More Random Notes
You know the drill by now.
1. Adrian Beltre doesn’t suck anymore.
I know the general baseball public hasn’t caught on yet, and because of his contract, he’s likely going to be considered a bust for the rest of his time in Seattle. But for the last couple of months, he’s been the Mariners best player. Here are some breakdowns:
April: .189/.284/.233, 90 at-bats
May: .264/.302/.355, 110 at-bats
June-Current: .287/.354/.539, 230 at-bats
In April, he was the worst player in baseball. In May, he just sucked. Since the beginning of June, he’s been playing at an all-star caliber level. A .900 OPS from a gold glove third baseman who plays half his games in Safeco Field and never takes a day off? That’s a borderline MVP candidate. And that’s what he’s been for the last two and a half months.
He’s not the guy he was in 2004, and he’ll never be that guy again. But since the beginning of June, he’s been the guy we thought we were signing. It’s still a small sample, and we can’t ignore April and May – they did happen, and the potential for them to happen again is still there – but we also can’t ignore that he’s now been Good Adrian for longer than he was Bad Adrian.
2. Chris Snelling apparently stole Bad Adrian’s Mojo.
On the other end of things, we have Doyle. After another 0 for 5 last night, he’s now hitting .218 for the season. But he hasn’t been consistently bad. Look at his montly splits:
May: .297/.371/.333, 48 at-bats
June: .301/.391/.507, 73 at-bats
July: .169/.286/.273, 77 at-bats
August: .000/.045/.000, 21 at-bats
He’s 9 for his last 98 dating back to July 1st. 9 for 98! In his last 64 at-bats, he’s walked twice.
The reports on him are similarly poor. He’s popping balls up, swinging through fastballs, chasing pitches out of the zone, and his mood has soured. At the end of June, he was hitting the ball well and on the verge of a major league callup. Since the calendar turned to July, he’s turned into an automatic out with no discernable approach at the plate.
Clearly, something is wrong. A kid who is this good of a hitter doesn’t go into a slump like this without there being an underlying cause. Almost everyone agrees that its mental, but we just don’t know. Here’s to hoping he snaps out of it soon.
3. The Mariners and Twins have the best bullpens in baseball.
And the average baseball fan has probably never heard of any of these guys. The Twins bullpen is the only one who can give the M’s end-of-game quartet a run for their money, and its made up of Joe Nathan, Juan Rincon, Pat Neshek, Dennys Reyes, and Jessie Crain. The M’s foursome of Putz, Soriano, Lowe, and Sherrill are just as dominant, but throw strikes a little less often. The final four for the Twins bullpen (Nathan, Rincon, Neshek, and Reyes) have a combined FIP of 2.27, while the M’s combined FIP is 2.49.
Either way, if you’re losing to the M’s or Twins after 6 innings, you’re probably done. Both of these teams have built lights-out bullpens that cost them nothing. Even after all the evidence, though, you still see teams throwing good money at big name relievers. It’s amazing.
4. My mother could beat up Willie Bloomquist.
Willie Ballgame has an Isolated Slugging% (SLG-BA) of .032, thanks to his whopping four extra base hits on the season. Among players with at least 100 plate appearances, WFB’s .032 ISO ranks 374th out of 374, unsurprisingly. But how bad is an ISO of .032?
The average national league pitcher has an ISO of .043. Willie Bloomquist has hit for less power this year than the league average hitting pitcher. Yes, he does some things well enough (mainly, steal bases) to keep a roster spot in the major leagues, but the idea that he’s any kind of major league player who deserves regular playing time is a joke.
Fiddle. Catchers call dumb pitches and pitchers try to get guys out with their 3rd best. Why did Meche toss Thomas that meat pitch? He didn’t mean to get it in his zone but did and later thought that a breaking ball was a better selection. Baseball and humans. Please don’t tell me you watch Beltre and don’t yell at him to lay off the low and away! He has big holes but is also physically talented so he can cover…but not always. See April
The park factors, by batter handedness, are published each year in the Bill James Handbook. Going from memory, I believe the 03-05 park factor for RH batting average is 93, and it’s 88 for RH home runs. It’s 110 for LH batting average and 121 for LH home runs. So you’d use those individual factors to translate their stats.
Isn’t this kinda extreme for modern day ballparks? And, if so, do folks really find it that enjoyable?
Isn’t this kinda extreme for modern day ballparks? And, if so, do folks really find it that enjoyable?
Yes. Not me.
Fiddle. Catchers call dumb pitches and pitchers try to get guys out with their 3rd best. Why did Meche toss Thomas that meat pitch? He didn’t mean to get it in his zone but did and later thought that a breaking ball was a better selection. Baseball and humans. Please don’t tell me you watch Beltre and don’t yell at him to lay off the low and away! He has big holes but is also physically talented so he can cover…but not always. See April
My point is not that he’s a good bet to reach his 2004 status….my point is that, even with his streakiness, he still has value enough to the club. You seem to say that it’s much more likely to see an April, and I’m saying that’s not a good enough reason to dispose of him. There are enough poor pitchers and mistakes for him to have value to the team.
There is a big steaming pile of gritty WFB in center again tonight. I guess its platoon mode.
Why not send Jones down and let him get some work in.
Platoon?? They’re both right-handed. This makes no sense.
Nope, I said that he wouldn’t repeat his high water mark because he has big holes in his swing. All players do, Beltre shows that he can hold his own but, as you said, he is streaky. I also said that if he was able to close those holes, he could possibly do it but he has shown no abiity to adjust and close them. I like Beltre but I also think that he is a $12M version of Bell. But that is just me.
re:156
Its the only thing I can figure since its 2 nights in a row without Jones.
He could be getting a rest to work specifically with Pentland.
Maybe he is sick. Maybe Willie hid his bats or gave him a batch of Ex-Lax brownies.
Just speculation.
By the way, who saw the report on the PI-blog that Lowe is out with a bad elbow?
Its mentioned in the game thread. I hope its a short term thing.
Nope, I said that he wouldn’t repeat his high water mark because he has big holes in his swing. All players do, Beltre shows that he can hold his own but, as you said, he is streaky. I also said that if he was able to close those holes, he could possibly do it but he has shown no abiity to adjust and close them. I like Beltre but I also think that he is a $12M version of Bell. But that is just me.
So, we’re arguing about two different things and talking completely past each other. Typical blogosphere….
And we probably also agree on Jones…if you’re gonna bring him up, PLAY HIM.
A new definition of “theory”: completely unsupported speculation. I think it’s seriously loathesome — really, I’m sorry, but while I can think of politer ways to say this, I can’t think of more accurate ways — that people feel free to make steroid implications (and sure, correct me if that’s not what you’re saying here) — based on zero evidence. Players have had one-season home run spikes for a lot longer than steroids have been on the scene. If all you’ve got is a libellous “theory” to explain it, you haven’t got shit.
This is like the squalid cousin of the “he only ever had one good season” crap, but at least that one can at least be refuted by pointing at the numbers, for anyone who’s paying attention. You can still guarantee that both “arguments” will be raised by one or two people in any extended discussion of Beltre.
The Twins bullpen has been sweet. I remember first learning who Juan Rincon was and then that he was a setup man and being shocked. He’s quite good. And his name translated to English is Juan Corner, which is great. That’s a fun game to play if you’re bored, translating names. Jose Mesa is Joe Table. Jose Rosado is Joe Pink. They sound like gangsters.
In 1999 he was getting paid more than Jamie Moyer
ah, yes, I rememer those days. On the days Jamie pitched, you could see Karen Moyer sitting in her seat, twisted up like a pretzel with nerves– something that a decade of bouncing between the minors the majors and unemployment will do for you, I guess … she’s much calmer these days 🙂
“Basically, his [Beltre’s] April is closer to his true talent level than his 2004 is, in my opinion.” Seconded, and amen. Adrian, after a blip in early July, has continued to connect with the pitch for another month. He’s a valuable guy right now. Right now. Let’s check in at the end of the season. . . . Still, it would make it _a lot_ easier to deal him if he—naw, he’s stayin’. And if he hits like this for a couple months a year, he’s not a hole in the lineup.
WFB: The fact that the team has NO other back-up plan in the outfield so that Billie Boomquist keeps getting ABs says everything about the present Ms FO that I dislike.
Doyle: It was said he had ‘a shoulder impingement’ in July, one of the unspecificed reason’s he wasn’t kept on the 25-man. Now, it may or may not be a relevant injury, but I tend to think that if he acquired yet another, entirely new physical problem this would, more than anything, affect his mental state and confidence in a baseball career. Don’t know if that’s it, but there’s nothing that would bring on major depression more than yet another significant injury, to me. And it sure sounds like depression even from the tatters of comments here. I doubt that being sent down has anything much to do with it. Might be non-baseball related, but _in season_? Unless he fell in love and she died, or Mumsy’s got the Big C it’s hard to see what else could hit him so hard as something which threaten’s his continued ability to play. . . . Sounds injury worry precipitated depression, to me. . . . Which sucks. There is life after, mate. But we’re still pulling for you.
Oh, and the idiot decision to bring up Adam Jones really rankles me. Again, this season the Ms FO have severely over-promoted their best buys in what seems like totally a bid by Bavasi to save his job by demonstrating ‘success’ of a kind. That kind of pressure, with no tomorrow for failure, just doesn’t make for good decision making. Tui and Jones have been badly mishandled, and Clement could have used more time in AA coming back from the injury before being pushed up.
. . . I’ll be happy when Billy B.’s gone. He’s done for us what he can, and it’s time to get somebody who can do what he can’t.
I’ll miss Bob Fontaine, though. Here’s hoping that Antonetti (or whomever our next GM is — probably won’t be somebody of that caliber) can find somebody to match Fontaine to run the scouting department. Or maybe that somebody like Logan White is the hire to replace Bavasi.
And btw, for those of you who see a HR spike and immediately think “steroids”: you want to dig up Roger Maris and accuse him of juicing? Would you like to go grab Bob Cerv or Davey Johnson and ask them if they used the cream and the clear? Maybe you could pull Ted Williams’ head out of cold storage and try to get him to tell you what he took. Fact of the matter is (as Jerry Crasnick noted recently in BA), HR spikes and fluke seasons have been a part of the game back to the days when Babe Ruth’s idea of a training regimen was beer and hot dogs, when King Kelly was the best hitter in the majors — heck, probably all the way back to Alexander Cartwright.
All this idiotic steroid speculation reminds me of H. L. Mencken’s observation that “for every problem there is a solution that is simple, easy to understand, and wrong.” It’s an effort to impose simple order on a chaotic system, and as such matches Mencken’s statement perfectly.
Are you sure your ISO is right? I showed .072 which isn’t much different than Suckzuki’s .091. I’m not sure if this stat is entirely telling anyway.
I don’t completely disagree with the idea of Willie not playing every day, but having the weekend plan, I certainly see holes in the game he is quite capable of filling – late innings defensively at second comes to mind. Jose Lopez, while much improves, still gives me a pause. And, until we get a real centerfielder, he’s still better than Jones.