes, but romero OPSes .925 Against Lefties For His Minor league career. Yes, he was bad against both in the bigs, but he had a BABIP of .200 too. He wasn't quite as bad as he looked, just needed to go down and remember he can hit. Get confidence back. Romero can spell Taylor at short if necessary, maybe play a little outfield. We have pieces to use. Feel free to use em.
I've been pointing out the inaccuracy of people's perceptions about Dustin Ackley's season four a long time now. I posted almost the exact same data last week on the Seattle Mariners web site (commenting on an article about his "recent" turnaround). I hope you did this research independent from mine. I feel like most Seattle Mariners bloggers have been unfair in their assessments of the team and player development and I often feel like a lonely voice of reason. Without knowing your history in covering the team, I find it an odd coincidence that after I posted a clear statistical case that goes against the common narrative that you've written the same perspective here. Where has this commentary been all season? I've been saying it forever. I'm a coach and a student of the game & player development. I know what I'm talking about and I'm rarely wrong in my predictions about the team and individual players. The problem I have with bloggers who try to cover the Mariners and convey information about the organization is that I don't think any of them have the perspective to be consistently credible. I feel like starting my own blog to refute the impulsive and misinformed garbage that seems to flow from our current crop of "experts". So my question is, have you been aware of these stats all season, did you do the research once the captain obvious goggles started to see that Ackley's success is real, or did you see my research and then basically change the dates by a few days and try to take credit for seeing something that only I've been pointing out over the course of the season?
Nobody on this site steals anything from anyone, and if we Do find something we think is interesting, we give credit. The Times stole a multi page article from this site that was translated by a Japanese friend of the site and posted it practically verbatim as front page news without attribution. We know the feeling.
Like you said, sometimes it becomes obvious and we try to point out obvious things around here. If you'd like to start a blog, feel free. Try not to wade into the blogosphere Telling Us all how stupid we are and how you are the only smart person in a sea of imbeciles if you'd like a readership, though.
And best of luck. This isn't a combative blog, it's a thoughtful one. Feel free to search through the articles and decide if it's a place you want to contribute to instead of preach to. We'd love any insights you'd like to provide, but tonally this is a place to share knowledge and learn from each other, not to see who can hoard the most.
Take care.
No problem here, G. I can live with that. But even if Taylor/Miller are a two-headed monster next year, with the hot bat getting the nod, it makes great sense for at least one of them to be multi-positional. That will happen.
Romero spelling Seager works. Romero has only 4 games at 3B since '11, none above High Desert.
But his hot bat demands some AB's.
Never heard of you or your work. I barely read anything Mariners on the 'net. Bob Dutton once in a while. These guys in the comments threads provide everything interesting I want to find.
What would have been better, would be if you'd checked the "Dustin Ackley" tag on this blog, and discovered that this has been a 3-year conversation -- before attacking us for parroting your stuff.
On the bright side, it's cool to know that we believe similar things, independently arrived at.
........
If you can throttle down a little, become more friendly, you're welcome to post here and then direct over to your site if you want.
- Jeff
20 years ago, he said "what a blue chip rating does NOT mean, is that the player is going to be a star. He has maybe a 30% chance of being a star." Spot on BSR. :- )
Perhaps the Braun/Prince/Weeks era spoiled Jack a bit ... whatever the case, if Dustin Ackley becomes a fast Adrian Gonzalez then that will be payoff plenty 'nuff out of the Golden Three ...
As far as I can tell, the only stats mentioned above about Ackley were Batting Average/OBP/Slugging. That's pretty common stuff.
Pointing out that Ackley was hot the 2nd half of last year then was decent the early part of this year, then dismally dismal most of this year, then real hot since August 1, is hardly proprietary stuff. I think we've pointed that out around here all month.
Ackley has been a hot topic around here for a long long while. Guys have been pointing out his resurging bat for 3 weeks. I'm pretty sure that guys have reached that conclusion without reading your analysis. But good luck with your blog.
Good catch Mo' Dawg. And that happens, what, 80%, 90% of the time to aging lefty hitters.
In any case, Chavez is certainly a band-aid until they find a real RF. But it's nice to see him pulling the Alex Diaz for a month here.
I'm all in on this. The guy is an athlete. He can play shortstop in the majors, but realistically he's probably not winning a gold glove over there. But that arm is strong and will play in right field, and I think most of us believe the bat will come around.
HEH!
This should probly be an article, but I don't have the time to do it justice (still on the road for work) so let's hit this by summary points and maybe Doc can take a run at a real article:
1) The Mariners have CONSISTENTLY tried to keep players at the hardest fielding position they can "handle." Ackley was a 1B/OF moved to 2B. Nick Franklin was kept at SS throughout his minor-league career and into the bigs. Brad Miller was drafted as a VERY tweener MIF and was kept at SS, even over Franklin. Saunders played mostly CF until this year. Jesus Montero playing C. On and on.
2) It hasn't worked. None of those guys have succeeded at the harder position, and it's currently KILLING Zunino to have to do everything as a defensice catcher AND work on his offense at the same time. If we could put Zunino at DH or 1B for half his games, would he learn faster on offense? Quite possibly. But he's "Too valuable" as a great game-caller, leader and defender to lose that, so we're sacrificing his offense instead and hoping in a couple more years he can get it together. The guy they didn't do that to: Seager. He had to learn third, but they didn't keep him at 2B or try to force him to play SS. So naturally who's the guy who succeeded out of the gate? Seager.
3) The Ms are coming around on this notion. They realized their mistake with Ackley, moved him to LF (a la Alex Gordon) and he's suddenly succeeding after his adjustment period and turning into a plus fielder (a la Gordon). They realized it with Franklin and traded him (as a 2B) to Tampa. When they moved Saunders to RF his offense immediately improved. Yes, his LF numbers are bad (indicating it might just be random, or a "sample size" issue) but he also played more LF early in his career, messing with those #s. His numbers last year in CF vs LF, and his success as a mostly-LF this year is either the natural maturation of a hitter, or the growth that comes when you're not trying to to more than you're capable of in the field. You decide.
4) Moving (middle) infielders to the (corner) OF destroys their trade value until they prove they can be more-plus with the bat there than they were in playing by a bag. AL Shortstops in 2013 averaged a .680 OPS. Brad Miller has a .675 career mark (combining his good half-season last year and this year's disastrousness). He has value as a middle infielder. The second you move him to the OF, you tank his value. LF averaged .725 and RF was at .740. Miller basically HAS to make the jump back to his year one numbers (.265/.320/.420) to be worth the move, and somebody is gonna wanna see him do it before they give you anything for him, since this year's .615 is bringing no one calling as a corner bat.
5) We might care about trade value. We have Romero, DJ Peterson (our #2 hitting prospect or thereabouts, slowed in AA with an injured wrist), Patrick Kivlehan (who was a top-3 bat in the Southern League until the last couple weeks when he got tired), Austin Wilson (demolished the MWL with a ~.900 OPS til his injury, is about 2 years away), Guerrero, Henry, Un-Suspended-Blash, Pizzano in a pinch, our #1 hitting Prospect Alex Jackson (who had his season cut short with a liner to the face), and wall-puncher Tank O'Neill, who sports a .240 ISO and is 11th in the MWL with 13 homers in only 240 PAs. We have a billionty guys to squeeze into those corner spots where we might move Miller.
Not to mention Saunders (.785 OPS in RF) and Ackley (.900 OPS in the 2nd half) as our theoretical corner bats who each have multiple years of club-control remaining. Where is Brad playing? Are we trading Saunders? He's got 2 years of club control left and can manage spot duty in CF as well as play both corners. He might not be able to stay healthy (didn't exactly play a 135 game schedule in the minors either), which is a concern... but when he's in, he can finally hit. Can Miller hit more and be more healthy? I dunno. I don't bet on it.
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Said all that to say: If you wanna make Miller a Bloomie-type, okay. But that's not likely to help his offense. Instead of learning one position, he'll have to learn several. He just spent all that time getting good enough to play SS (and he CAN play SS. Not a gold-glover, but he can play it). So if you believe Miller will eventually hit (and I do believe that) and he can't beat Taylor out to get the SS job back, then you should either move him to ONE outfield spot NOW so he can learn it and be Ackley 2.0, or you should leave him be. Making him field everything and turning him into Zobrist will take a minute. Zobrist his ownself did not become more than a spot player until age 28.
If you think Taylor's 100 PAs do not make him a lock at SS (and I don't) then I'd sure want another quality option around. If Taylor turns into a quality starter, then trade Miller as a SS where he doesn't have to hit a ton to be valuable... but he probably will, especially in the minors.
If Taylor falters, then you can replace him with Miller's next go-round.
I don't move Miller permanently. We've done it a bunch with other players, but with the OF pipeline we're building we don't have to move Miller. At least not unless he's completely blocked. And if he IS completely blocked, I'm not sold that he's better than Peterson or Kivlehan or Wilson on a corner. Or better than Ackley and Saunders in the next couple years either. Maybe he's like Biggio who played a bunch of glove positions before settling in at 2B and exploding. But for us, right now, we only have a few needs for a middle-infield bat, and one of them is in the middle infield.
I want some kind of production out of SS. If one guy black-holes, we have another guy. They are opposite-handed. We SHOULD be able to Frankenstein league-average production for minimum wage using Miller and Taylor, and that removes the sinkhole in the offense. Even with Miller's atrociousness this year the Ms are only a little below league-average value at the position. Let's get a bit more over a full season and see what happens.
... And I guess I typed enough to make it an article after all. Oh well. ;)
~G
It does not happen very often. We could do it. But it still helps if one of the guys can play another position or two. It doesn't have to be OF, btw. 2B or 3B will do.
A year from now, if nobody's been traded it seems like the M's will have three viable short stops competing for one available middle infield spot.
Gordon and Spec you'd know better than me, but it seems like Miller has the most upside (legit power, great minor league numbers, athletic enough to play the position if he can get the errors under control) Taylor's the better glove now and probably going forward but he doesn't carry nearly the offensive upside (best case scenario he hits, what, a babip dependent 270/330/380 or something... That'll play with a good glove at short but I'd bet the under on that). I'm honestly not sure how Marte compares with the glove but it seems like he's even more babip dependent than Taylor without much power but the advantage of being a switch hitter. And he's a lot younger so there may be more power there than he's shown so far.
It seems like but 2016 one of these guys is not in the organization. And the other is playing the Willie Bloomquist role.
I really have no idea what the organization thinks about Miller's struggles this year... If they're just growing pains or represent a serious block going forward. Numbers wise it seems like he was bad to start to the year but fixed things in June and has been mostly unlucky/benched since. We'll see if his recent hot steak buys him some more ABs...
Do they carry both these guys and Willie next year?
Before we plan to ride him against anybody.
He was Michael Saunders in 2011 levels of lost before they want him down. That doesn't mean he can't be fixed but in a lot of years of watching bad Mariner offenses Stefan Romero was probably among the five most helpless hitters I've seen them run out.
I'm not sure of his issues staying on the field are bad luck or the beginning of something chronic but looking ahead to next season: a starting outfield of Ackley, Jackson, and Saunders would probably project out as something like league average. And there'd be some upside there if Ackley really is a better than average hitter, if Jackson can get back to his form from a couple of years ago, and if Saunders can put it all together and do it for 140 games or so that could pretty easily be a 9 win outfield.
It seems to me that the big holes in next year's team start with 1b/DH where the team has been relying on hopes (LoMo/Smoak), reclamation projects (Kotchman, Branyan, Morse) or both (Hart) for way too long. I don't know what the budget will be next year, if it'll finally go up after years of holding steady, but it seems like the team needs to put some actual resources into filling one of those spots with somebody who can actually be expected to go out and give us something like league average production. We can save one spot for LoMo/DJ/Lara/Whoever but it's been deadly carrying two black holes for so long this year.
We should also make a concerted effort to find a backup catcher who we'll actually be comfortable starting a couple of times a week. Zunino is great and all but he's carried a heavy load (too heavy) this year and I'm worried that his approach has deteriorated to the point where he gets hard to play no matter how good the defense is. When he's swinging through grooved 91 mph fastballs in the zone I'm worried he's turning into J.P, Arenicibia with a better glove.
Those would be my priories I think. Closely followed by bolstering rotation a bit (you can never have enough pitching blah blah blah) and finding a fourth outfielder who can spell everybody else (and cover the inevitable Saunders injury).
Yep, I was out of line. I can certainly contribute here or elsewhere with a much greater degree of tact and that post was not representative of my character. There's no excuse for me coming into the conversation so combative. Please accept my apologies, everyone.
Hope you can post here often. And feel free to link to your site at the bottom of each comment if you like.
Best,
Jeff
Nice recovery. That will be currency here. Stick around - there isn't really anything like SSI anywhere else in the M's blogosphere.
Jeff Mullen the Seattle Prep coach? Your expertise is welcomed. If you realize there's a lot of insight here that you can supplement with your knowledge and experience, this could be the start of a nice multi-partnership (cue Casablanca closing credits). This site is full of passionate fans who love trying to make sense of things - from Ackley's turn-around (keeping his ki right; keeping his head still and eyes on the ball - depending on who's expressing much the same thing), to the A's trials without Cespedes. A fun time can be had by all!