If there's one squad in baseball this year that narratively deconstructs the sport of baseball into its constituent parts of base and ball, while at the same time reacting to and critiquing extant modernism, it has to be the 2007 Seattle Mariners*. While pitcher Felix Hernandez satirizes the conventional pitching wisdom of "establishing" the fastball by disestablishing the "fastball," while José Vidro (mis)informs the pre-conceived notions of the designated "hitter" by "slugging" .358, and while manager ex-officio Mike Hargrove expands the meaning of "managing" a team to include, "resigning amidst an eight-game winning streak," the Mariners continue to defy the heretofore rigid constructions and socially-accepted norms of baseball teamness.
Before the current baseball season had yet begun, certain members of the blogosphere brought forth scorn and derision upon the men responsible for constructing (or should we say deconstructing?) the Mariner roster, in particular for making two specific trades. Now, at near mid-season, with the Mariners unexpectedly hanging in the midst of playoff contention, a mere game and a half out of the wildcard spot, and three and one half games out of the division lead, perhaps these specious and ill-informed bloggers are ready to eat their words, to admit that they critique without basis of knowledge or fact. After all, it's not as if starting pitcher Horacio Ramirez, acquired for Rafael Soriano (now sporting a 3.03 ERA with 32 strikeouts and 8 walks in 35 innings for the Atlanta Braves), pitched so poorly for the Mariners that they finally placed him on the disabled list with a made-up injury. And it's not as if the only thing preventing their newly aquired designated hitter from being the worst regular batsman on the team (not to mention that the backup catcher and backup first baseman/outfielder are both nigh-literally spanking his ass with the bat, and that his presence is blocking the promotion of AAA phenomenon Adam Jones) is the fact that their shortstop is in a terrible slump at the plate. No, clearly those who predicted doom based on these two trades are mindless, prattling incompetents who...what? Sorry, I've just been informed that those things are actually all true. Sorry to have mislead you, if only for a moment.
So then how are they doing it? To be sure, the Mariners have the greatest center fielder and leadoff man in the known universe in Ichiro Suzuki, and find themselves endowed with a relief pitcher who, while his name is literally "Putz," possesses uncanny attributes of unscorable-upon-ness, they had these attributes last year and the team, in the words of Jaques Derrida, "sucked complete crap." Clearly, the answer can only be found through postmodern analysis. The very existence of the Mariners, the very fact of them, can only be parsed in a context that abhors established norms. They will hit well against good pitchers and poorly against bad ones. They will sweep three games against the Red Sox, the best team in baseball, and lose two of three to the Royals, the single most inept club in all of team sports. They cannot be understood with existing metrics of baseball goodness. Attempts at scouting them or predicting their future through rigorous statistical regression shall surely fail. Only laws of lawlessness may dictate what lies in store for your 2007 Seattle Mariners, Postmodern Major League Team of Baseball.
*it is technically possible that no team in baseball is doing these things in this or any other year.
Showing posts with label Seattle Mariners. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seattle Mariners. Show all posts
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Pitch To Contact
The Seattle Mariners went into spring training this past March with a new mantra from their pitching coaches: "Pitch to contact." They apparently had t-shirts made up, which, in case you were never in Glee Club in college and don't know this, is completely cheesy. The antithetical philosophy would be to try and strike out every batter a pitcher faces, and this indeed has some drawbacks--trying to strike a batter out in baseball will generally require more pitches, whereas if the batter puts the ball in play, he could conceivably get himself out with one pitch. Moreover, a strikeout pitcher might try to throw more finesse pitches that are harder to locate, and end up walking a lot of batsmen, which puts him in trouble in an inning, and forces him to throw a lot of so-called "stress pitches." A pitcher who racks up higher pitch counts will get tired sooner in the game, and so on and so forth.
There's also (seemingly) a statistical basis for this philosophy, too. Statistical analysis has shown that once a batter has put a pitched ball in play, the pitcher has little to no control over whether it becomes a hit or not. There's a statistic called Batting Average on Balls In Play which measures how successful batters are at reaching base safely once they've hit a pitch (assuming that it doesn't go over the fence for a home run, in which case there's usually nothing the defense can do). This number tends to sit in a range centering around about 30%, but has very little correlation from pitcher to pitcher and year to year--if a pitcher has a .280 BABIP one year, it's as likely to be .330 as .280 the next season (knuckleballer pitchers, such as Boston Red Sock Tim Wakefield, tend to be the exception to this rule of seasonal correlation, but that's another story). Sometimes a ground ball gets through the infield for a single and sometimes the shortstop gets it for an easy out, and this outcome has little to do with the pitcher and a lot to do with a) how much ground the defense behind him covers, and b) luck . So if a coaching staff knew (or thought) they had a good defensive team, pitching to contact would appear to make a lot of sense.
The Mariners apparently have a lot of written or unwritten philosophies like this. They coach their hitters to be aggressive, and look for a good pitch to hit early in the count. They also toyed, more last season than this, with being aggressive once they got on base, trying to go from first to third on a single, for instance.
In tonight's game, in the top of the first inning, Vladimir Guerrero came to bat against Mariner pitcher Jarrod Washburn with a runner on first base. Here is the book on pitching to Vladimir Guerrero: Under no circumstances should you pitch to Vladimir Guerrero. He can hit pretty much any pitch anywhere near the plate and hit it very hard. He is an extremely good hitter. If you were to, for some reason, ignore this information, and throw him hittable pitches, he would hit them. Hard. Pitching to contact against Vladimir Guerrero is a bad idea. It is bad. Bad. Bad bad bad. A better strategy would be to throw unhittable pitches far out of the strike zone and hope he swings at them or just walk him than, rather let him beat you with his bat. Vladimir Guerrero took the very hittable pitch he was thrown and deposited it into the left field bullpen for a home run. Later in the game he came to bat with another runner on and doubled, Mariner pitchers apparently being unable to parse blatant object lessons.
Jarrod Washburn was doing pretty well so far this season: he'd managed to win more games than he lost while sporting a very good earned run average for the most part by throwing strikes and letting hitters get themselves out. By coincidence, Jarrod Washburn had also been facing some baseball teams with pretty poor lineups. But throwing hittable pitches to batters who are good at hitting hittable pitches is highly likely to eventually result in bad outcomes. Similarly, when the Mariners tried to always take that extra base, it worked some of the time, and some of the time the ball wasn't hit far enough or they were facing a team with canon-armed outfielders and they just ran themselves into outs. As for their "aggressive" approach to hitting, when the Mariners face pitchers who tend to throw strikes early in the count, they tend to do pretty well. When they face pitchers who aren't as good, who have trouble hitting the strike zone with regularity, they tend to do poorly--they frequently get absolutely stymied by pitchers who have just come up from AAA, going up hacking at the first pitch that looks hittable instead of letting the pitcher get himself into trouble by walking batters and running up his pitch count...sounds a little bit familiar, doesn't it? Seems like there's some sort of object lesson there.
There's also (seemingly) a statistical basis for this philosophy, too. Statistical analysis has shown that once a batter has put a pitched ball in play, the pitcher has little to no control over whether it becomes a hit or not. There's a statistic called Batting Average on Balls In Play which measures how successful batters are at reaching base safely once they've hit a pitch (assuming that it doesn't go over the fence for a home run, in which case there's usually nothing the defense can do). This number tends to sit in a range centering around about 30%, but has very little correlation from pitcher to pitcher and year to year--if a pitcher has a .280 BABIP one year, it's as likely to be .330 as .280 the next season (knuckleballer pitchers, such as Boston Red Sock Tim Wakefield, tend to be the exception to this rule of seasonal correlation, but that's another story). Sometimes a ground ball gets through the infield for a single and sometimes the shortstop gets it for an easy out, and this outcome has little to do with the pitcher and a lot to do with a) how much ground the defense behind him covers, and b) luck . So if a coaching staff knew (or thought) they had a good defensive team, pitching to contact would appear to make a lot of sense.
The Mariners apparently have a lot of written or unwritten philosophies like this. They coach their hitters to be aggressive, and look for a good pitch to hit early in the count. They also toyed, more last season than this, with being aggressive once they got on base, trying to go from first to third on a single, for instance.
In tonight's game, in the top of the first inning, Vladimir Guerrero came to bat against Mariner pitcher Jarrod Washburn with a runner on first base. Here is the book on pitching to Vladimir Guerrero: Under no circumstances should you pitch to Vladimir Guerrero. He can hit pretty much any pitch anywhere near the plate and hit it very hard. He is an extremely good hitter. If you were to, for some reason, ignore this information, and throw him hittable pitches, he would hit them. Hard. Pitching to contact against Vladimir Guerrero is a bad idea. It is bad. Bad. Bad bad bad. A better strategy would be to throw unhittable pitches far out of the strike zone and hope he swings at them or just walk him than, rather let him beat you with his bat. Vladimir Guerrero took the very hittable pitch he was thrown and deposited it into the left field bullpen for a home run. Later in the game he came to bat with another runner on and doubled, Mariner pitchers apparently being unable to parse blatant object lessons.
Jarrod Washburn was doing pretty well so far this season: he'd managed to win more games than he lost while sporting a very good earned run average for the most part by throwing strikes and letting hitters get themselves out. By coincidence, Jarrod Washburn had also been facing some baseball teams with pretty poor lineups. But throwing hittable pitches to batters who are good at hitting hittable pitches is highly likely to eventually result in bad outcomes. Similarly, when the Mariners tried to always take that extra base, it worked some of the time, and some of the time the ball wasn't hit far enough or they were facing a team with canon-armed outfielders and they just ran themselves into outs. As for their "aggressive" approach to hitting, when the Mariners face pitchers who tend to throw strikes early in the count, they tend to do pretty well. When they face pitchers who aren't as good, who have trouble hitting the strike zone with regularity, they tend to do poorly--they frequently get absolutely stymied by pitchers who have just come up from AAA, going up hacking at the first pitch that looks hittable instead of letting the pitcher get himself into trouble by walking batters and running up his pitch count...sounds a little bit familiar, doesn't it? Seems like there's some sort of object lesson there.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Season Preview
With baseball season nigh, it's again time for some baseball blogging. Here are a couple of notes from the baseball offseason wire this past winter.
If you follow the Mariners at all (hi, Greg) you know that the trades listed above were widely reviled in the online Mariner fan community. The problem wasn't so much that they were terribly lopsided trades (they were), but that these trades revealed a fundamental difference between the business philosophy of Mariner management and that of sane people.
In the Mariners' division, the American League West, is a baseball team called the Oakland Athletics. Since 2000, the Athletics have finished first, second, first, first, second, second, and first in their division, and made the playoffs five out of seven seasons. In every one of these seasons they had a payroll that was roughly half that of the Seattle Mariners, and in the bottom half of payrolls across baseball. The Mariners, after making the playoffs in 2000 and 2001, have finished second, second, fourth, fourth, and fourth in the division. In business speak (and I am paraphrasing the words of another Mariner blogger), the Mariners have a competitor who year after year puts out a (frequently vastly) superior product at half the cost.
The way that the Athletics do this is a mystery to absolutely no one. Michael Lewis wrote a very popular book about it. This book rubbed a lot of people in baseball the wrong way because, in short, they thought it threatened their jobs. The baseball blog linked above is an excellent analysis of Moneyball as it relates to the Mariners vis-à-vis the Athletics, so I won't do that here.
If some things go right for the Mariners this season--if Felix Hernandez develops into an ace, Raul Ibañez keeps hitting, Adrian Beltré hits a little more, and the bullpen isn't quite as terrible as it looks like it might be--the Mariners could contend for a division title. However, if pretty much any one of those things doesn't happen or any starter gets injured, the Mariners are looking at finishing fourth out of four for the fourth year in a row. The problem with that is that the M's are sporting a payroll of $111 million, which is third highest in baseball behind the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox (both of whom, while prognosticators are universally picking the M's to finish last in their division, are expected to make the playoffs). What the Mariners did this offseason was to trade away young, cheap, actually or potentially good players for old, expensive, mediocre veterans who were once good (well, Horacio Ramirez was never good, so I don't know what they were thinking there). The Mariners have the third highest payroll in baseball and they're going to break camp with Rey Ordoñez on their roster, a player who's been out of baseball for two years, and proved over the course of over 3000 at bats that he simply can't hit Major League pitching. $111 million dollars ought to buy one hell of a baseball team, but the Mariners have taken it and bought a baseball team that will have to be lucky not to finish last in their division.
Next: More Frequent Blogging!
December 7, 2006
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (AP) -- The Atlanta Braves swapped a starting pitcher for bullpen help Thursday, sending oft-injured lefty Horacio Ramirez to the Seattle Mariners for reliever Rafael Soriano.
December 13, 2006
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Second baseman Jose Vidro would be sent to the Seattle Mariners by the Washington Nationals for two prospects in a tentative trade that is pending physicals for all players involved, a person with knowledge of the deal told The Associated Press on Wednesday night.
If you follow the Mariners at all (hi, Greg) you know that the trades listed above were widely reviled in the online Mariner fan community. The problem wasn't so much that they were terribly lopsided trades (they were), but that these trades revealed a fundamental difference between the business philosophy of Mariner management and that of sane people.
In the Mariners' division, the American League West, is a baseball team called the Oakland Athletics. Since 2000, the Athletics have finished first, second, first, first, second, second, and first in their division, and made the playoffs five out of seven seasons. In every one of these seasons they had a payroll that was roughly half that of the Seattle Mariners, and in the bottom half of payrolls across baseball. The Mariners, after making the playoffs in 2000 and 2001, have finished second, second, fourth, fourth, and fourth in the division. In business speak (and I am paraphrasing the words of another Mariner blogger), the Mariners have a competitor who year after year puts out a (frequently vastly) superior product at half the cost.
The way that the Athletics do this is a mystery to absolutely no one. Michael Lewis wrote a very popular book about it. This book rubbed a lot of people in baseball the wrong way because, in short, they thought it threatened their jobs. The baseball blog linked above is an excellent analysis of Moneyball as it relates to the Mariners vis-à-vis the Athletics, so I won't do that here.
If some things go right for the Mariners this season--if Felix Hernandez develops into an ace, Raul Ibañez keeps hitting, Adrian Beltré hits a little more, and the bullpen isn't quite as terrible as it looks like it might be--the Mariners could contend for a division title. However, if pretty much any one of those things doesn't happen or any starter gets injured, the Mariners are looking at finishing fourth out of four for the fourth year in a row. The problem with that is that the M's are sporting a payroll of $111 million, which is third highest in baseball behind the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox (both of whom, while prognosticators are universally picking the M's to finish last in their division, are expected to make the playoffs). What the Mariners did this offseason was to trade away young, cheap, actually or potentially good players for old, expensive, mediocre veterans who were once good (well, Horacio Ramirez was never good, so I don't know what they were thinking there). The Mariners have the third highest payroll in baseball and they're going to break camp with Rey Ordoñez on their roster, a player who's been out of baseball for two years, and proved over the course of over 3000 at bats that he simply can't hit Major League pitching. $111 million dollars ought to buy one hell of a baseball team, but the Mariners have taken it and bought a baseball team that will have to be lucky not to finish last in their division.
Next: More Frequent Blogging!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)