You are dead on, Doc....
A tater whacking LoMo isn't the guy we've really got...or should expect. Funny for Mac to insinuate that he wants Morrison to hit more homers when he told Smoak that he wanted him to lead the league in doubles. Using B-R's "162 Game Average," Smoak has been a 25-0-22 XB guy for his career. He's spent the bulk of it in an tough tater park, as you might know. Morrison has been a 31-6-18 guy for his career. He didn't spend most of it in Safeco, btw.
Who is the guy to look at and say, "Big guy, go get me 27 homers" and who is the guy to request of, "and you go get me 35 doubles!"
For the last umpteen years when the M's were down 2 runs in the 4th inning you could just about figure we were DOA.
My how the tide has turned. When the bad guys glace at our pen, down 2 runs, the effect is "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!" It's a bunch of live arms who are hot.
BTW, Ackley's swing for the 2-run knock was indeed just a pepper cut, but it impressed me greatly. That was an Ichiro-like single. He seemed to say, "I'm going to place this one right....over....there" and did. It was a swing of a guy not pressing. A happy camper. I've beat Ackley up (when deserved) but I will surely give him credit for stuff he deserves, too.
This run, as you allude to, has really been done without much contribution from Morales and Denorfia. If either one of those guys gets warm (Kendrys shows signs) it will balance the inevitable Ackley or Morrison bump in the road. They will not/can not continue the streak they are on. Winning teams have guys who pack the load when needed. Those new guys will still be needed.
I now am eager to see how this team handle the 3-game losing streak or the 1-4 stretch. Such things happen late in the year. Good advice is to breath slow and deep, in through the nose filling the lungs from the bottom up.
In other words, good teams don't panic. With Felix and Cano driving this team's bus I don't worry that we will panic.
Interesting, too, how we get a big Seager homerun and it isn't part of the big story. We've come to expect that kind of stuff from him. He's pretty good.
moe
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Logan Morrison
The M's were down, 0-1, in the bottom of the 3rd. LoMo had singled sharply, and with Austin Jackson at the plate, LoMo took off - pretty much a straight steal. (His speed index is about ML average - which is good for a 1B.)
Jackson singled right at Colby Rasmus in CF. Rasmus, hurrying, had the ball bounce off him, about 6-8 yards away. He looked up, didn't see it, looked right, saw it, scrambled over to the ball in short CF. He picked it up and fired it back in.
Incredibly, LoMo was already roaring around 3B and forced a bad throw to home plate. M's were even on the scoreboard, but were ahead two touchdowns psychologically. Like in a 7-7 football game at CLink, and you've got a QB sack followed by a false start.
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In 1969, Jim Bouton was traded, late in the season, from the lowly AL Seattle Pilots to the contending NL Astros. The Astros won a game based on a botched defensive play and Bouton wrote "We got a great game from one of our aces tonight, and we've got another ace going tomorrow, and we won tonight because their shortstop made an error in the 10th inning and we stepped in. Just like the old (1961-62) Yankees used to. I think I'm going to cry."
Normally, over the period 1977-2013, the Mariners make the Bad News Bears plays when the play matters most. But they are as sharp as a tack right now - only 1 strikeout against J.J. Happ - and they are putting pressure on the other club.
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Media types do overplay this thing, "LoMo has a 13-game hitting streak." But you, the savvy SSI reader don't take hitting streaks as non-info. You read that as "That's a cue to investigate whether LoMo is swinging the bat great." Hey, LrKrBoi29, when you hear "[Joe Shlabotnik] has a 25-game hitting streak," that [Joe] name ain't going to be Endy Chavez.
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LoMo is razor-sharp at the plate, but there are lizards in the cellar. Lloyd grumbled about LoMo a coupla days ago, "Hits are fine for you guys. But I need my first baseman to hit the ball out of the ballpark."
I doubt that LoMo has the swing shape to do that at Safeco.
They keep saying, "He is soooooo hot; it's only a matter of time before the balls start finding the seats." And here's another night where his best shot is a topspin line drive into the power alley, one hop off the wall. He looks great, but I don't like the intersection of
- LoMo's topspin swing shape (without a lot of walks)
- His position at 1B
- His being a Safeco Field player
How about asking for a little more out of RF, Lloyd. On this one, you might be barkin' up the wrong tree.
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Kendrys Morales
We use the term "Rauuuul is who he is." That sounds feebleminded at first, a tautology.
But words are little wheelbarrows that carry ideas from one mind to another, which is why only humans can use them. The "Kendrys is who he is" phrase is a wheelbarrow carrying a heavy payload:
- He has a well-defined set of skills ...
- ... without huge upside
- ... but with considerable value
- He's done it before, consistently -- and easily ("he hits .280 falling out of bed")
- He'll do it again, consistently
- Visually, you can see that he hasn't lost anything
- Steady Eddie
We used to say this about Ibanez.
In the last 2 games, Kendrys has swatted 3 extra-base hits into his pull field. As you know, SSI can be counted on for tomorrow's news today. Like Kendrys, Dr. D is who he is.
Nah, Kendrys' timing ain't quite there yet. But it's gonna be.
Consider this problem about the 2014 Mariners: the ballclub has no players who "are who they are." Maybe now Austin Jackson.
Even pitching, there's only one guy I can think of, who is reliable enough, to get the mild compliment of "Is who he is." That being Chris Young.
Two things, then:
- It's one reason the 2014 Mariners look better, then worse, then better than who they are
- It's the main reason you don't care if Kendrys takes a little while to get his timing
Included in Kendrys' skill set is that he likes Safeco.
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Jack has done a great job in keeping the door open with Boras, never rubbed it in the way 2014 worked out, etc. SSI wouldn't be opposed to Kendrys in future seasons.
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4 Runs a Game? You sure you got the right number, bro'?
LoMo is part of the rah-rah brigade, which is great. He is the one who shoots the arrow with Rodney, the guy who fires the ball around the infield and points at guys, etc.
He said the magic number is 4. "Our job is to score 4, and we'll win."
This of course means that they can relax into a manufactured run, early in the game. Who knows, you might hold your hitting K's to 1, against a lefty who fanned 12 his last time out... Dustin Ackley's RBI single, he took almost a pepper swing to line the ball the other way. Very little weight behind the swing, but he did stay back.
True that 4 runs are enough, but from behind our monitors we can also be aware that 3 runs are enough. The M's are playing .611 ball when they score exactly 3. Contrast that with other AL teams, who are .3xx winners when scoring 3.
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NEXT
Comments
Blowers, during the game, commented that Morrison was probably one wood grain away from a homer on that liner to RCF last night, and I believe him. He's got a topspin swing, but so did Raauuuuuuuuul...that's a PLUS in Safeco, not a minus, when it comes to getting hooked line drive home runs to RF and keeping the average up. But Ibanez' last good season in Seattle, he didn't hit the ball as hard as Morrison currently is, season averaged (including the bad beginning and recent bad stretch). I think Morrison is capable of 25 HR.
If I have come away with one impression of this team, it is that every time I started to write them off as folding like the same old Mariners, they...didn't.
Bouton is right...bad teams whiff when they get chances to punish the mistakes of other teams. The ariners lately have been cashing those mistakes in. CF miscue in the second gives the Mariners a run, then in the 8th, they were in position to get run #6 only because of some heads up base-running by James Jones. It's a MUCH more stressful 4-3 game if Seattle doesn't take advantage of Toronto's mistakes. If they play even a skosh more relaxed...this game owuld have been very different. But they are razor sharp.
Morrison stings the ball but doesn't have much loft on it. I'm ok with that given the alternatives. It's not ideal but its also not Smoak.
++ Funny for Mac to insinuate that he wants Morrison to hit more homers when he told Smoak that he wanted him to lead the league in doubles. Using B-R's "162 Game Average," Smoak has been a 25-0-22 XB guy for his career. He's spent the bulk of it in an tough tater park, as you might know. Morrison has been a 31-6-18 guy for his career. ++
Annihilating logic ...
Am sure that McClendon would have his logic, but I'd like to know what it is.
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Without much contribution from Kendrys or Denorfia ... or much from Jackson, right? Though (if true) that's been partly due to batted balls finding leather --
You hold out hope that Morrison can fashion Ibanez-like results in Safeco ... you could be right. You oughta run with that one. And any decent production from 1B, much less Ibanez-like results would push towards a pennant.
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Can't put my finger on what it is about LoMo that seems (to me) to rule out an Ibanez career path. After all, as a 22- and 23-year-old, Morrison had the same 115-125 OPS+ results that Ibanez posted in his prime.
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Maybe it's that, later on, Rauuuuul would guess right and routinely hook it into the RF seats, like Seager. Don't know if I've ever seen Morrison guess right on a pitch and just swat it into the seats. (Well, of course he has, a few times... )
Sabermetrically that might be reflected in the pull angle of Raul's HR. Or maybe I'm just out to lunch. Good post Matty.
He gets his pitch, and hits a 1-iron ... Raul's swing shape was much more heavily topspin: upward arc, then down with a flourish. Or not.
Also, during Morrison's HIT STREAK, he's only .330/.380/.467. If that's your big two weeks, um ....
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Like you say, we'll gladly take it. I kinda like LoMo, especially vis-a-vis Smoak. But the thing about "needing him to hit it into the seats" ... yowch. Well, maybe that's McClendon trying to re-shape LoMo in a way he needs to be re-shaped.
Earl wrote about this. He'd take players like Morrison and say, "Hey. It's 2-0, 3-1 and you get your pitch, try to hit it out of the park." Think that could be McClendon's thing here?
/330 for two weeks is nice but hardly world-beating. He needs to do better than this to justify my belief that he can hit 25 homers in his prime. One of the common things for young players to do is to transfer some doubles into homers...and the reaso that tends to happen is precisely what McClendon is talking about I think and what you're suggesting here. He's using the same line drive swing on all pitches...he's not back-legging the gimmes and trying to put the ball in the air when he gets a chance. You don't want him to swing with more upper cut all the time...that would kill him...but if he could learn to drop the bat head into the loop zone on mistakes in hitter's counts...he'd get some more loft on those pitches. I do think that that is a skill that comes with experience if you hang around long enough and have power. He's got power...you don't see it in PX yet because he's on top of the ball really well and hitting 100 mph rocket line drives instead of 100 mph parabolic arcs. :)
O the question of whether this version of LoMo can hit 25 homers...nada. On the other hand, Raul when he was young wasn't the 30 HR guy he turned into. He, too, was more of a line drive hitter early in his career:
In the minors, Ibanez hit twice as many doubles as homers, and only occasionally ticked 20 dingers, and in those cases...only just. The Raul we all remember in Seattle hit only about 40% more doubles than homers - he learned to cripple mistake pitches and it happened rather suddenly...at age 29.