Seattle: 62-59
Cleveland: 52-68
| MARINERS | INDIANS |
EDGE | |
| HITTING (wOBA) |
-74.9 (27th) |
51.3 (5th) |
CLE |
| FIELDING (UZR) |
52.1 (2nd) |
-23.0 (26th) |
SEA |
| ROTATION (pRAA) |
-19.1 (23rd) |
-7.3 (17th) | CLE |
| BULLPEN (pRAA) |
-28.8 (30th) | -21.0 (27th) | CLE |
| OVERALL(RAA) |
-70.7 | 0.0 | Cleveland |
What are the odds that roughly 120 games into the season you would find a team that came to exactly average? Incredible.
The previous Cleveland series chopped a leg out from under us. I, for one, would like to similarly embarrass them in their podunk city. A couple lefties in the rotation for Cleveland means more of Mike Sweeney and the likely introduction of Bill Hall into the lineup. Third base seems like a natural place for him to play, but do not be surprised if he gets some time in left as well given our options there, Ryan Langerhans and Michael Saunders, are both left-handed.
I would prefer to get Langerhans some more playing time if sitting Saunders against lefties is the short term plan, but I feel it's one of those times the team will do the opposite. And frankly, it's not that big of a deal. One could argue that the team has a pretty solid idea of what Langerhans brings to the table already and so getting further PAs for Jack Hannahan is more important as the team still has to figure out third base for 2010. To which I reply, yes, but shut up, I love Langerhans. I also love Hannahan though, so I will just shut up now.
Game 1: Lucas French* vs. David Huff*
Game 2: Doug Fister vs. Aaron Laffey*
Game 3: Felix Hernandez vs. Fausto Carmona
David Huff's swinging strike rate is still down, he's not getting strikeouts and he does little job of generating ground balls. If that sounds like a below average pitcher, or Luke French incidentally, then yes! It is.
Aaron Laffey makes David Huff look like Rich Harden. Among starters with at least 1,000 pitches tossed this season, Aaron Laffey has the third worst missed bat rate in the Majors ahead only of John Lannan and Anthony Swarzak. He does get ground balls, but he does not pound the strike zone and has 32 walks and 32 strikeouts in 65 innings pitched so far.
Fausto Carmona continues his Magellanic voyage to re-find the strike zone. Only 45% of pitches he throws are inside it and he has accumulated 53 walks in 82.2 innings this year, a super high number not balanced by his merely average swinging strike rate and pedestrian strikeout totals (46).
The lesson for this weekend? Take pitches! And aim low, Laffey and Carmona are big time groundball pitchers.
0 recs | 67 comments
Let's get right to it.
Bill Hall is starting in LF today:
RF Ichiro
CF Franklin Gutierrez
2B Jose Lopez
DH Mike Sweeney
1B Russell Branyan
LF Bill Hall
3B Jack Hannahan
C Rob Johnson
SS Josh Wilson
ThundaPC - August 21, 2009
That lineup enjoys mayonnaise and the soulful sounds of Michael McDonald.
waldo rojas - August 21, 2009
Bill Hall begs to differ.
abender20 - August 21, 2009
And Ichiro.
Eyebrows - August 21, 2009
Franklin Gutierrez enjoys mayonnaise in a slightly different way than the rest of the lineup
Dewey N - August 21, 2009
Ask Jeff.
msb - August 21, 2009
Remember when Carmona had that good year back in 2007?
Yeah, he’s going to look like that against us on Sunday.
Coach Owens - August 21, 2009
No
He’ll pretty much suck in a game that will conclude with a walk-off single for Cleveland.
ThundaPC - August 21, 2009
We're 9.5 games better than that team somehow
Jeff Sullivan - August 21, 2009
We say this every series!
Matthew - August 21, 2009
Yeah, add the W/L record to that table, and it's pretty wierd.
Seattle: 62-59 with -70.7 RAA
Cleveland: 52-68 with 0.0 RAA
Seattle’s been really lucky and Cleveland’s been incredibly unlucky.
urchman - August 21, 2009
M's have the leagues best record in 1-run games
at 28-15.
I dunno why Cleveland’s been so unlucky though.
urchman - August 21, 2009
They play in the AL Central too (Which should help them some)
I’m amazed we have the record we do seeing how the AL West is apparently good.
Its amazing how we’ve somehow outperformed our suspected record. Remember a couple of years ago we were trying to justify how we outperformed our pythag record because of our “great” bullpen. Yeah can’t use that excuse this year.
Edgar for Pres - August 21, 2009
ERA ERA ERA ERA ERA
Matthew - August 21, 2009
Are you saying Putz wasn't real?
Cause if I remember right, he was alot of the reason some people proposed we were able to do so well in close games which pushed our record so high compared to the pythag.
If you are saying his ERA (or RA?) was better than it was suppose to be then I think we just will have to disagree.
Edgar for Pres - August 21, 2009
Wow, that was about as wrong of an interpretation as you could have
and still manage to make it about the same subject.
My comment was a joke that people still think our bullpen is good this year because of it’s shiny ERA.
Matthew - August 21, 2009
Hah. Ok cool. I thought I was being really stupid.
Edgar for Pres - August 21, 2009
I wouldn't really say our bullpen has too shiny of an ERA even though.
Its probably about average considering park effects. Once taking into account defense helping them out….they kinda suck just like you showed.
I don’t want to say cheap bullpens suck because I agree with you guys that it should be possible to make a good bullpen without shelling out big money but man, our relief pitchers kinda suck. Imagine what they’d look like without the defense (and some of their good luck). I don’t really want to think about it too much.
Growing up with the 90’s Mariners, I think I’ve grown to despise bad relief pitchers. They just exist to piss you off. Hopefully (and should be possible) the pen next year is stronger. I don’t want to go through a year of a bad bullpen with bad luck that kill a team’s potential.
I can take bad starting pitching because you expect to lose a game where Carlos Silva pitches. This year I’ve discovered watching a team with an utter lack of offense isn’t even that bad as long as they play amazing defense. The one thing that destroys my spirit is when everything is going great or at least the game is close and in the 8th or 9th inning some piece of crap from the bullpen comes in and fucks everything up. That’s the only time I question why I care so much about a game because there is nothing enjoyable about watching a meltdown of those sorts.
Edgar for Pres - August 21, 2009
Probably just because our hitting is so god-awful.
Put that at 0.0 wOBA and we’re actually a little bit better than them.
Coach Owens - August 21, 2009
So, basically, I don't think that it's necessarily all that accurate.
No offense, Matthew. I appreciate how you put one up before every series.
Coach Owens - August 21, 2009
Are you saying you do not think we're a poor hitting team?
Matthew - August 21, 2009
No, I'm saying that I don't think we're as bad of a team as our hitting makes us look.
Coach Owens - August 21, 2009
Because... ?
Matthew - August 21, 2009
Just from seeing the team play their games.
We look like a team that has the ability to actually contend for the playoffs, but we just can’t put it all together.
Coach Owens - August 21, 2009
Next on 'Your opinion counts!'...
Graham MacAree - August 21, 2009
Okay, let's look at it this way.
Take out players like Betancourt, Cedeno, Balentien, Burke, Chavez and Woodward, guys who aren’t even on the team anymore, and our bRAA goes up -17.3. Which is what I’m trying to say. Our team isn’t as bad as it was, and is better than that -74.9 makes us seem.
Coach Owens - August 21, 2009
And that doesn't apply to other teams? Bad players get dropped from teams all the time.
But yes, the team is better now than it was at the start of the season (hitting-wise).
Matthew - August 21, 2009
I'd say it's better defense-wise as well.
And maybe rotation-wise but that’s probably a stretch.
Aaron Campeau - August 21, 2009
Definitely not, rotation-wise.
Defense is probably true.
Matthew - August 21, 2009
Oh yeah, Bedard.
Aaron Campeau - August 22, 2009
I would argue.
That given the way our team has been constructed and the way it has performed this year the team HAS put it all together…as much as it can anyway. This really isn’t supposed to be a 90+ win playoff team but it most certainly could’ve been worse. Every other team that’s score as few runs as we have are struggling just to get 50 wins at this point in the season. Here we have 62.
ThundaPC - August 21, 2009
Do you mean 0.0 RAA by wOBA?
Because a 0.0 wOBA would be bad. Like not hitting the ball ever bad.
I Lick Squirrels - August 21, 2009
You know what I mean, pal.
Coach Owens - August 21, 2009
Actually we have no fucking clue
Graham MacAree - August 21, 2009
If it weren't for our flaws we'd be flawless
Jeff Sullivan - August 21, 2009
If it weren't for the bad pitches, Horacio Rameriez pitched a good game!
joof - August 21, 2009
If you take out those 59 losses we're undefeated!
UNDEFEATED! AWESOME!
pdb - August 21, 2009
Holy crap.
Asdrubal Cabrera and Shin-Soo Choo account for 39.1 bRAA (0.390 wOBA)!?
Good Lord, stop making us look bad…
ThundaPC - August 21, 2009
Where does that RAA rank us in MLB?
Jeff Nye - August 21, 2009
Poorly.
(I don’t know, I don’t have UZR in my database and like hell am I doing the calc by hand)
Matthew - August 21, 2009
Does this mean that the M's are over-achieving, or does record and RAA not correlate like that?
Fin - August 21, 2009
It means they have over-achieved.
Note the past tense.
Matthew - August 21, 2009
But RAA almost certainly doesn't take strength of schedule into account?
If your post, Matthew, from right before the AS break still has any weight, we are right were we should be, no?
Coach Owens - August 21, 2009
That was rudimentary SOS
And no, that well over a month ago.
Matthew - August 21, 2009
Aw, so we are better than we should be.
I hate getting my hopes up like that.
Coach Owens - August 21, 2009
By about 7 or 8 wins.
Matthew - August 21, 2009
How do you calculate that?
Coach Owens - August 21, 2009
BaseRuns pythag
Matthew - August 21, 2009
Ah. Thanks.
Coach Owens - August 21, 2009
Yeah, that's what I figured.
Jeff Nye - August 21, 2009
Better than the Nationals! (At least, when you don't include fielding)
Coach Owens - August 21, 2009
RAA is a hitting stat
Edgar for Pres - August 21, 2009
No it isn't.
Matthew - August 21, 2009
Which is why the pitching is graded on pRAA?
Coach Owens - August 21, 2009
Ignore that comment. I am not "with it" today.
Edgar for Pres - August 21, 2009
What beer should we be drinking with this series?
d0nkey - August 21, 2009
LookoutLanding does not condone the use of products that produce levels of intoxication that can lead
to impaired judgment and we certainly do not encourage abusing said products.
Matthew - August 21, 2009
So, paint thinner it is then.
pdb - August 21, 2009
Well that's a relief.
Coach Owens - August 21, 2009
Might you have a suggestion for something to reduce the shaking I am experiencing?
Sec 108 - August 21, 2009
A light jacket.
Matthew - August 21, 2009
So you aren't recommending
this, then …
msb - August 22, 2009
I suggest
Dewey N - August 21, 2009
Natural Ice?
d0nkey - August 21, 2009
Puzzles!
I had to pull the second picture up full size to see what the hell you were doing.
Teej - August 21, 2009
Cleveland!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZzgAjjuqZM&feature=PlayList&p=8C81FA17BA732A1A&index=4
okdan - August 21, 2009
Holy shit I almost peed when I watched this.
Granted, I’m high. But still, rec’d!
JamMasterJesus - August 22, 2009
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