SB Nation - Matt Tuiasosopo

Full of Hitting Depth

Matthew — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 04:48:25 -0000

Ryan Langerhans, Bill Hall, Michael Saunders, Jack Hannahan, Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Carp and Matt Tuiasosopo. Those are the people currently on the 40-man roster who profile as bench bats or a starter at designated hitter, first base or left field for 2010. That's seven names for six spots (the three starting jobs plus three bench roles) and that's before we sign anyone else. Heaven forbid those are the seven Don Wakamatsu has to pick from for those last six spots come end of Spring Training.

Here is where I would love to throw in some clear facts on which players have options remaining, but MLB's player option rules are murkier than lead and so the best I can do are educated guesses. Langerhans, Hall, Hannahan and Griffey are out of options while it appears that Saunders, Carp and Tuiasosopo all have two options remaining.

If the Mariners add two more bats in the DH/1B mold (say Nick Johnson and Russell Branyan), then clearly Carp and Tui head back to Tacoma. However, that still leaves seven players for six spots. The consensus so far has been that Saunders is penciled in as the starting left fielder and thus Ryan Langerhans would appear to be the odd man out, a victim of a overprotective seven-men bullpen. I wonder though, given Saunders struggles in his Seattle showcase, and the roster situation, would it not make more sense to send Saunders back to Tacoma, he only has 387 PAs at the Triple-A level after all, and start the season with a Langerhans/Hall platoon in left field?

If the team only adds one more hitter, then this is moot, but given that it appears the team considers neither first base nor designated hitter filled, it seems an interesting discussion to be had, one with reasonable arguments on multiple sides.

It is also a key discussion no matter where the second hitter is added. If the team did manage to sign Adrian Beltre, and held onto Jose Lopez, then Chone Figgins would get moved to left field and Michael Saunders demoted. Or if the team inked Mike Cameron, same result for Saunders. In either case a lock for the team replaces one of your optionable players and takes a roster spot up, once again forcing you into a two spots for three guys decision.

Wednesday Afternoon Quick Hits

Eli Greenspan — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:36:57 -0000

More photos » by Luis Alvarez - AP

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Here are some links for you guys on this Wednesday afternoon:

Before I get to the links, I have a MLBDD-related announcement: Are you interested in writing for MLB Daily Dish once or twice a week? If you have knowledge of all thirty teams and are available to write once or twice a week for a portion of the day, please email me here. In your email, include some of your writing background, as well as two articles, displaying your knowledge of a particular situation or concept.

If you have any questions about the openings, feel free to email me: mlbrumors@gmail.com.

Nationals GM Mike Rizzo told reporters that interim manager Jim Riggleman has a legitimate shot to return as manager in 2010. The Nationals are expected to explore the market, possibly interviewing former managers like Mike Hargrove, Buck Showalter, or Bobby Valentine. The search is expected to begin after the season.
The New York Daily News is reporting that Mets would like to bring Alex Cora back for the 2010 season. Cora is currently on the disabled list, but his versatility makes him a desirable bench player. An inexpensive one year deal should do the trick.
35-year old sidearmer Chad Bradford may retire after this season, he told the St. Petersburg Times. Bradford, who said his decision won't come until January, hasn't had a full season since 2007 with the Orioles. He has a career 3.26 ERA in 561 appearances.
The Rangers would be smart to use Marlin Byrd in center field next season, FOXSports.com's Ken Rosenthal suggests. The Rangers need to sign Byrd first, which might be tough after putting up career highs in home runs and runs batted in. Still, there is a mutual interest so a deal is possible.
The White Sox may move closer Bobby Jenks after this season. Jenks, who is not a free agent until 2011, who has 29 saves with a 3.71 ERA in 52 games. The Braves could target Jenks as their closer, assuming they let Rafael Soriano walk.
Check this out! Mariners television broadcaster Mike Blowers predicted that Matt Tuiasosopo will hit a home run. It wasn't just predicting the home run, he predicted to what part of the field, the count, and which at-bat. Very impressive.

80-73, Game Notes

Jeff — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 04:49:21 -0000

More photos » by Darren Calabrese - AP

Seattle Mariners Franklin Gutierrez, left, and Ken Griffey Jr. knock helmets in celebration of Gutierrez's two-run home run during the third inning of a baseball game in Toronto while Santa Claus looks on with particular interest.

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One bad pitch.

Technically, a pitcher's results aren't the best way to evaluate a performance. One game gives you only a limited sample size of batter decisions and swings, and, say, a handful of mis-hits of bad pitches or solid hits of good ones can lead to a misleading judgment. The most accurate way of deducing how well a pitcher pitched would be to strip away the hitters entirely and look simply at the quality and location of the pitches he threw.

However, that's a real nuisance, and though most of the time it would provide valuable information, sometimes - on nights like this one - you don't need to get super granular to understand how well a guy was throwing. This was Felix Hernandez pitching as well as Felix Hernandez has ever pitched. That much was readily apparent just from watching his fastball dance and his curveball snap and the Blue Jays flail away. Felix has pitched this well before, but I don't know that he's ever pitched better, and in the end, I feel like he plowed through those eight innings having made just the one mistake. It was a big mistake, mind you, and one that cost him three runs, but if you're like me, there's nothing better than watching Felix be exceptional, and today, for eight innings, Felix was exceptional. Cheers to Josh Wilson, because Felix deserved that win. Felix deserved two wins.

A start that some have said might knock Felix out of Cy Young consideration may have been his best start of the year.

Let me just show some things to you:

71% strikes
16% swinging strikes
75% groundballs

Felix faced 34 batters tonight. He got ahead 0-1 on 18 of them and got to two-strike counts on 19 of them. And not only did he threw 71% strikes - he threw 71% strikes despite Chris Guccione robbing him of at least eight or nine other pitches in the zone, which he didn't do to Romero nearly as much. So that's 71% going on 80%. It was just...Jesus, Felix threw a ton of fastballs, but he threw them in such a way that he looked like the version of Felix Hernandez that we saw him going for so often in seasons previous. We complained a lot in the past that he relied too heavily on his fastball despite not having real good command. Tonight he had that command, and he showed what he can do when he has it. He was alternating between a straight four-seamer and a two-seamer that kept diving at ankles, and once he had those heaters established, he was pretty much free to do whatever he wanted. People used to point out that sometimes batters swung against Felix like they knew what was coming. The Blue Jays didn't know what was coming, and they looked like it. In the bottom of the fifth Jose Bautista swung at a high slider over the plate while ducking out of the way.

Felix is a big game pitcher. I wasn't aware that today was a big game, but based on his performance, Felix really, really wants that Cy Young. Even if he says he'd vote for Greinke.

How good was Felix tonight? In the middle innings I sent Dave from USSM a text saying I hoped he was watching. Dave texted back that he loves his wife more than he loves Felix. 40 minutes later he felt compelled to email me an explanation.

It was good to see Franklin Gutierrez take Romero deep in the third, because since August 11th he'd been batting just .228 with a .592 OPS. He had clearly cooled off, coming in today with something more in line with the consensus offensive expectation before the year. Of course, despite his now-current .753 OPS is the fact that Fangraphs lists him as a 5 WAR player. It's actually kind of a good thing in a way that he's slumped, because it's provided further evidence that Guti can still make a positive contribution even when he's not swinging the bat real well. Franklin has been worth about 35 fewer runs at the plate than Mark Teixeira, and he's still been the more valuable player. As Dave talked about a little while back, we probably can't count on Franklin repeating 2009's defensive numbers in the future, but even allowing for a bit of regression, he is a very, very, very good player, and among the best outfielders in baseball.

Jose Bautista likes his lips so much he gave them an underscore.

I haven't seen a whole lot of Matt Tuiasosopo in the field so far, but one thing that became apparent today was that he needs a lot of work at second turning double plays. Twice he turned potential DPs into fielder's choices, once by making a bad flip to second and once by making a bad pivot and throw to first with the runner bearing down. On the plus side, he made a really good no-look sweep tag on a wide throw to catch John McDonald stealing, so his instincts seem good. He just, y'know, needs work.

The top of the ninth saw Adrian Beltre get locked into an 11-pitch showdown against Jeremy Accardo. After getting ahead 1-0, Beltre swung at nine consecutive balls out of the zone before grounding out on a fastball down the middle. A lot of fans and broadcasters would say that Beltre did a good job of battling and staying in. Smarter people would call him retarded.

Going back to that Tuiasosopo flip - with a man on and none out in the bottom of the fourth, Adam Lind hit a grounder to Tui, who flipped the ball high to Josh Wilson. Wilson came down ahead of the runner and threw to first, but the ump called the runner safe at second. Replays confirmed that Wilson didn't touch the bag. Apparently getting the phantom tag call is conditional upon completing the turn without screwing up. If you do everything smoothly and don't touch the base, the runner's out. If you make a little mistake along the way, tough noogies.

Josh Wilson's two-run triple in the eighth was the big hit of the game, but it was very nearly a one-run triple, as Bill Hall ambled his way home and narrowly avoided the tag after a strong relay. This isn't the first time we've seen Hall at something less than full speed. It isn't the second or third or fourth time, either. He's nursing a hurt quad, so I'm willing to excuse him for taking things at a more leisurely pace, but is our situation really so dire that this is a guy we have to be playing every day? So Langerhans is kind of banged up. And Saunders is getting special treatment. I understand. But why not just throw someone like Tui or Wilson out there and let Hall get some rest? I know that Wilson and Tui don't have any experience in the outfield, but I'd wager that an inexperienced outfielder is probably going to be better than a crippled one.

Ken Griffey Jr. led off the eighth with a fly ball to center that Vernon Wells ran down in front of the track. As the ball settled into his glove, Dave Sims announced "...and...IT'S GONE!" I don't have anything witty to add. I've just never quite seen that before. I mean, wow.

Ichiro: 2-5, .3554
Mauer: DNP, .3714

Roster Moves

Jeff — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:45:35 -0000

Tacoma's elimination last night freed up a couple current prospects and one former one, so Adam Moore, Matt Tuiasosopo, and Garrett Olson are on their way to join the Mariners. Neither Moore nor Tui are expected to play a whole lot - Moore's a third stringer and Tui will ironically be used as a defensive replacement - but these call-ups are as much about experiencing the environment as experiencing game action, so both of them should benefit. Also, Olson.

To make room for Moore on the 40-man roster, the M's are cutting ties with Stephen Kahn. You might remember Stephen Kahn for throwing one inning in the last three years. It was a bad inning.

On Spring Surprises

Jeff — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:23:30 -0000

One of the brightest stars so far - at least as far as the coaching staff is concerned - has been Chris Jakubauskas, a converted outfielder who toiled in the Indy Leagues before signing with the Mariners and pitching well in West Tennessee and Tacoma. He's become something of a sleeper to break camp with the M's based on his ability to throw strikes. The issue is that that's kind of all he does. Among 123 starters with at least 100 xOuts in the PCL last year, Jakubauskas' 65.8% strike rate was a full standard deviation above average, but his ability to induce groundballs was middle-of-the-pack and his 5.8% swinging strike rate came in 120th, between Joe Woerman and Tyler Lumsden. That's 5.8% against AAA competition, with a league average of 8.8%. That's bad.

Jakubauskas throws enough strikes and has a good enough changeup to keep from embarrassing himself on a bigger stage, but realistically, there's nothing special about him, and his upside is far lower than that of many of our other bullpen candidates. He's a good story who just isn't good enough. Which might be for the best, since I'm already damn tired of hearing jokes about his name. It's long. We get it. You're more predictable than Friends.

Chris Shelton has 13 hits and three homers in 25 at bats so far this month, and is doing a wonderful job of securing a roster spot as the other half of the 1B platoon. Shelton was always the favorite, but unless he takes a nasty turn for the worse over these next couple weeks, at this point he's all but a guarantee. That's good news for ginger people. Don't be alarmed by Shelton's reverse platoon splits in the Majors - the samples are small, reverse platoon splits don't really exist, and he was normal in the minors. Going forward, we can say with near-absolute certainty that Shelton is a more productive bat against lefties than he is against righties. This platoon isn't going to light anyone's hair on fire with its awesomeness, but it ought to be solid.

All I'm going to say about Matt Tuiasosopo is that you better hope he's almost ready, since there's pretty much no way that Beltre re-signs after the season. It really is remarkable how well Tui has bounced back from his .185/.259/.218 stint in AA a few years ago. Say what you will about the many questionable operating philosophies of the Bill Bavasi administration, but the whole rush-prospects-until-they-fail thing seems to have worked out okay, all things considered.

Felix has yet to allow a run so far in the WBC, which is good. But he's walked six batters in 8.2 innings, which is bad. He only threw 57% fastballs against Puerto Rico the other day, which is good. Only 53% of those fastballs were strikes, which is bad.

Carlos Silva has only allowed one run in WBC play, but then Carlos Silva has thrown 11 innings against Italy and the Netherlands.

Jose Lopez, Endy Chavez, Ichiro, and Kenji Johjima are a combined 27-70 in the WBC with 13 extra-base hits. Ichiro's been the worst. Lopez has just been flipping out, with five doubles, two homers, and one single that he tried to stretch into a double (nearly succeeding). He also has three walks and zero strikeouts as part of a talented lineup. I don't know how much to read into this, if at all, but what I can say for sure is that this can't possibly be bad news. A Jose Lopez breakout season at the plate would be a godsend to a Mariners team that's right on the verge of making the AL West awfully interesting.

Of all the Mariner pitchers in camp, none have performed better than Randy Messenger. Which is pretty convincing evidence of why ST stats are retarded. But anyway, Messenger's a four-pitch righty with a straight fastball, and because his change isn't very good, he uses his curveball instead as his primary offspeed pitch to lefties. A contact guy who doesn't keep the ball on the ground, Messenger's only as good as his ability to stay in the zone, and while his 2008 was solid in that regard (in both the Majors and AAA), his strike-throwing track record is barely above average. It's interesting that his top PITCHf/x similary score is the doesn't-suck Ricky Nolasco. Messenger's a nobody reliever with 174.1 innings under his belt as a nobody reliever, and nothing he does this spring short of throwing 100 miles per hour somehow should be able to get him a roster spot. That he looks like a total douche can't be helping him either.