Hey all. Longtime lurker, first time poster. You know the deal: massive respect for the community and level of discussion cultivated on this site. SSI has ruined me for the rest of the baseball blogosphere, to the point where I can hardly read anything else. And LL is good! But they've got nothin' on the grandmasters in this little corner of the coffee shop...
So, my attempt to add to the conversation. I hate to be a contrarian (that's a boldfaced lie, I live to be contrarian). But Doc, your take on the Ms vs stRangers talent level left me with some cognitive dissonance. We watched the same couple recent series, but where you saw two evenly matched teams playing in a 2-pawn luck-based handicap match, I saw a good team get consistantly beaten by a better, more complete team.
To back up my intuition, I present some Fangraphs defensive rankings which I do not fully understand, but I believe paint an effective broad strokes picture of the problem. According to the nerds (I'm a huge nerd, so I can say that), the stRangers rank 1st in baseball in total defense. Meanwhile the Ms come in 25th on the strength of a defense hamstrung by some shockingly slow corner outfielders, the only Japanese player to ever take bad routes, a rangeless 2B, and an inconsistant shortstop. Our defense is held together by duct tape and voodoo, and that's just what we used to patch up King Leo's hamstring.
So, where you see an un-possible BABIP differential, I see Texas exercising its superior defensive ability to choke the life out of the boys in blue in what would otherwise be an even matchup. Of course, I'm sure some BABIP regression on both sides should still be expected, because you can only hope to contain the Mariners' offensive juggernaut, and a .234 BABIP is not gonna withstand the off-field line drives of Nelson Cruz and Dae-Ho. But it's a real advantage they've got, respect is due, and we need to find a different edge to even the odds. What that is, besides the mighty left arm of Zeus, only JeDi knows.
My 2.5 cents. Thoughts?