Game 133, Angels at Mariners
Lackey vs Woods, 7:05
Jake Woods has given up just 1 run in the 10 2/3 innings he’s pitched since moving into the rotation. The lesson the Mariners should be learning from this is that replacement level pitchers are literally everywhere, it really isn’t that hard to find a guy who can get major leaugue hitters out with smoke and mirrors for a little while, and there is no reason to pay big money to end-of-rotation starters just because they’re proven to only kinda sorta suck.
The lesson the Mariners are learning from this is, instead, that Jake Woods is a pretty good pitcher. So, without being rude to Woods, I hope he gets pounded tonight, and the Mariners win 10-9. Because we really don’t need this organization failing to get us a real major league pitcher this offseason because they were fooled by the likes of Jake Woods.
Ultimate 2006 Mariner Line-Up, Take 2.
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that should read: strong silence “does not equal” David J. Corcoran. That lays to rest the accusation made earlier tonight.
In case anyone is still reading – just got back from the game.
1) Looked fair to me 3rd base/row 10. But I’m half blind so whatever. But no one in my section could figure out what they were arguing about.
2) Woods liked kind of scary in person. Like we were sort of holding our breath most of the time he was pitching and it’s amazing he didn’t give up more runs.
3) I bought a “Doyle” jersey. The people at the team store went nuts because apparently they are (well, 3 of them) huge Doyle fans and that was the first one anyone had ordered while they were working. None of them knew why he is called Doyle.
4) It’s way too big. Oh well.
5) It was actually a fun, good game to watch in spite of itself. What a difference a real lineup makes.
6) Ichiro was born to play CF.
7) Good night.
8) Oops, P.S. Does anyone know Hargrove’s rationale for Joel intentionally walking Adam Kennedy? A really bad match-up or something? Worse than everyone else’s match-up against Joel? Any insight would satisfy my mild curiosity.
9) Good night for real.
I would just like to say that for all the crap I gave the WHIP guys earlier in this thread, I am so damn glad I’m not an Angel fan hanging out on THAT blog.
Re: 203, I cain’t but hardly buhleeve that anyone not in politics or guvmint could expend so many words making such a damnfool of themselves as that poster.
I would just like to say that for all the crap I gave the WHIP guys earlier in this thread, I am so damn glad I’m not an Angel fan hanging out on THAT blog.
Amazing.
Oh yeah, all these stats are too general. We need to know who’s gonna hit a home run today, off of whom, and then whether he’ll trip in glee rounding first base.
Only then do all these stats hold any meaning. I mean, come on, anyone could predict such general things, right? No, I don’t see any other methods of doing so, but they must exist. It would be pretty damn sad if they didn’t, if it’s such an easy general thing to hide behind!
Thanks for sharing that, btw. 🙂
I’d like to get that lad into a decent game of chance sometime.
I would just like to say that for all the crap I gave the WHIP guys
Look there were no “WHIP guys” earlier in the thread, that was your invention. Look you’re a good poster, you’re smart, and if I’m not mistaken you wrote an F.A.Q.-worthy post on pitcher evaluation. However, you were looking to lecture someone where no lecture in needed. No one was defending WHIP as a good tool for pitcher evaluation– I sure wasn’t– you made it all up. Read what people actually type next time.
Dave, why would you wish for Woods to fail just to push your agenda? Aren’t we all fans that want our team to win? Who cares if our lineup is 9 WFBs and our rotation is 5 Baeks’ as long as we win. Shame on you for wishing ill on the team.
Does Doyle now share the record for foul balls called fair in a single game with two?
Dave, why would you wish for Woods to fail just to push your agenda? Aren’t we all fans that want our team to win? Who cares if our lineup is 9 WFBs and our rotation is 5 Baeks’ as long as we win. Shame on you for wishing ill on the team.
I have to agree with Dave. Who cares if we put a bunch of meaningless wins together at the end of a lost season? That’s not what baseball is about. Baseball, and every other sport I might add, is about winning the WHOLE THING. Not the right to call ourselves “third losers” or “not half bad”.
I would rather that Mariner management see that part of their product is faulty and suffer the losses – as I(we) have done for the past 4 years – in order to fix it in the future than to continue to throw good money after bad.
You JeffS can keep your sub-.500 team if you want, but I want the best Mariners team that we can field. If that means getting shelled in order to do it, then I’m all for it.
What irked the hell out of me was that we could so easily have scored 4 or 5 runs in the first 3-4 innings if this team wasn’t such a bunch of idiot hackers. Yuni gets a leadoff triple and then Ichiro swings on a 3-1 count, then Grover stupidly gives away an out by putting the squeeze on … Lackey couldn’t throw a strike to save his life last night and instead of being patient and exploiting that, the Ms gave the game away by hacking at the plate and being complete assclowns on the basepaths.
It’s scary to think of how good the Ultimate Ms Lineup could be if they actually exercised some patience at the plate. Of all the lessons this team’s management thinks they learned from the 2001 team, taking pitches isn’t one.
speaking of Felix as a #2, any chance he stays in AZ this offseason so he work out. If he stays in AZ and works out he could be a legit Ace, which would be nice to go with a FA ace.
203 – I know an engineer who says he “doesn’t believe in statistics” because they “can’t tell you what’s going to happen”.
Well what can, praytell?
Statistics do tell you what’s likely to happen, and the larger the sample size the greater the confidence with which the stats speak.
For example, the stats say that pitchers give up homeruns at a specific rate per flyball allowed. Over a span of several seasons, the stats claim with considerable confidence that any given pitcher will approximate that HR/FB rate.
Guys who write blogs like that one (or that engineer I know) don’t understand sample size.
That’s not what baseball is about for me. If winning the WHOLE THING was what baseball was about for me, I would be very unhappy every year for the last 30. (And since I’m not employed by the M’s, I don’t call myself anything — let alone “third losers” — when the team I happen to follow fails to win). Now, I agree with you: I want to see the team get better (and I have no problem with them tearing down now to win later — it can’t be worse than those M’s teams in the 80s, right?) Yes, I want to see them be smarter with their resources than the other teams (I really wouldn’t care that the A’s were regularly winning pennants if they were doing it on the same budget, but having them outperform on less money is infuriating). And I don’t want them to be stupid, either in roster construction or in-game tactics. But there are 30 teams in MLB, and all but 5 or 6 of them have a legit shot at the WS; yet only two play in it every year and only one wins the WHOLE THING. Even the Yankees, with twice the budget, can’t ensure that: their fans expect to win the WHOLE THING every year and how well has that worked out for them lately? It’s a bit crazy to pin my entire enjoyment of the game on winning the WHOLE THING. I’ll take a well-fought game like this night’s, even when it ends in a loss, over a bunch of blowout wins. Next year I’m going to remember Felix’s shutout, and Snelling’s HRs, and Ichiro’s catches, and Beltre’s throws, and Betancourt’s wizardry; but I’m not going to remember whether those games were wins or losses, or what the final scores were. I want to follow a winning team, of course, and I want them to be in the pennant hunt every year because it makes September exciting. And naturally that means trying to win it all every year. Trying. But not matter how good the team ever gets, they’re not going to win the WHOLE THING every year and if I had some kind of expectation they would, well, as an M’s fan I would’ve killed myself a long time ago.
I wonder if that engineer you know realizes the values he looks up for materials (strengths, etc) are essentially statistical results that only enable him to predict outcomes with certainty because they (or he) builds in enough of a safety factor to take him out of the nonlinear domain where chance dominates. Pressure, for that matter, is purely a statistical property and has certainty only because of the large sample sizes.
I wonder what that Halo’s blogger would think if he was playing blackjack with a card counter? Would he think they were equally likely to win out over the course of the evening because the guy couldn’t predict the exact card that would be dealt next? For that matter, would he schedule an outdoor party in Seattle in November because the meteorologists can’t predict with any certainty that it will rain on a particular weekend? But maybe that’s his problem: he lives in southern California where the climate doesn’t give annual lessons in regression to the mean.
If I was a betting man, I’d be happy to put next month’s rent down on Jered Weaver’s career (or even the next couple of years), assuming he maintains that FB%/GB%. Especially since it looks like the league just needs a couple of looks at the guy to get past his deceptive delivery.
203 – I know an engineer who says he “doesn’t believe in statistics†because they “can’t tell you what’s going to happenâ€.
I know I’m going to insult a few people on this group, but that is just like an engineer to say that.
Past performance does not guarantee future results, obviously, but the correct and judicious use of stats can give you a decent forecast for what’s coming.
“Doyle” jerseys on sale at the M’s store at Safeco? “Doyle” stat scrolls during the TV broadcast? This blog rates something special in the fan universe – it has real influence on a real organization. Absolutely freaking amazing.
216 – that is just like an engineer to say that
Not a good engineer.
Dave, why would you wish for Woods to fail just to push your agenda? Aren’t we all fans that want our team to win? Who cares if our lineup is 9 WFBs and our rotation is 5 Baeks’ as long as we win. Shame on you for wishing ill on the team.
Joser, what I was inferring is that the aim every year is, if not to win the whole thing, then to get closer to winning it. All the while putting an entertaining product on the field.
Of course you can’t win it every year. But you can manage the team smart enough to compete every year. Look at the A’s and the Braves.
203: That logic is borderline retarded (not by you, but by that Halo’s Heaven author). That’s like asking a guy who is a champion of ERA to predict when a pitcher will give up an earned run.
211
Excellent post imho. A lot of people were so focused on Woods/Piniero (me included), that there was enough talk about the MANY MANY blown chances through impatient hitting and stupid baserunning.
Sad thing is, this is HOW MANY times we’ve shot ourselves in the foot with this sort of garbage?
221- I went over there, to take a look.
Can you say Bitter?
222 – I thought both pitchers were getting rocked often and early … usually in that kind of game the team that’s more patient and works the count to get more baserunners wins. In the Ms case I just don’t know what they were thinking at the plate and on the paths … their aggressiveness was their undoing.
I kept thinking of the old axiom “play for one run and you’ll only score one run.” While the polite Safeco crowd and the announcers were applauding the suicide squeeze in the 3rd I was fuming … it was just so dumb to be giving up outs against a pathetic defensive outfield and a pitcher that clearly was struggling early.
But you’re right, that’s the M’s for you. More than capable of beating themselves at a moment’s notice.
Not a good engineer.
Yeah, given.
I once heard an engineer on a local talk show advocate his plan to fix Seattle traffic — making Aurora a 14-lane freeway from downtown to the county line, build stack interchanges at major junctions (85th, 105th, 145th), and generally demolish everything to build lots of concrete.
He saw a problem (not enough throughput) and solved it (greatly increasing throughput), and damn everything else around it because that’s not part of the problem (thousands and thousands of homes and businesses).
And, sometimes, anti-statheads think the same way.
Look there were no “WHIP guys†earlier in the thread, that was your invention.
Was not. You added up his walks (W) and his hits (H), divided it by his innings pitched (IP), and claimed that was why he was having a bad game (WHIP = 2). Later down, if you noticed, I said that it wasn’t that I didn’t agree that Woods had a bad game and allowed too many baserunnrs. But just pointing to this game, his baserunners allowed, and ignoring everything before and everything that will happen after this in favor of saying “well allow 2 baserunners per inning and YEAH…” isn’t practical analysis.
Ulysses S. Grant would be a good analogy for this. Grant’s strategies were often simply ones of attrition. “I have more men then you, and I’m going to win.” For the early part of his career, losing two men every minute of the battle was attrotious and he lost. Later on, he still lost two men every minute, but was winning. Looking at his battles, someone could say that he lost two men per minute and say “well, that would do it right there.” But it would ignore the bigger picture that Grant himself was simply a complete moron of a tactician.
Look you’re a good poster, you’re smart, and if I’m not mistaken you wrote an F.A.Q.-worthy post on pitcher evaluation.
I wrote a small post, yeah. Dave wrote a better one. I was “threatening” to link that, not mine.
However, you were looking to lecture someone where no lecture in needed. No one was defending WHIP as a good tool for pitcher evaluation– I sure wasn’t– you made it all up. Read what people actually type next time.
Don’t use it then. Others here in this thread used different methods then “well if you allow 2 runners per inning…”. It just screamed lazy; taking the easiest and most superficial “reason” and pointing it out as if it weren’t obvious.
But enough of this. Game over and streak over.
dw – I don’t blame the engineer on that one – someone just asked him the wrong question.
My brother is a process engineer for a big multinational company. He insists that every big project can only do two of the following three things:
1. Finish on schedule
2. Finish on budget
3. Build something that works.
Usually, one of the first two is sacrificed. Road construction, however, typically sacrifices the third.