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Unsurprising News

Ryan Rowland-Smith has been moved to the bullpen and Ian Snell returned to the rotation.

Per Larry Stone, per Wak

0 recs  |  34 comments

Comments

Bittersweet

I don’t think I can stand watching anymore of RRS like this but Snell sucks too

Yay, Lefty in the bullpen!
So now Snell can suck for 3 innings before RRS comes in to mop up

Mariners!

Nothing wrong with this.

RRS gets a chance to straighten himself out, we get a lefty in the pen, and Ian Snell gets more innings okay that last part isn’t good.

The SP in AAA looks good but looking closer, it looks like a lot of them have low HR/FB%
Should have sent him to Tacoma.
Out of options
That's fine.

I can’t see there being a bunch of teams lining up for a starting pitcher with an ERA north of 7 who only averages 3-4 innings per outing. He needs more time to work out of the funk he is in, constant work and in an environment where the pressure to perform is lessened. Getting to work for a couple of innings every week to ten days isn’t going to cut it.

If we lose him in waivers, oh well. Plenty of others that can take his place.

He's cheap and has potential

He’d be picked up in a heartbeat.

No there are not plenty of others that can take his place.

Losing RR-S for nothing would be incredibly short-sighted and I’m glad our GM isn’t that stupid.

This is funny since they're going to both end up pitching the same amount of innings on the same days.

They only switched who goes first.

Even Ian Snell would have trouble running out an xFIP like RRS's this year.
So how much of it is just bad luck?

I don’t see any huge differences in his stats from last year to this year except a couple of glaring ones: his HR/FB is 10% higher so far this year (16.7% so far, 6.7% last year) and opponents are making way more contact on pitches he throws that are out of the strike zone (up to 78.1% from 69% last year).

I'm tempted to say that a lot of it is luck

Or, if you don’t like the word ‘luck’, unsustainable.

Indeed, but when your xFIP is the worst in the majors out of qualified starters (113!) then there's something wrong past luck.

He’s not the worst starter in the majors, but he’s pretty much been pitching like it.

Why do all of the cool Mariners have such bad luck?

Figgy, RRS, Kotchman…I could care less if RoboRob or someone like him suffers bad luck because they should go away anyways, but when you have actual talented players who are also awesome, it’s frustrating.

What, exactly, do you find cool about Kotchman?
Defence, face.
Dunno.

But we’d better stop this subthread before it gets too OT.

RRS has been legitly terrible
Well he has had SOME bad luck, albeit a lot of it has been his fault.
I don't buy his middle-tier peripherals (BB, K, HR, that sort of thing)

I think he’s been unlucky in that regard, as he’s been throwing strikes and missing bats like ~usual.

There are a bunch of things. Some are bad luck and some are suck.

Strikeouts fell and walks rose. Whenever you are around ~ 1 K/BB you are doing something very wrong.

His BABIP was probably a little low last year and rose tad bit higher than expected. Last year his HR/FB% was pretty low and now its a little too high.

He’s giving up a ton of line drives. This might regress but it looks like people are killing the ball because he is throwing bad pitches.

His fastball is slower and worse than in the past.

A lot of it will regress but its not all luck. Some of it will regress because he isn’t this bad. Right now he’s a little unlucky and a little worse than he was last year. Also, last year he seemed a little better than he was. He isn’t a good enough pitcher to have his true talent decrease for any reason. The fact that he got worse and was less lucky was a devastation combo.

Even his well-located curves look like they're getting crushed this year.

Is it worse than last year or is THAT just somewhere that he got unlucky? I’d check but I don’t know my way around pitch f/x sites.

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