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A great bullpen can cause a team to 'outperform' pythag and it stands to reason that a bad bullpen can cause a team to underperform pythag. Benoit getting hurt and then tanking really, really hurt this team.
HST knew some stuff, didn't he?
OK, I must confess, Hunter S. Thompson is one of my favorite authors. There, I've said it. It's on the table for God and all to see.
I don't read him often, mind you. But he's pretty dang stellar with that words stuff! Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Great Shark Hunt are particular favorites of mine, going way back. Have read them many times.
And with the Weirdness!! that surrounds the M's this year, I felt a HST theme was somewhat appropriate.
Do you know that we have a 50-39 Pythag? We would all be dancing giddy jigs were we 50-39 right now. It would be DiPoto for Pope kind of stuff. But we're not. Somehow 45-44 sounds completely dismal in comparison. Gloom and doom and dejection and run of the mill M's-fan pessimism is the currency of the realm (thanks for the phrase, Doc) right now.
"Woe is us," goes the refrain. No less so here on SSI than out on the street, btw.
But did you know.....?
1. We're 2nd in homers and 4th in OBP but only 6th in runs scored!! Now that's weird.....just try to do it in your roto league.
2. We're 4th in the league in ERA....despite our dilapidated and bruised pitching staff. Doesn't seem possible, does it?
3. Lind is unbelievably terrible on the road (OPS of .523 vs. .917 at home), Marte's walks are way down (he walked in 10% of his PA's last season, less than 4% this year), and Aoki hit lefties terribly (.434 vs. .735 for his career. His vR #'s are above his career rate). You know what? I defy you to find another performance that is far below what we might have expected. Oh, Ianetta is down a bit but he's above last year and we didn't grab him for his bashing bat, anyway. Is O'Malley worse than Willie B?
Seager is having his career year. Cano is Cano. Cruz is Cruz. Guti isn't Hank Aaron, like last year....but if you expected that then you were into the Kool-Aid a bit. He's still a potent hitter. Smith is hitting RHP better than his career mashing numbers and Lee is a wonderful find. Even Martin is having his career year at the plate. Really. Look it up.
To tell you the truth.....offense hasn't been a real problem, on the whole.
4. On the pitching side, Kuma is having his worst year (FIP of 4.56) but is still 9-6. If somebody told you on Opening Day that Kuma would be 9-6 at the Break would you have moaned about that? I think not. Karns is 6-2! Our two Opening Day rotational question marks are a combined 15-8. Wade Miley, a career .500 pitcher is .500. Mongomery and Diaz have been devastating in the pen and my fingernails appreciate Cishek WAY more than they did Rodney. He has 21 saves. You would have grabbed that number in a moment, given the chance, I bet. Would you have kicked if I told you on Opening Day that Walker would have 16 starts and an ERA of 3.66/WHIP of 1.14? Likely not. Paxton has shown some signs that have us all drooling, again. OK, it would be nice if the staff would get into the 7th a bit more often....but, overall, they've been just fine. Or close to it. What we've really missed from our staff is 8 Felix starts. We're about 50 Felix innings short of quota.
5. Despite all that......a few weird batting figures (and really the only killer is the Lind road numbers) and even fewer pitching glitches.....we're still only 45-44. But we should be 50-39....so maybe we wasted a bunch of games.
On the other hand....maybe Lady Luck is going to sit in the M's dugout for the next 73 ballgames. She's a difference maker, in case you've forgotten.
So there you go. Weirdness, it seems, has turned pro and is playing for the M's right now.
And he doesn't look good in Teal and Green.
Will end with this: We've a brand new guy in the dugout calling the shots, as you know. Would Joe Torre be 45-44 at this point? Or Lou? Earl? That's a serious question but not an accusation, btw.
Is there a learning curve to being a Big League Manager?
Go team
Moe
Comments
2
A noble effort, sir Moe of Ivanhoe.
And doubtless much truth in what you say about the M's. The standard set of numbers does not correlating with their .500-ish record. Injuries, particularly the one to Felix, have helped short-circuit potential.
But I can be a stubborn cuss. Having watched the M's, I feel their .500-ish record corresponds to how this team has played. They are talented, but they are inconsistent and often do not PLAY up to their talent. To me the carryover from the last few years of some eggregious baserunning is a perplexing bellweather of a team that simply does not play the game well. And you don't often go to the postseason having not played well.
Many is the talented team with some gaudy numbers that lose out to lesser teams that play smart and execute, that minimize mistakes and minimize damage when they do make them, that persevere when things get tough (I'm looking at YOU, pitching staff, you of fragile heart.) On occasion sheer guts can trump talent. The truly great pitchers were more than just talent, they added guts and determination. This is where I find our pitching staff lacking, in particular Taijuan Walker and James Paxton. Yes, they are young, but IMHO they have not shown they are able to retreive innings that start to get out of hand. The term I mutter to myself is "rockhead," a term I picked up from G-Money.
I dunno, maybe I'm just being cantankerous. I hope so. But to me this team's record accurately reflects how they've played. Luck may have played some factor, but I'm not sure it's the decisive factor in the discrepancy between Pythag and actual.
Like everyone I'm hoping the return of Felix will help restore some of the swagger we started to feel earlier in the season. One wonders what the "spiritual" effect of his absence has been on the team. It's as if their center of gravity has been missing.
These are all generalized, vague, ethereal sentiments, but in my opinion such things are truly at work on this team.
Re: Marte, his lack of walks (disturbing!) and inconsistent defense (= error rate) have put a mild question mark over what had earlier in the season looked like a position locked down for years.
Re: Cruz, despite his continued HR production over the last month or so he has not been the same hitter as earlier. To me he looks tired, either mentally or physically or both. He could fall out of bed and hit home runs, but lately he's been suffering from the same syndrome we saw from Adrian Beltre when he was here, helplessly waving at sliders low and away. In key situations when they need a strikeout, Cruz has almost become a pitchers' escape hatch. I'm hoping the ASB will help. Otherwise, Cruz has reverted more to what we saw in Texas than what we saw last year.
3
But I do have to say that we're five games under pythag because we aren't well built for winning close and late. Our offense is very...very unathletics...small ball is a challenge for us. Our defense is slightly below average even with Martin holding together the outfield and gasp-inducingly bad when we give him a day off. Our bullpen has three good pitchers in it...and none of them are good fits to close...and then it has a closer who I'm not counting as a good pitcher because when the game is close, he pitches noticeably worse (look it up). Slider pitchers cannot and should not ever close for a contending team. Ever. Sliders are impossible to be consistent with, and batters know that...they go up there taking in the ninth of a walk can help them launch a rally that takes down the closer. Cishek can hold 3 run leads just fine, but one run leads? I do not trust him.
4
As a math major and a ex-Yankee employee, you're saying that this team deserved to be -10 under Pythag (full season) because it's defense is below average, the bullpen is weak, and it has pitchers who throw sliders?
:: smiling :: those deficits are traded off against other assets (e.g. Seager, Lee) to create an *averaged* 50-win expectation, right
Or is below-average defense and slider orientation pretty much the anti-optimal way to build a club?
;- )
5
I was trying to put a finger on what I felt was wrong with the offense and I think the lack of smallball totally fits the bill.
The offense doesn't feel in sync because it can't thread rallies together.
We're doing better than last year because the offense has 'extended' by being on base more.
But now the problem is that the team seems to hit out of sequence... GIDP then HR... Solo HR... Can't SF worth beans, etc.
Part of that is definitely randomness, but part of it feels like hitting without a plan.
Well, maybe a plan, but not necessarily planning for the outcome.
Which is odd for a team coached by Edgar.
6
Well done guys!
I would have mentioned our defensive inconsistencies......but they should show up in the run differential and (ergo) the Pythag (which is an imperfect tool, I know). I am willing to bet that we see less and less of Cruz/Smith in the COF spots on the same day.......which means that we likely see less and less of Lind or Smith. I think one of them gets traded. It's easy to say it will be Lind, but his Away #'s are so far below the norm that it is also understandable that you could expect a significan 2nd half bounce. Smith would bring more and B-R has him as a -1.2 defensive guy, but it is hard to see where that is because his range in both left and right are basically league average. Marte is basically fielding JUST like he did last year, and we're not going to Sardinas who has a career 48 OPS+ and has a Tacoma OPS of .575.
Montgomery/Vincent/Nuno/Diaz have all been good to better out of the pen. I think Cishek is 21 for 25 in save opportunites....at 22/25 he would be at an .880 rate....quite acceptable.
Peralta/Guaipe/Rollins/Sampson/Johnson have a combine 57 innings with a FIP about 5.6.....that isn't good. But they've been basically the last guy out and some were emergency guys, anyway. Most of that groups (all butRollins) is gone for one reason or another.
But every team has back of the bullpen guys who are shaky. Texas has 54 wins, best in the league (Pythag is only 47-43, however). They have 80 innings out of Tolleson and Ramos, with a combined FIP of about 6.1. And those guys are still on the 25-man.
Our weirdness is the combination of a bunch of little things....but for the most part, those little things should show up in run differntial. Get thrown out a bunch on the bases and that eventually shows up a runs lost. Take bad routes to fly balls and you get more quickly to your bullpen and runners move up. Those things show up, too.
Maybe the weirdness is in that the M's have been pretty lucky in scoring and preventing runs....and the Pythag is out of whack. But it sure doesn't seem like we've been pretty lucky.
And I do wonder if bad use of the pen (wrong guy, wrong time) has cost us some games....but that is then on Servais....and was the question I ended with.
Something is amiss.....and it isn't the Curse of Bucky Jacobson or that Rickie Weeks is sticking an M's voodoo doll.
We're better than this.....and sometimes it takes 162 games for stuff to even out.
7
I intuitively like Servais, but you're right, part of the problem could be his first-year learning curve as TGWTBS (The Guy Where The Buck Stops). He has a ton of baseball background as a player and coach, but taking the reins as manager-in-fact instead of manager-in-theory is probably not an easy transition. There's been a few times where I thought he was outmanouvered in the chess game.
When you're winning, the manager's mantras sound like wisdom. But when things start falling apart, the same mantras start sounding stale and out of touch. Welcome to the role of manager, Scott.
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Then we get +4 games ABOVE Pythag coming to us, right, in addition to the 41-32 record we'd normally expect? :- )
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My one complaint about Servais is his bullpen management. Seems like a good leader, especially for this group of guys, but his in-game decisions are lacking thus far. Okay, I have 2 complaints... The basestealing needs to stop or be taught better. Martin and Marte are both more than capable base stealers but they need to pick their spots better (or are they being told to go?) A game against KC last weekend comes to mind when the M's had 1st and 3rd with 1 out. Marte decides to test Perez's arm and doesn't stand a chance. All of a sudden we have 3rd base with no outs and the batter in a 2-strike hole. This seems to happen fairly often in some fashion or another. Some of it's unlucky, some of it's just bad baseball.
My main beef with Servais though is his bullpen usage. Since the DiPoto regime took over, they have preached (and mostly practices) saber principles (defensive shifting, lack of bunting, etc.) For some reason the bullpen doesn't use this. Why doesn't Servais use handedness match-ups more? He loves giving a guy a full inning. I understand that for a closer but Vincent doesn't need to pitch the full 7th inning when Nuno is available and there is a lefty coming up with 2 strikes. I don't know what the rationale is with those decisions as they seem to happen at least a few times a week. This idea that each bullpen guy should get his own inning feels very old-fashioned when considering everything else the club is doing. I'm all for giving a guy a full inning if they are dominant (Andrew Miller, Betances, heck even Diaz) but not if they are just a decent reliever facing a bad match-up.
11
I have a friend who lived near Hunter Thompson in Colorado in the late 60's, and his behavior was not unlike that of the Mariners bullpen: you never know what you are going to get.
While I never figured Moe to be addicted to Jimson Weed, just as Mariner bullpens have nearly always gone: you never really know what you are going to get.
Comments in this here thread have the same "maybe it's hope or maybe it's dope" as the late author cited herein, as you never really knew what you were going to get on infrequent visits except you could be pretty sure you would see guns openly displayed in his home.
Now, young guns seem to be needed by the M's, along with their older arsenal, and the second half of the season could be a turnaround as if they can banish misfortune.
I remain thrilled that we have a new regime which owes up with answers rather than apologetic hamburger leftovers, and with a host of them navigating. Whatever happened to Tony Gwynn's brother and his development crew hiding in some stealth project which couldn't get off the ground?
Am I flying to Bovada to grab some of that 40- 1 money?
No, but give me 10 - 1 on a wild card spot (which I know they won't).
We portray and perceived as bikers or gonzo journalists warped by our geographical solitude and way too much coffee far outside the borders of the staid ancient belief system at the top of the sport who have been under attack from stats maggots.
But, most geographical gentry have come to respect the Seahawks, so perhaps things could change.
...and even if I don't trust Cishek any more than the bow and arrow guy (and i'd trust cupid more than that other bow and arrow guy), I won't be surprised if we have a new closer in about two weeks time.
Last year, with this record, I would have found nothing more optimistic than Redi-Whip for dessert at the end of the season.
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