Mariners

Aaron Harang and/or Mike Zunino illiterate as it relates to the book on Josh Hamilton

Published June 17, 2013 | By Casey McLain | Posted in Mariners

As many of my days start, I wake up to, or am greeted shortly after waking by a text message. These messages, at one time, came from my lovely and beautiful girlfriend, with whom I have now spent three years (Happy Anniversary on Tuesday!). More recently though, as I live in Chris Broussard’s iteration of sin, I wake up next to my girlfriend, occasionally with her telling me to shut the alarm on my phone off.

Nowadays I receive my early morning text messages from Matthias. All too often he’s responding to a late night complaint I’ve lodged about the Mariners, or lodging one of his own. We spend parts of some of those days commiserating about being Mariners fans in general, and sometimes we’ll engage in a text-based discussion or debate about something inconsequential and then start the cycle over at the end of the day. As the Mariners game began on Monday I was out grocery shopping, because of aforementioned girlfriend, and was blessed with the beginning of this message, only to receive the balance of the message later on in the evening:

The last two, as you may remember if you watched Monday’s game, came after Hamilton’s second inning home run to center field that deflected off Michael Saunders‘ glove. Saunders put himself in a good position to catch the ball, but ultimately couldn’t hang on. The pitch was a changeup, and the location was poor, as evidenced by Gameday’s Pitch F/X.

hamilton harang 2

The pitch was in the lower half of the strike zone, and technically on the outer half of the plate, but relative to big league pitching, this ball was basically right down the middle. Aaron Harang gave Josh Hamilton, a guy who has been a bad hitter for most of the past 12… Continue reading →

Matt Cain and after-the-fact Conclusions

Published June 17, 2013 | By Matthias Kullowatz | Posted in Mariners

Now in the midst of his eighth full season, the Giants’ Matt Cain has been the subject of much sabermetric analysis over the course of his career. He has been an enigma statistically for a few reasons, the most popular of which comes from his ability to prevent hits on balls in play.

Here are the facts. Cain’s career BABIP is .263, about 30-to-40 points lower than the league median, and he has recorded a lower BABIP than the median of other regular starters during every single season since 2006*. Those facts are the source of many comments similar to these ones.

“It’s not like a guy can get lucky for eight straight years” and “You have to start believing it’s a skill by now.”

In 2005, Cain made just seven starts. His BABIP was below the starters’ median that season, but it was based on an awfully low sample size.

I’m not going to argue definitively that Matt Cain actually has zero control over his BABIP. I am not going to argue definitively that he has been lucky for eight-plus seasons. However, I am going to examine those claims as possibilities while introducing the probabilistic concept of multiple comparisons. That Wikipedia article has a classic example about testing many coins to see if any are weighted—we really like flipping coins, we statisticians—but maybe I’ll introduce the concept with a different example.

Ever heard of Yao Ming? He’s a 7-foot-6 Chinese man. The probability of any Chinese boy growing up to be 90 inches tall—even to parents who were 82 and 74 inches tall, respectively—is quite small. Are we to believe that Yao has an extraordinary skill that allowed him to grow taller? No, that’s silly. Genetics explains most all fluctuation in height. So how can we explain… Continue reading →

Dustin Ackley, the Seattle Mariners outfield, and the center field position

Published June 14, 2013 | By Casey McLain | Posted in Mariners

In the past couple days Dustin Ackley has played left field for the Tacoma Rainiers, this after a lot of time and resources went into making Ackley a second baseman. Ackley is a very good second baseman, far better than passable, but his value as a player and a prospect is rooted heavily in the production of his bat.

There’s no reason to believe that becoming out outfielder will have an inherent impact on Ackley’s bat in the positive direction. He’s played outfield before, but unless we’re delving into some sort of theoretical psychology of players’ unquantifiable comfort at a position correlated with his offensive production, any argument about this helping his bat is silly. I’m not going to make that argument, and I’ll probably remain skeptical of it even if I hear it from the horse’s (Ackley’s) mouth. Too many people are spewing absolutes based in biases, as opposed to facts and data.

That in mind, there is no doubt that moving to the outfield will actually devalue Ackley’s bat. Positional adjustments call left field basically the third easiest position to play, while second base is the third hardest. Considering the amount of positions and the amount of ties in these positional adjustments, these may not seem that far apart—in fact, as far as their order goes, left field and second base are right next to each other. But in the WAR formula, over a full season, there is about a 10-run difference in defensive value between a league average second baseman and a league average left fielder.

We know that Ackley’s good at second base. He’s got 2370.1 innings at second base and has amassed +9.5 runs compared to an average second baseman in that time. We don’t know if he’s good at left field, and even more… Continue reading →

Mariners DFA Kelly Shoppach and sign Henry Blanco, who still plays baseball apparently

Published June 14, 2013 | By Casey McLain | Posted in Mariners

Goodbye to this fantastic beard.

Today the Mariners DFA’d Kelly Shoppach and signed Henry Blanco. The move is curious, and slightly bizarre, but unlikely to be related strictly to performance in my estimation. You may remember, I was a big advocate of the team bringing in Shoppach, but I am acutely aware that he was part of the faction that brought down Bobby Valentine‘s chicken and beer empire in Boston.

That’s not to say that Shoppach is an objectively terrible human being, but that he’s got a past incident in which he did something that stepped outside the normal chain of command. Eric Wedge being the oldest, grumpiest 45 year old man on earth, I presume, wouldn’t take kindly to such an incident. All the funky stuff going on at the catcher position for the Mariners in the past month, namely the ill-conceived landing of Mike Zunino in Seattle, seem to point to Shoppach not gelling with the rest of the roster, or the front office, or whatever.

Shoppach seems outwardly like a bit of a Type A personality. A guy that is an absolute perfectionist as it relates to himself. I personally believe that that’s why he grows the beard he does, it’s not that he’s naturally gifted in that area, but that he’s willed himself into a near perfect beard, a piece of facial hair that Mike Zunino’s goatee simply cannot, and shouldn’t have to compete with.

The reality is though that Type As – and please don’t consider me to be practicing amateur psychology here – can grate on their associates.

Of course, I don’t really know what is behind this move. I have no access to inside information any more than the next guy. Shoppach wasn’t exactly lighting the world on fire at the… Continue reading →

DJ Peterson signs with Seattle Mariners for exactly slot money, which isn’t bad news

Published June 12, 2013 | By Casey McLain | Posted in Mariners

Last week when the Mariners drafted DJ Peterson in the first round there was some idea that the team would be able to sign him for less than slot money. He was viewed by some as a guy with a low ceiling for a player drafted that high, but also a guy whose bat was almost sure to play at the big league level, even if he has to move off of third base.

The team signed him for exactly slot money today: $2.759 million. After a 2012 draft that included Mike Zunino signing for a remarkable $4 million signing bonus, about $1.2 million below his suggested slot value, this may seem like bad news. As a result of Zunino’s sacrifice the Mariners were able to sign all of their picks in the first 10 rounds with the exception of Nick Halamandaris, who they couldn’t buy off a scholarship at Cal. They signed Tyler Pike, Joe DeCarlo, Timmy Lopes, and Chris Taylor for above-slot bonuses.

But while the news that Peterson signed for his slot value may not be as good as the inexplicable signing of Zunino, it actually affords the team some flexibility. You see, by signing Peterson the Mariners gained about $138,000 that they can use above their allotment without losing draft picks.

If they do spend all of that $138,000 it will actually cost them more than $241,000 if you include the tax associated with spending between 0-5 percent over the spending cap, but that may be worth it considering some of the odd value that has been found in later rounds in the past two drafts – especially considering this team’s record for finding prospects in later rounds.

The organization hasn’t been clear about their plan on how to use Peterson, though Peterson seems… Continue reading →