Game 123, Brewers at Mariners
Ariel Miranda vs. Matt Garza, 1:10pm
The M’s closed to within a game of the 2nd wild card by beating the hapless Brewers yesterday, and they go for a sweep today behind Ariel Miranda. I mentioned before that Miranda reminds me of ex-Mariner lefty Roenis Elias, but the parallels are adding up. Elias may have more swing and miss in his game (though neither are ever going to be high K pitchers), but they have two of the *least* consistent release points in the game. With the M’s, Elias was famous for having very different release points for righties and lefties, and then he’d alter it more when facing left-handed bats:
Miranda doesn’t do that, but his release point varies by nearly *two feet* from pitch to pitch. This probably makes some pitching coaches cringe, but if a pitcher can command it, it’d give each of his pitches a very different look. When the M’s acquired him, I noted that he had really odd movement on his fastball, with the high vertical movement that you might get throwing straight over the top, and the high horizontal movement you’d get throwing low 3/4. I don’t think Miranda’s altering his *vertical* release point all that much, but changing his position on the rubber and changing his horizontal release point might give him different angles on his fastball and may make it tougher to hit.
Here’s Miranda’s release points in his last start – note the smear of pitches stretching from right about 0 all the way to 2′.
At least, that’s the theory. It’s too soon to say much, but he hasn’t shown an ability to limit BABIP, walks or hard contact. Given his raw stuff, I’m not sure Miranda will ever be more than a back of the rotation starter (like Elias), but I kind of like that there’s something odd about his game. It’s just kind of strange that the M’s sent Elias away, seemingly as a throw in, and then found someone similar on another team’s scrap heap.
Soooo, Felix. Last night’s game provides the best evidence both that Felix is back to being a top of the rotation starter, and that Felix’s ability to make adjustments is still just about unparalleled. Every time he hits a rough patch, and to be honest, they’re coming more frequently now, he’s able to snap out of it. He’s at an age where it’s not enough to assume it’s regression (although that’s certainly playing a part, too); he’s got to do something differently. In his last few games, he’s actually striking people out – something he wasn’t doing before his injury – and he’s throwing his change a lot more. In addition, the change is moving a bit differently than it did earlier, with a bit less sinker-like run. A good version of Felix makes me much, much more optimistic about this playoff chase.
1: Aoki, LF
2: Smith, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Lind, 1B
7: Iannetta, C
8: Martin, CF
9: Marte, SS
SP: Miranda
Game 121, Brewers at Mariners
Wade LeBlanc vs. Brent Suter, 7:10pm
The M’s welcome the Milwaukee Brewers to town tonight, as Harvard product Brent Suter will make his big league debut at Safeco Field.
Suter’s a lefty the Brewers drafted in the 31st round. He moved somewhat slowly up the ladder for a few seasons, showing decent command, but not showing he was much more than organizational depth. He flashed some potential in High A, but a poor end to the season left his stat line unimpressive, especially considering the Florida State League’s reputation as a pitcher’s haven. He took a step forward in 2014, holding his own in AA, and limiting hits; an increase in his walk rate was concerning, however. In 2015, he put it all together, combining a very low walk rate with poor contact, and it added up to a sub-2 ERA in 20 games in AA. A promotion to AAA went well, and thus Suter began 2016 in AAA with a growing reputation.
Milwaukee’s AAA affiliate is in Colorado Springs, one of the most notorious hitters’ parks in the minors. While the humidor has taken the edge off the scoring levels, much as it did down the road in Denver, it’s still played at nearly 6,000′ of elevation, and that impacts how the ball travels. So while Suter’s overall ERA doesn’t scream “prospect” the fact that he allowed just 5 HRs in 110 2/3 IP is pretty remarkable. He’s allowed just 14 walks in that span, too, while registering just 75 strikeouts. His command’s played well at altitude, and despite a fairly over the top delivery, he’s shown the ability to get ground balls when he needs to. He’d been sharp in late July and early August, but had a clunker in his last start in the one park that may rival Colorado Springs for offense, Albuquerque. He gave up 2 of his 5 HRs on the year on August 13th, yielding 7 runs in 5 IP.
Overall, the skillset and lanky 6’5″ body reminds me a lot of a young Doug Fister. Fister bumped along in the minors for a while, not looking like a prospect at all (his stats in AA in 2007-08 are atrocious) but something clicked in 2009, and he rode an extreme pitch-to-contact style to the major leagues (it helps that the M’s were awful, kind of like the 2016 Brewers). Fister eventually adjusted and turned himself into an extremely valuable hurler, but Suter’s move from underpowered lefty to pinpoint control craftsman looks kind of familiar.
The Brewers are terrible at the moment, but their future is fairly bright, thanks to a series of trades executed by new GM David Stearns. Stearns turned over a quite a bit of the roster in the offseason, and with the recent Jonathan Lucroy deal, he’s kept it up during the season as well. Fully half of their organizational top 10 prospects were added to the org within the past year or so, from the sell-high deal of Carlos Gomez (man did THAT work out well for them), the Will Smith deal with San Francisco and the Lucroy trade with Texas. Stearns and Jerry Dipoto hooked up for a minor trade this off-season, too, the epic Luis Sardinas for Ramon Flores deal that changed the course of two divis…sorry. Sardinas’ has been DFA’d while Flores slotted in as the Brewers starting RF, putting up a line of .205/.294/.261 in 289 PAs.
As bad as that slash line is, it hints at an approach that the Brewers seem to target: their club walk rate of 10.2% ranks second in baseball behind the Cubs. They rank *first* in strikeout rate; often times the way to get undervalued, high-walk players is by accepting some Ks, hence Chris Carter, Jonathan Villar and Kirk Niewenhuis are all fixtures in the Brewers’ line-up. Also of note: they steal a lot of bases. Their 133 swipes also rank first in the game…by 24 over 2nd place Cincinnati. They’re not a great hitting team, and they’re no great shakes in the field, but by drawing some walks and adding value on the basepaths, they’re not the disaster that, say, the Reds and Braves are.
1: O’Malley, LF
2: Gutierrez, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Romero, 1B
7: Iannetta, C
8: Martin, CF
9: Marte, SS
SP: LeBlanc
The M’s made a series of roster moves prior to the game, with OF Stefen Romero heading back up to Seattle, replacing struggling 1B Dae-ho Lee. Hmmm. I’ll say this: Romero’s been white-hot in AAA, and has probably earned some kind of shot. Not sure that Lee’s the guy I’d swap out, but Lee told Ryan Divish that his timing had been off, and that it was affecting his confidence.
Steve Cishek’s back, following his rehab stint, with Joe Wieland moving back to Tacoma to accommodate the erstwhile closer.
Game 120, Mariners at Angels
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Matt Shoemaker, 7:05pm
It’s a splitter battle in Anaheim as two right-handers with excellent split-fingered fastballs and relatively poor uh, regular fastballs face off. Both are known for great control, an ability to miss bats, and home run problems. Iwakuma’s been the better, more consistent, pitcher over his big league tenure, as he’s tended to suppress BABIP and strand runners, meaning his ERA’s been consistently below his still-pretty-decent- FIP. Shoemaker, on the other hand, has under-pitched his peripherals by a bit, as he’s running a career ERA a bit higher than his FIP. A big part of Shoemaker’s seeming inconsistency has been his troubles away from his home park. On the road, he has a career FIP of 4.42 and ERA of 4.91, compared to home marks of 3.06 and 2.79, respectively. It seems like we’ve been wondering what sort of devil magic the Angels cook up at home, but it’s worked for Shoemaker: not only are is HRs suppressed (and as that’s his biggest weakness, that’s a huge factor), but his K-BB% is much better as well. He’s a pitch to contact control arm on the road, but a high-K, low-HR near-ace in Anaheim.
Also of note is that he’s run reverse platoon splits over the years, and they’re freakishly wide this year. I’m not saying his 2016 are his true talent, but this is not a guy you’d automatically put out your left-handed batting line-up against. It’s odd, because he strikes out more righties, but righties seem better able to capitalize on Shoemaker’s mistakes. Righties have a higher HR rate despite hitting fewer fly balls. I can see why managers might not trust what’s essentially a HR/FB oddity, but there may be more to it: righties are hitting Shoemaker’s third pitch, his slider, fairly hard. Even more similarities with Iwakuma!
I feel like I’ve talked about Shoemaker a lot, going all the way back to his big league debut in 2013. I don’t want to say too much more, because even I get tired of my write-ups on AL West pitchers we see twice a month. So let’s talk about this:
As you can see, the M’s playoff odds have improved markedly since late July, rising from a low of around 11% to the current ~40% in a matter of a few weeks. That’s good, and the M’s played well in that stretch, but…holy crap, look at the Astros. There own odds have cratered, falling from over *69%* in late July to 8.5%. They’ve shaved over 60 percentage points from their playoff odds in a matter of less than three weeks. That’s kind of astonishing. They had a four-game winning streak a week ago! Part of this is due to the fact that both Seattle and Texas have been incredibly hot, so that even when Houston won, they couldn’t really gain ground. But the bigger factor has been that nearly every loss they’ve had has been to a wild card rival. They’ve dropped 5 of 6 to Toronto in recent weeks, and they got swept by the Tigers.
Overall, Houston’s a decent hitting club, and their pitching hasn’t been too bad, despite a down year from Dallas Keuchel. There’s no big sequencing issue here, as their baseruns record is almost exactly the same as their real one. Last year’s bullpen collapse hasn’t repeated itself, as their club has a very good WPA. Instead, they’re suffering from some sort of weird meta-sequencing. The distribution of runs matches their record, but the distribution of their losses has sunk them. Clearly, no matter how they got to 61-59, they’d be in the same position today. But their season’s been so bizarre, so streaky, that it’s like they were designed to produce huge spikes in playoff odds.
A big part of *that* has been their inability to coax much value from their vaunted prospects like AJ Reed and Alex Bregman. No one could’ve foreseen Carlos Gomez’s collapse, or Dallas Keuchel’s (really) down year, but they were supposed to have depth to cover over whatever holes developed. Instead, when Tyler White faltered, Reed faltered *worse*. After dominating the minors, Bregman’s taking a while to adjust to big league pitching. A year after getting a huge lift from Carlos Correa, the Astros player development machine has given them some good Joe Musgrove starts and not much else.
Meanwhile, the Athletics not only have to deal with having the worst group of position players in MLB by fWAR, but also the festering conflict with erstwhile star and team leader, Coco Crisp. Crisp’s been hurt, and he hasn’t had a season above (or even near) league average since 2013, so it’s pretty natural that the A’s would scale back his playing time in favor of some young hitters. But Crisp’s got an option that vests if he plays in a certain number of games, and given his PT now, it looks like he’ll fall just short. If there’s one team that really needs to avoid paying out a player option for a declining vet, it’s the A’s; to many, this’ll be a vindication of their trade-early, trade-often philosophy – that trading, say, Josh Reddick before he becomes an albatross is the way to go, even if you have to suffer a Josh Donaldson or two. But the A’s can’t *just* be worried about their 2017 payroll. Given Donaldson and Reddick AND a string of poor seasons, their fans may be weary of rooting for a club whose operations make it virtually impossible to have a favorite player. Moreover, they may make it even less likely that free agents will want to sign with them. Won’t their prospects look at Crisp’s comments when they’re presented with contract extensions?
Anyway, here’s tonight’s line-up:
1: Aoki, LF
2: Smith, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Lind, 1B
7: Zunino, C
8: Martin, CF
9: O’Malley, SS
SP: Iwakuma
The M’s and A’s AAA farm teams meet up today as well, as Taijuan Walker faces off with the A’s top AAA starter, Daniel Mengden. Mengden made 9 lackluster starts in MLB, but has been really tough to hit in AAA.
Other starters include Andrew Moore going up against Birmingham, Ronald Dominguez facing Quad Cities, and Eddie Campbell pitching against San Jose.
Game 119, Mariners at Angels
Cody Martin vs. Tyler Skaggs, 7:05pm
I suppose the bullpen wasn’t going to be unhittable forever. Gonzaga product Cody Martin could really help them out with a strong start.
We talked about Tyler Skaggs recently, but he’s not looking like a great comeback story as much anymore. He tossed scoreless outings in his first two games back from a very long recovery from TJ surgery, but he was hit pretty hard by the M’s, and then demolished in 5 IP against Cleveland the other day.
He’s still showing better velo than he did before his injury, and he’s still got a big breaking curve that’s been his best pitch. They’re not out of control, but he has some normal platoon splits.
Cody Martin made a few starts for Oakland after starting 2015 in the Braves bullpen. As I mentioned when the M’s acquired him, Oakland changed his repertoire substantially. With Atlanta, he had a four seam fastball, a curve and a slider. In Oakland, they ditched the four seam in favor of a cutter, which took the place of both his fastball and slider. That didn’t go terribly well, so the four seam is back now, but he’s keeping the cutter too. That cutter’s an odd one; batters swing at it a ton, and put it in play a ton, but thanks to its sink, most of that contact is on the ground.
1: O’Malley, LF
2: Gutierrez, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Lee, 1B
7: Iannetta, C
8: Martin, CF
9: Marte, SS
SP: Martin
Game 118, Mariners at Angels
Ariel Miranda vs. Jhoulys Chacin, 7:05
The Angels have now dropped 11 in a row, a perfect encapsulation of a season – and window – that’s gotten away from them. Their pitching’s collapsed to the point where Ricky Nolasco and Jhoulys Chacin make sense as stopgaps, their erstwhile SP depth in the minors has been shipped to Atlanta and Minnesota, and their payroll crunch gets more difficult each year.
The team has money and the best player in the game signed to a team-friendly deal, so I’m not writing an obituary for their 2018 season, but I can’t think of the last time it was more fun to be an M’s fan than an Angels fan.
Ariel Miranda’s making his second start for the M’s, and while it’s still way too early to say much about his results, but it’s early enough to say that I like the look of his splitter. He’s thrown all of 16 with the M’s, but the movement looks decent compared to his four seam fastball, and it’s essentially the only pitch that seems to mess with hitters’ timing.
Jhoulys Chacin had lost his spot in the Angels rotation, but with trades and injuries, he’s been pressed back into duty. He had a couple of nice starts when he first joined the Angels, including a quality start in Seattle that was his first in an Angels uniform. A disastrous June/early July cost him his spot, and his return to the rotation wasn’t auspicious: he yielded 7 runs in just 1 1/3 IP.
1: Aoki, LF
2: Smith, DH
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, RF
5: Seager, 3B
6: Lind, 1B
7: Zunino, C
8: Martin, CF
9: Marte, SS
Game 117, Mariners at Angels
Felix Hernandez vs. Ricky Nolasco, 7:05pm
A splendid Felix Day to you all!
Tonight, the M’s face off with ex-Twins hurler Ricky Nolasco, traded to Anaheim in something of an odd deadline deal that sent Hector Santiago to Minnesota. We’ve talked a lot on this blog about pitchers that for whatever reason consistently “beat” their fielding-independent stats. Chris Young had a consistently low HR/FB ratio (until this year), and knuckleballers often post very low BABIPs, and some high-K pitchers have the ability to strand more runners. In Nolasco, we’ve got a textbook example of the *opposite* phenomenon – a guy whose FIP makes him look decent, worth extending a 4-year, $49 million deal to, as the Twins did, but has posted just one above-average (2 WAR) season in a fairly lengthy career.
By Fangraphs’ FIP-based WAR, Nolasco’s been worth nearly 23 WAR over his career, which is more than respectable. His career average FIP is 3.86, and paired with decent durability (he’s been hurt a bit more recently), that drives some real value. But his ERA is 4.59, and it’s been well over 5 for his last 300IP over three seasons. That pushes his fielding DEpendent WAR under 10, a bit more in line with what you’d expect from a pitcher who’s allowed so many actual runs. Part of his problem is a stubbornly high BABIP, but Nolasco compounds it by failing to strand runners. Yes, I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s worth reiterating after the Angels not only took on the end of Nolasco’s deal, but also sent a so-so prospect to the Twins. Sure, sure, they got back injured-but-formerly-highly-regarded Alex Meyer, but fundamentally, the Angels took on salary presumably because they saw this as a decent buy-low guy. By FIP, it’s a decent bargain – it’s a roll of the dice, but you could get a bit of value and not have to burn service time on your actual prospects while your window of contention is closed. But how many innings is enough to confirm to us that Nolasco simply isn’t as good as that perfectly solid FIP?
1: Aoki, LF
2: Smith, DH
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, RF
5: Seager, 3B
6: Lind, 1B
7: Zunino, C
8: Martin, CF
9: Marte, SS
SP: King Felix.
The M’s made a minor trade today, sending UTIL/SS Luis Sardinas to San Diego for a PTBNL or cash considerations. Sardinas was coming off a terrible year at the plate in 2015, and despite a very good spring training, had another awful year at the plate this year. Sardinas just can’t hit – after a .457 OPS last year, he “regressed” to .467 this year.
Most teams run instructional league teams where guys who’ve been hurt or need extra work can play games but without worrying about their stats. The M’s made the somewhat surprising move of not fielding a team this fall – they’re opting to send more guys to the Caribbean winter leagues, but also they want their players to work on things *outside* of game action. It’s easy to see this as a cynical move to save money, but as Andy McKay’s said in that BA article, they want to replicate what they see as the success of that “hitting summit” they held last winter – a workshop on reworking hitting mechanics outside of games. Given their success this season, it’s hard to quibble with that.
Game 116, Mariners at Athletics
Wade LeBlanc vs. Zachary Neal, 1:05pm
After last night’s win, the M’s are 7 games over .500 and 2 games behind Boston for the 2nd AL wild card. The Tigers’ shutout of Texas keeps them ahead of the M’s for now. Despite that loss for the Rangers, they’ve still got a healthy lead in the AL West, thanks both to the distance they’d put between themselves and Seattle and Houston’s 2nd half struggles. It’s been a pretty remarkable run in the West, as this playoff odds graph shows:
After defeating one A’s starter featuring a low-spin sinker, the M’s face another one today in Zach Neal. He’s not on the Pitch FX leaderboard for some reason, but if he *was*, the vertical movement on his sinker would be the lowest of any starter in the game, at just under 1.8″. That’s almost no backspin, and while Neal’s delivery is low 3/4, it’s not quite at Justin Masterson levels. That exceptional movement figures like it’d make him somewhat tough to hit, or at least make him an extreme grounder guy, but with below average velocity and low-spin breaking balls, that’s not really what we see. Clearly, he’s a ground ball pitcher, but he doesn’t have Zach Britton’s velocity or bite, and thus Neal’s K rate is far below league average. His GB rate in the mid 50s is well above average, it’s nowhere near Britton’s or some of the truly dominant grounder guys.
He also throws a (sinking) four-seamer, a change-up at around 83 (that sinks *less* than his sinker), and his best pitch, a slider at 86. He’s induced a fair number of whiffs with that slider, especially for a guy with a K/9 3.38 and an overall K% under 10%. So is this just a poor man’s Aaron Cook? Perhaps not. Neal has very good control, and he’s walked all of one batter in his 29 1/3 IP for Oakland. That’s a trait he showed in the minors as well, walking 8 in 61+ IP in AAA this year.
With a profile like this, you’d figure Neal to have serious trouble with left-handed bats, and that’s exactly what we’ve seen. Lefties are slugging .536 off of him, while righties are at .397. He’s given up 5 dingers thus far, 4 of them to lefties. This is something that I think needs further research, and given the relative rarity of HRs, it’s going to be tough to make any robust conclusions, but: a lot of sinkerballers DON’T show the kind of HR prevention that teams might expect. When things go as they’re supposed to, even a mediocre sinker guy can get grounders, but their mistakes may not be hard-hit grounders and line-drives, they’re HRs. For marginal velo and “stuff” guys, it kind of makes sense that this problem would show up only in the minors – their stuff may be good enough to get mishits in the minors, but not in the majors. But we’ve seen this even from established ground ball guys this year: Dallas Keuchel’s HR/9 is over 1 this year, and then there’s Sonny Gray, who’s given up 18 dingers despite a GB% over 54%. So why are some guys – Jeremy Jeffress, Sam Dyson, Brad Ziegler, Zach Britton – able to limit HRs consistently (though with their reliever workloads, we may not even be able to say that with confidence) while others struggle? Velocity is probably involved, but that doesn’t explain Ziegler. Is it movement, arm slot, command, or a combination? Whatever it is, let’s hope Neal continues to search for it in vain today.
1: Aoki, LF
2: Smith, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Lind, 1B
7: Martin, CF
8: Zunino, C
9: O’Malley, SS
SP: LeBlanc
Tacoma beat Memphis 6-5, with the R’s bullpen doing some solid work behind Taijuan Walker. Walker was knocked out in the 5th, giving up 4 runs in 4 1/3 IP, but one of those runs scored when Pat Venditte walked in an inherited runner. Venditte was great after that, though, tossing 2 scoreless for the win. Tacoma’s Zach Lee starts today in Memphis.
Jackson beat Biloxi 5-3 thanks to a big 3R HR from Tyler O’Neill, who now leads the Southern League in all three triple crown categories. Last week’s SL pitcher of the week, Ryan Yarbrough, starts for the Generals today.
Bakersfield mounted an unbelievable comeback in yesterday’s 14-13, 11 inning win against Lake Elsinore. Trailing by 8 going into the 8th, the Blaze scored 4 to make it 12-8, and then Justin Seager hit a game-tying grand slam in the 9th, sending the game to extras. After the Storm took a lead, Jay Baum’s 2-run single walked it off for the Blaze. Seager hit 2 HR and knocked in *7* on the day. Anthony Misiewicz starts for Bakersfield today.
Ronald Dominguez and Clinton were hard-luck losers yesterday, as Burlington won 1-0. Dominguez pitched a complete game in the loss, striking out 9 and walking 0 in 8 IP. Kevin Gadea starts today’s game for the Lumberkings.
Everett lost to Salem-Keizer 11-7, despite a grand slam from Nick Zammarelli. 4th rounder Thomas Burrows continues to pitch well for the AquaSox, striking out 29 in his first 17 1/3 professional innings. Brandon Miller starts today’s game.
Game 115, Mariners at Athletics
Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Kendall Graveman, 6:05pm
I’m at a concert today, but the resurgent Iwakuma takes on sinkerballer Kendall Graveman tonight. The M’s try and start another winning streak, and their odds go up dramatically when you go from Joe Wieland to Kuma.
1: Aoki, LF
2: Smith, Raf
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Seager, 3B
6: Lind, 1B
7: Martin, CF
8: Iannetta, C
9: Marte, SS
Tigers and Rangers are scoreless at the moment; Astros trail the Jays.
Game 114, Mariners at Athletics
Joe Wieland vs. Sean Manaea, 7:05pm
The red-hot M’s take on the Athletics in a series in Oakland, with Joe Wieland making his debut in an M’s uniform. He’ll be facing Sean Manaea, the lefty prospect who’s numbers look a bit better than they did early on, but is still having something of a rough go in his first MLB season.
Ariel Miranda was scheduled to start this one, but now it’s Joe Wieland’s turn to take the hill. Wieland was just selected from Tacoma, and to make room on the 40-man, the M’s have DFA’d Daniel Robertson. To make room on the active roster, the M’s sent down Jarrett Grube, who’d been in the bullpen as emergency depth. Wieland’s a righty who’d been a Ranger prospect, but made his MLB debut several years ago with San Diego. Though he made a handful of (forgettable) appearances with the Dodgers last year, he was signed on a minor league deal in the offseason. As Tacoma’s opening day starter, I think the M’s thought he might be some helpful rotation depth, but he got off to a brutal start in the PCL: after his first 5 starts, his ERA stood at 17.31. He’s been much better since, but his season numbers are still a bit ugly thanks to an April in which he gave up 36 hits and 31 runs in all of 13 innings pitched. As for his repertoire, the best way to describe it is that he’s a starting version of Blake Parker – he’s got a straight, kind-of-rising four-seamer, a big curve ball, and then a change-up. He used to throw a slider, but hasn’t for some time now. Wieland throws around 91-92.
Manaea’s whippy, lower 3/4 delivery produces a lot of armside run. His four-seamer has more than 2 standard deviations more run than average; it’s a bit like Carson Smith’s sinker, only from the left side and obviously nowhere near as effective. Manaea’s secondaries are a slider (this one more clearly behind Smith’s big breaking slider) and the makings of a pretty good looking change-up. Despite a lot less movement, Manaea’s slider has been pretty effective, and even the change’s results look solid, especially given that he’s generally throwing it to right-handed bats. But his fastball is just getting squared up far too much, and that’s something the A’s are going to need to work on this offseason. Righties are destroying him, while his arm angle and slider allow him to dominate lefties. Righties are slugging nearly .600 on his fastball, and while that should regress, he’s clearly got to figure out how to keep his fastball from breaking right into righties’ barrels. Improved command may help, but I wonder if he may need a mechanical tweak of some sort.
1: O’Malley, LF
2: Gutierrez, RF
3: Cano, 2B
4: Cruz, DH
5: Lee, 1B
6: Seager, 3B
7: Zunino, C
8: Martin, CF
9: Marte, SS
SP: Wieland
The Tigers are facing Yu Darvish and the Rangers in Arlington, for those wanting to do a bit of scoreboard watching.
It’s Been Something, Alex Rodriguez
It’s essentially always been this way when we talk about Alex Rodriguez. This weird, delicate balance not so much between love and hate, but from a healthy appreciation of his talent and the need to give extremely HOT TAKES about his personality. A-Rod was drafted #1 overall and had the #1 overall agent in baseball, Scott Boras, representing him. What followed fairly predictably was a lot of what we’d come to know and associate with Boras, but when Rodriguez held out, and when Boras had him enroll at the University of Miami to demonstrate he wasn’t bluffing, a lot of anger and a lot of histrionics got directed at 18-year old A-Rod.
In June of 1993, the M’s had enjoyed all of one winning season, and had never come close to the playoffs. They’d hired Lou Piniella, had the game’s most famous and recognizable player, a freak of nature as their best pitcher, so they weren’t the complete joke their cumulative record made them out to be, but they had the #1 overall pick for a reason. And when Rodriguez threatened to hold out for more money instead of leap at the Mariners’ early offers, well, people suddenly felt pretty aggrieved about this cocky kid’s lack of gratitude, his focus on money and not improvement, his insincerity. When we first met him, before he’d ever suited up in A-ball, we were doing it, and he was reacting to it by staying preternaturally calm, aloof almost… which just made people madder.
That seems like a normal indictment of a certain kind of sports fan, but I’d like to think that we collectively learned a bit from it. Sure, we saw it again with JD Drew a few years later, but to my knowledge, no one absolutely blasted Brady Aiken for not signing with Houston – most blamed *Houston*. When Andrew Miller or Josh Harrison or anyone else threatens to go to college unless they get some sky-high bonus, there’s some chirping of course, but it started to get so routine that the discussion moved on to what the league was going to do, and once the league did something, how draft strategy would adapt.
When he signed that breathtaking 10 year deal with Texas, he played against the M’s for the first time early in 2001. I remember watching it and thinking that it was the loudest crowd I’d ever heard at Safeco, and that it was threatening Kingdome noise levels. The M’s were a year removed from their beloved icon essentially forcing a trade and leaving. Griffey’s departure stung, and he’d had some harsh words for the organization both before and immediately after the trade to Cincinnati. Of course, when he returned with the Reds, the M’s fans gave him a standing ovation. As much as we try to complicate the story of Griffey, Seattle’s Hero, the fans kept simplifying it again: we love him, and count ourselves fortunate that we got to watch him grow into a superstar. With A-Rod – the A-Rod who’d accumulated 35-38 WAR (depending on what system you use) in his time in Seattle – all anyone could think about was betrayal. People screamed at him, threw monopoly money at him, acted like petulant children in front of their actual children, and just showered the man in hate. Alex Rodriguez’s response was to deny that it had happened at all, telling reporters, “I don’t think it was animosity…I thought they were…supporting their team.”
Playing on a division rival, he’d have to go through that gauntlet several times each season, with the M’s winning most games and Texas increasingly falling behind. Fans loved it: he’d left for money, and all of these OTHER guys, guys who never thought about money for a *second* they were so team-oriented, conquered all they surveyed. The 2001 M’s won 116 games, so there was going to by some mythmaking about them regardless, but at the time we really defined them against A-Rod. You can choose to follow money, or you can choose to win 116 games behind Paul Abbott, Mike Cameron, Edgar and Jamie Moyer and all of those nice guys.
The PED scandals hurt his legacy, there’s no question, but my point is that they were just extra ammunition. He was already guilty of a multitude of sins, so of *course* it was different than, say, Bret Boone or Ken Caminiti or even Roger Clemens. With Biogenesis, the same pattern repeated itself, with MLB and the Commissioner’s office losing its collective mind in the pursuit of A-Rod. By literally buying documents to try to pin down A-Rod’s guilt, the Office scuppered an investigation by an actual government body. This was the bureaucratic of M’s fans’ 10-minutes Hate in April of 2001, and it lasted the best part of a year.
Whether it was his move to New York and relationship with sainted captain Derek Jeter, his struggles in (certain) clutch situations or what, fans and the league itself have had an enormously strange relationship with what was the game’s best player, and one of the most dominant hitters – especially shortstops – in baseball history. Being a fan means looking past so much, from actual, physical violence to personality or health foibles that sap a player’s ability to contribute. This blog didn’t hate Chris Snelling because he got hurt. Yankees fans didn’t hate (and shouldn’t) when CC Sabathia went to rehab before the playoffs. We didn’t hate any number of players who subsumed their identity into the game (we loved it in Lenny Dykstra), and we didn’t hate John Halama when he said he didn’t much care for baseball. What was it that we all found so insufferable about Alex Rodriguez? Why couldn’t three different orgs just cheer for the laundry, alreaedy?
This Jeb Lund piece at RS is the best thing I’ve seen on this strange phenomenon, and why we perceived him as such an alien. I’d still like to learn more about why we just couldn’t stomach his need to be loved (as opposed to, I don’t know, the vast majority of sports and entertainment personalities), or his anodyne public statements about anything and everything (as opposed to an even vaster majority of sports and entertainment personalities). I think it’s been said many times, but the only thing I can think of is that he tapped into a hitherto undiscovered sports version of the uncanny valley – the feeling of revulsion or discomfort at seeing a really, really good simulacrum of a human being, whether a robot or computer-generated image. It’s a famous phenomenon, but I’m still not 100% convinced it actually exists, or at least, that it exists for most people in a clearly definable set of circumstances. But A-Rod… A-Rod makes me think we’ve found something equivalent.
To know for sure, of course, we’d have to replicate this, and that’s going to be tough. Mike Trout is transcendent, but he’s signed to a long-term, team-friendly contract, and even as anodyne as his every utterance is, we latch onto every glimpse of a clear personality willingly, almost with relief: he loves the weather! How funny! How not-like-A-Rod, somehow! Griffey had so many similarities, he’d seem like a perfect test case, but no, fan reaction literally couldn’t have been more different. Barry Bonds is the closest thing to A-Rod, in that people could not stop offering HOT TAKES, but even at the height of his legal troubles, he was absolutely beloved by his home fans. If everyone else hated him, at least Giants’ fans had his back. Why was A-Rod’s support always so conditional and fleeting (it’s not like people never cheered for him, after all)? I still don’t really know, and I’d love to know what you think.
A part of the reason I find this all so strange is that I hold on to this one memory of him, and how normal he seemed to be, at least for a time. In 1995, A-Rod’s second pro season was split between Seattle and the Tacoma Rainiers. He was 19 and would hit his first MLB HR that year. I was 18, and working as a dishwasher at a public golf course in Tacoma, and A-Rod and some teammates would occasionally come play on off-days. We all knew his talent, and the restaurant staff – many of whom were his parents’ age – asked him to sign something, and he obliged them all. I held back and didn’t ask, because I couldn’t get used to the fact that a baseball player ~my age caused this kind of excitement. He and his group approached the first tee, and many of us stopped to watch. He unleashed what would become a familiar swing, and effortlessly sent the ball flying 300 yards, albeit about 100 yards out of bounds. He kind of laughed, and one of his teammates started ribbing him about it, and he sat back and waited for someone else to tee up. He was composed, but otherwise completely familiar and relatable. I’d like to think that somewhere that version of him’s still around – maybe it’s relegated to clubhouses, or maybe it really only comes out when he’s doing something or talking about something OTHER than baseball. That you could tease him about his odd end to his career, or bust his chops about anything from his shifting WBC allegiances to his move to DH and, if you were in just the right spot, you’d see a genuine, human, reaction. Maybe this is the problem, though: that we want to relate to star players like we’re friends, when in reality there’s simply nothing to say. Maybe A-Rod made that a little bit too clear.
If this really is the end of A-Rod’s career, then thank you, Alex. You were something, all right.