When the Mariners released their Friday night lineup some time ago, one noticed that Chone Figgins was not in it, and that Dustin Ackley was batting leadoff. This is something you're gonna want to get used to, because according to Eric Wedge, Chone Figgins is no longer an everyday player. He's been demoted to a utility role, and Ackley will move up on at least a semi-permanent basis.
I'm looking at the text box and I don't even know what more there is to say. I just complained about Chone Figgins earlier this morning. The Mariners gave him just over a month to show signs of life, and while he did show some signs of life, he showed several more signs of...death? That's pretty dark. Signs of not-life. No, that means the same thing. Bad signs. He showed a lot of bad signs.
It was weird when the Mariners put Figgins at leadoff, considering the year he had in 2011. Statistically, it didn't make sense, and plenty of people were more than happy to point that out. I think it was understandable why the Mariners gave that a shot, though, and I don't think they waited too long to knock Figgins down. He's been demoted after 25 games. I am okay with the experiment having lasted 25 games. The results of the experiment are predictable, but it was worth seeing.
Figgins, of course, hasn't been released. He's been moved to the bench. But he can do less harm from the bench, and a demotion to the bench could easily be the first step toward a release or trade that's basically a release. Now Figgins isn't standing in the way of playing time for Kyle Seager or Mike Carp or Alex Liddi or Casper Wells or whoever, and maybe he'll be of use as a reserve. If Chone Figgins were standing in my way, I'd probably be like, doesn't look like there's anything standing in my way. This is a short joke. Friday afternoon brain :(
Ackley to leadoff is what we expected. When he's going good, Ackley is a patient, line-drive hitting on-base machine. When he's going bad, like he is now, he's not much to look at, but unlike Chone Figgins I don't think there are many people who expect Ackley to keep struggling the way that he has. He's too good to keep doing this, we tell ourselves about Dustin Ackley, and we told ourselves about Jeremy Reed. Whoa, wait, hold on, I didn't expect this post to go there. I just gave myself a spook.
"[Brendan Ryan has] taken away more runs at shortstop than anyone in the game,'' [Eric Wedge] said. "That's real. You can't get away from that. With what we saw this spring from him, what we saw at times in the past year, that's real, too, offensively. If you get a guy that can defend himself at home plate, and just be even borderline average, you have a championship-level shortstop, without a doubt."
No issue worth discussing is ever black and white. I would call that, or a better expressed version of that, one of Lookout Landing's core principles that extends far beyond our specific points about baseball and tectonics. There are almost always some benefits and some drawbacks, some context and a whole number of shades of gray between the two extremes. Ignoring that vast expanse of middle ground is more intellectually perilous than ignoring the unmistakably growing threat from the Moon. What's its deal?
Aspects about Eric Wedge's managerial philosophy drive me bonkers. That's not unusual. There will never be a manager that I completely agree with. But his job isn't solely about how often and where he plays Miguel Olivo. That's but one part of many and in many of those other many, Eric Wedge garners my approval. His acknowledgement of defensive skill and a willingness to see runs driven in at the plate and runs saved in the field as a sum is worth praising. We've seen managers in the past who couldn't grasp that, leading to poor playing time decisions.
By and large, I think fans tend to be pretty objective about their teams during the offseason. Fans of pretty good teams usually know that they're fans of pretty good teams, and fans of less pretty good teams usually know that they're fans of less pretty good teams. People are realistic, perhaps because, during the offseason, there is the opportunity for things to change. Situations change as players change teams.
But after the offseason, I think there comes a point every spring where just about every fan, no matter who he or she roots for, thinks "well, maybe". There'll come a point at which A's fans think things could break right. There'll come a point at which Astros fans think things could break right. That objectivity never quite goes away completely, but come spring, fans are more aware of potential upsides. This is necessary, by the way. This belief, and sometimes this delusion that our teams can compete helps to amp us all up for what's a six-month slog even at the best of times.
Between objectivity and daydreaming, there is a midpoint. At this midpoint, the switch is flicked. Now, here, I'm only going to talk for myself, because I don't know what's going on inside all of your heads. But I think today I reached my midpoint. Today, the Mariners are playing the Mariners again, for the second time in three days. The intrasquad began somewhere around 11:45. Not long after that, the following tweet showed up on my screen:
Guti takes Felix deep
— Shannon Drayer (@shannondrayer) February 26, 2012
The Mariners are playing an intrasquad game today, and we don't really care that much about what goes on in an intrasquad game. But in this particular intrasquad game, Franklin Gutierrez hit a home run off of Felix Hernandez.
There are so many reasons why this is basically irrelevant. Felix is just getting stretched out, and he's hardly giving it his all. Who knows what pitch he threw or where he threw it. Maybe he was just working on something. Maybe he was just messing around. The ball flies pretty well in Arizona. The park dimensions aren't huge. This is an intrasquad game in Peoria. You don't get excited about home runs hit in these circumstances.
But earlier today, in a game situation, a pitch left Felix Hernandez's hand, and Franklin Gutierrez clobbered it over a wall. Last season, Franklin Gutierrez hit one home run, and last spring, Franklin Gutierrez hit zero home runs. I don't know if Guti might've hit one in an intrasquad game, but he didn't hit any in Cactus League action. They record those stats and not intrasquad stats because Cactus League stats are vitally important.
The Rangers and Angels are incredibly strong. The Mariners, meanwhile, are coming off a bad season, and they didn't exactly stock up on the market. I haven't even tried to pretend that the Mariners might stand a fighting chance. But I saw this tweet, and it was after reading this specific tweet that I felt myself going a little nuts. If Gutierrez bounces back to 2009 form, he's a legitimate star. Felix is already there, and there's talent in the bullpen, and Dustin Ackley is great, and Jesus Montero could be great, and Justin Smoak could be really good, and what if the Rangers or Angels suffer through injury problems? What if things blow up for them the way things blew up for the Mariners in 2010?
It's all insane, but what's really insane is the fact that I can convince myself that it's not. I think the chief side effect of spring training is that we all go insane in a few ways - we go insane waiting for spring training to be over, and we go insane believing that our teams could actually do something. Some teams will and most teams won't, and it's the uncertainty that props the doors open.
Nobody asked me about the Mariners yesterday. If somebody had asked me if I thought the Mariners could make the playoffs, I would've laughed and said "well I mean I guess they could." If somebody asked me now if I thought the Mariners could make the playoffs, my answer would be different. I still know in my soul that, no, no, it isn't going to happen, it's probably never going to happen, these are the Mariners, that's crazy talk, but my faith cortex has been activated after a winter hibernation. Because Franklin Gutierrez is back, see. And there's a lot of talent on this team, and when you put all that talent together...
In an entirely meaningless game, Franklin Gutierrez faced Felix Hernandez and hit what feels like a profoundly meaningful home run. Maybe you're not the same as me, and maybe you're not crazy just yet, but it's going to happen eventually. There's no use trying to fight it off. At some point soon, if not already, you're going to feel good about this baseball team.
Does the headline need any further commentary? Greg Johns provides some and some additional details about how the Mariners will handle their early winter training in preparation for the season opening trip to Japan. Greg also writes about Mike Carp spearheading a tribute to Greg Halman. The Mariners will unfortunately spend a second straight season with a death in the family at its forefront and based on how 2011 went (tribute-wise, not player performance-wise), I believe the organization will handle it with suitable grace.
But I don't want to get too bogged down in that just this moment. Pitchers and catchers reported. Baseball is almost back and regardless of how sucky the team was and might be, baseball is always better than no baseball. By the way, among the players checking in today was Jesus Montero.
Not long ago, the Los Angeles Angels signed Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson on the same Thursday morning. You remember, it was awful. We knew the Angels had money to throw around, but we didn't know the Angels had that kind of money to throw around, and it came out shortly thereafter that the Angels were supported by a new 20-year TV deal they'd negotiated worth $3 billion. The Angels had an existing TV deal, Arte Moreno opted out of it, and then he secured a way more awesome TV deal.
When that news came out, I reviewed the landscape of TV deals in the AL West. As you'll recall, I wrote that the Mariners were tied to a ten-year deal with FSN Northwest worth $450 million through 2020. That's not a bad contract, but the money pales in comparison to the money in the Angels' new contract, and in the Rangers' new contract.
Well, now I have good news. The Mariners won't have to wait until 2021 to begin a new, more lucrative deal. As Fanshotted earlier and as originally written at Forbes, it turns out the Mariners' contract with FSN Northwest or ROOT Sports or whatever contains an opt-out clause after the 2015 season. That's the halfway point. The Mariners can and probably will opt out and negotiate a substantially bigger deal.
What kind of deal? That's hard to say now, but the quoted Forbes source goes with "at least $70 million a year," which would be a step up. That would be comparable to the Rangers' contract, and while the Angels' contract would still leave the Mariners in the dust, they'd be choking down less dust, and, of course, the Angels should have the bigger contract, given the market size. The source says that the Mariners could probably squeeze a healthy sum out of Fox because Fox wouldn't want to lose the Mariners' broadcast rights to Comcast.
The subject of broadcast rights is not a very interesting one. It is surely interesting to some, but to few. What most sports fans care about is their teams getting good players and winning. A bigger TV contract would provide the Mariners with more money. If the Mariners have more money, they will be more able to get and keep good players, which would help them win. Even though the subject matter here is unexciting, hey, all right, more money. What's good for the Mariners is good for us, and having this opt-out clause is good for the Mariners.
The Seattle Mariners will have had 18 (since no playoffs in 1994) opportunities to win a four-team AL West when the 2012 season concludes. As of now, they've accomplished that feat three times in 17, one below their theoretical expected number. Good job, Mariners, you're even bad compared against abstract mathematical reality. The division will inflate to five teams starting in 2013 and with that so goes the built-in advantage of fewer competitors that the Mariners have enjoyed, but not really seized, for almost two decades.
However, that's coming to an end with the move of the Houston Astros into the division and the expansion of the playoffs to two wild cards. All that really matters of course is how this affects the Mariners. Who cares about anything else?
As I just recently (very recently) explained here on FanGraphs (go there to read though each team's current probability), in 2012, the Mariners will begin the season with a 31.8%* chance at the playoffs. It's been that way since the switch to six divisions which means they should have been expected to see six trips, all things being equal. Instead we saw four. Great job, Mariners, you look even worse now!
*Each AL West team has a 25% chance at an automatic berth and then a 75% (since they can't win both) chance at a wild card shot, which carries a 9% (1/11) probability. 0.25*1 + 0.75*1/11 = 31.8%. The formula comes from Bayes' theorem.
The odds of winning the division crown fall to 20% (1 in 5) starting in 2013, but baseball is adding a second wild card to the mix. For the Mariners (and for all 29 other teams), that means their level-playing-field probability will then be 33%*. Adding the Astros and a second wild card team actually increases the Mariners' (and Rangers' and Athletics' and Angels') odds of meaningful October play by a very slight margin.
*1 in 5 x 1 + 4 in 5 x 2/12
For those disgruntled Astro fans, they might want to heed this post as well. Their club, stuck in the six-team NL Central and 16-team National League currently face the worst level odds in baseball at just 23.1% each season. Their move to the AL helps grant them an increase of almost 10%.
Dustin Ackley's batting line on May 7 was .218/.354/.353 and I wrote this piece about how his low ball in play average was probably not a concern going forward.
Ackley is missing seven hits if you assume his true talent BABIP is at that .300 range. Add those seven hits back and his batting average jumps from .218 to .277, his triple slash line becomes .277/.413/.412
Dustin Ackley since May 7th has a BABIP over .400 and has brought his triple-slash line up to .263/.383/.417. He is doing well against both lefties and righties and I have still not heard any legitimate concerns over his defense. We already knew he could work counts. Ackley is starting to show that he can hit for modest power as well as handle second base.
The question then becomes about his time table to Seattle and Jack Zduriencik appeared to address that today when on the radio he surmised that Ackley would get the call "sooner rather than later." Naturally, that doesn't actually mean anything and so we're still left with our initial estimation of early June being the best guess unless something dramatic happens in the meantime.
Ackley's promotion would seem to spell the end of Jack Wilson on the team as Luis Rodriguez is needed to fill in on the left side of the infield and Adam Kennedy can sort of fill in at first base as well. However, that would stack up the left-handed hitters so who knows. I have no special attachment to Jack Wilson, but neither do I to Adam Kennedy.
As a post-note, Jack also commented in his radio interview that Franklin Gutierrez was a week away from joining the team which means one of Michael Saunders, Mike Wilson or Carlos Peguero will head back to Tacoma. It probably will not be Saunders simply because the team needs a backup at center field, but it's not like Saunders has earned a stay.
Dustin Ackley is off to a slow start this season. His OPS currently stands at .707 thanks mostly to a really low batting average. His .136 isolated discipline (OBP-AVG) and his .135 isolated power (SLG-AVG) are fine. Ackley profiles as a high average kind of hitter and I think we'd all be perfectly happy with a .280/.415/.415 batting line from him. Sure, more power would be nice at his peak, but I'm willing to settle for anything involving a .400+ on base percentage.
Ackley started slowly last season as well, so this may be a thing. Or it may not be. It's his second professional season. Anyways, I wanted to focus on that low batting average for the moment because as stated above, that's about his only offensive worry*. He is batting .218 and that's no good. He's basically some Chone Figgins/Jack Cust hybrid right now and we don't want that. But is that .218 a cause for actual concern?
*Defensively, you'd have to ask someone who's been watching him play. Any T-Towners want to chime in?
I think it is not. Ackley's batting average on his balls in play (BABIP) is abysmally low at .229. It's a small sample but he carried a more usual .300 rate last season between West Tenn (now Jackson) and Tacoma. There has been no real change in his batted ball profile this season compared to last. He's getting roughly the same percentage of grounders, flies, line drives and pop ups so we would expect a similar BABIP.
Ackley is missing seven hits if you assume his true talent BABIP is at that .300 range. Add those seven hits back and his batting average jumps from .218 to .277, his triple slash line becomes .277/.413/.412 if you assume those seven are all singles. With that line we'd turn to obsessing over him just needing to add a little more power (hey, it's freaking cold out if you hadn't noticed), but truthfully we'd be pretty pleased. I know many of us are impatient to see him dazzle, but take heart. He has shown some real improvement this season in his plate approach which was already fantastic and the hits will come. Dustin Ackley will be here soon.
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