Hisashi Iwakuma

Seattle Mariners vs. Anaheim Angels: Series No. 8 Preview

Published April 25, 2013 | By Casey McLain | Posted in Mariners

The Mariners are playing really bad right now, and they just benched Brendan Ryan. Jack Zduriencik’s job, Eric Wedge‘s job, and everyone’s job is in doubt. Just ask Dave Cameron.

The Angels are also bad, and have won only eight games. They’ve only lost 12 compared to the Mariners 15, but Josh Hamilton is really awful, and has been since the second half of last season. You should be happy the Mariners didn’t spend $125 million on him. You should be happy they didn’t spend whatever they offered for him, also.

And:

Jason Vargas has given up 34 hits and 10 walks in 21.2 IP, for those who still care about Jason Vargas.

— Casey McLain (@CaseyMcLain34) April 25, 2013

Plus:

Hisashi Iwakuma has a higher swinging strike percentage than Clayton Kershaw so far this year.

— Casey McLain (@CaseyMcLain34) April 25, 2013

—–

Game 1: 7:10 PM — TV: ROOT, Radio: 710 AM ESPN Seattle

Brandon Maurer vs. Garrett Richards

Game 2: 7:10 PM — TV: ROOT, Radio: 710 AM ESPN Seattle

(Beard hat night!)

Aaron Harang vs. C.J. Wilson

Game 3: 6:10 PM – TV: ROOT, Radio: 710 AM ESPN Seattle

(Dustin Ackley bat night!)(I’m fucking serious)

Felix Hernandez vs. Joe Blanton

Game 4: 1:10 PM – TV: ROOT, Radio: 710 AM ESPN Seattle

(Senior Special Day)

Hisashi Iwakuma vs. Jason Vargas

Seattle Mariners coax fans from ledge by splitting series with Texas Rangers

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

Your beard is weird, bro.

At the beginning of past seasons the Mariners have had a fan base that was prepared to abandon ship if the team was in tough shape within a month or two. This season, especially after some high-profile, and locally controversial moves intended to add power to the Mariners lineup, the fan base was excited, but they were smiling with one foot hanging off the plank.

After an expected less-than-split in their opening road trip, the team looked poised to be over .500 at some point this week with the hapless Houston Astros in town. On the contrary, the Astros lost the first game to the Astros and then got trounced, giving up 24 runs in the following two games.

Rightfully so, that fan base was hanging from the over-metaphor’d plank by a fingernail. The team lost a game that Felix Hernandez started, and while they won another very good start made by Hisashi Iwakuma they squandered a Joe Saunders gem. Going into Sunday with a volatile (to put it nicely) Brandon Maurer on the hill, the team seemed unlikely to beat the Rangers.

Maurer was phenomenal, missing 12 bats in 97 pitches, and gave up only two earned runs, three runs total, in six innings. The third run, however, came in when Maurer missed his spot by more than the full width of home plate, and Jesus Montero barely got a piece of it before it ricocheted to the third base side of home plate, allowing Craig Gentry to score from third base. In a sequence prior to this instance Maurer threw what appeared to be strike three to Lance Berkman, a fastball with hand-side run that appeared to get a piece of the inside corner. Instead, Berkman walked, and that kept the inning… Continue reading →

Mariners lose series to Chicago White Sox in a way that is more flattering than being completely destroyed

Published April 7, 2013 | By Casey McLain | Posted in Mariners

The Mariners woes against the Chicago White Sox continued this weekend as they lost two of three to Chicago’s south siders. They didn’t get the shit beat out of them, they were outscored by only one run in the series, and you could make a pretty good case for them being able to win all three games, and also for them to lose their Friday game and to surrender a sweep to a White Sox team that has destroyed them of late (They’ve won 25 of the past 30 matchups between the two teams).

Alex Rios hit home runs in every game of the series. That may seem shitty, but Alex Rios isn’t the same bad Alex Rios as you think he is. He was the White Sox best position player last year, and he’s been pretty good in two of his three years with the White Sox. Alex Rios is fine, and maybe better than he was when he was put on waivers by the Blue Jays, the transaction that brought him to Chicago.

Most notably, Rios hit a home run on Felix Hernandez‘s 0-2 hung changeup:

Courtesy of Brooks Baseball

And Ryan Divish authored the perfect description of such an event:

Rios gets Hernandez on an 0-2 mistake for two-run homer …. #Noesi‘d

— Ryan Divish (@RyanDivish) April 6, 2013

The Mariners, for their part, hit four more home runs in this series, meaning they’ve got nine on the season. Last year after eight games the team had four home runs. Seven games in this year the Mariners nine home runs. That’s a thing. It might not be the thing, but it’s a thing.

Mike Morse hit another home run today. Morse has been really good this year, and here’s visual evidence in generally inefficient metrics… Continue reading →

Mariners Split Series in Oakland

Published April 4, 2013 | By Casey McLain | Posted in Mariners

On Monday and Tuesday we saw perhaps the best we’ll ever see of Mariners fans. Optimism reigned supreme as it does for most fanbases this early in the season. The offense was maybe better, Felix Hernandez and Hisashi Iwakuma were as good as we remembered them being, and the Mariners were undefeated. The last two days we’ve seen the deconstruction of some optimistic Mariners fans.

Of course, preaching that “it’s early” is totally valid, but chances are if you’ve sunk into mode that I can’t break you out of. Cynicism isn’t your fault. It’s a culture created by more than a decade of losing.

Cynicism is also not worth trying to talk you out of.

Morse has the power

In four games Mike Morse has four home runs. It took the Mariners eight games as a team to hit four home runs last year. Last year Jesus Montero was the first Mariner to hit four home runs and he did it in the team’s 24th game, their last game in April. Morse had a 380 wRC+ in this series. Mike Morse has played like a god for four games. That’s good, and it’s good to get early returns on a trade that much of the Seattle Mariners blogosphere — myself included — thought was a bad move.

Up in Smoak

Obviously this is silly. I reference Mike Morse’s comically high wRC+ in part to display how good he was, but more as a display of how silly it is to jump on or off of ayone’s bandwagon this early in the season. Justin Smoak has two hits in four games. Justin Smoak has been on base five times in 17 plate appearances. He has no extra base hits. He has 17 plate appearances. He probably won’t be the MVP candidate… Continue reading →

Mariners Re-Sign Hisashi Iwakuma to Two-Year Deal

Published November 2, 2012 | By Casey McLain | Posted in Mariners

Amid constant rumors of the Mariners opposing the NBA arena, and what seems like an imminent sale, it’s nice to have something to analyze that doesn’t involve wringing our hands over the Mariners doing something the equivalent to when us guys like to go make our friends look stupid in front of otherwise-interested females. The Mariners have become the worst kind of friend.

But the Mariners signed Hisashi Iwakuma to a two-year extension on Friday that could make Iwakuma one of the offseason’s greatest bargains. Don’t let Iwakuma’s modest 0.8 WAR fool you, he’s a bit of a SABR-darling in his own right. You see, the problem with WAR as it relates to pitchers is that it uses FIP, instead of xFIP. Iwakuma gave up significantly more home runs than one would expect based on his opponent’s batted-ball types, and as a groundball pitcher, it seems legitimate that he’s due for a regression in the right direction. Combined with what was a better-than-expected strikeout rate, and a propensity for handing righties, Iwakuma figures to see pretty similar peripheral numbers next year, even in a more hitter-friendly Safeco Field.

I don’t know if the terms of Iwakuma’s deal are officially know at this point, but right now we have Jon Heyman’s knowledge to count on:

iwakuma gets $14M for 2 yrs. $6.5M in ’13, $6.5M in ’14, $1M buyout on $7M ’15 option, $1.1M in pbs. arn deal. #mariners

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) November 3, 2012

Based on prior pitchers with similar skill-sets to Iwakuma I predicted that Iwakuma would receive a deal in the range of three-years, $24-27 million. As it turns out, Iwakuma may have offered the Mariners a bit of a hometown (defacto hometown anyways) discount that was also aided on the other end by an exclusive negotiating… Continue reading →