SB Nation - Ian Snell

Pirates Can't Learn Much From Phillies

Charlie — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 22:05:52 -0000

More photos » by Ross D. Franklin - AP

Philadelphia Phillies' Cole Hamels throws against the Arizona Diamondbacks, Tuesday, July 28, 2009, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

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John Mehno has the right idea in this Beaver County Times column about the differences between the Pirates and Phillies--it's not primarily about spending, it's about building by acquiring amateur talent. But while the technique of comparing some great Phillies draft picks (Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, and so on) to picks the Pirates botched at similar points in their drafts is effective for an article written with a word count for a general audience, it doesn't quite tell the whole story.

The Phillies' case is really weird. If you look at their drafts under previous GM Ed Wade (that's basically the time frame described in the Beaver County article), it's very surprising they've been so successful. Working backwards, the best player they got in 2005 was current Athletics reliever Josh Outman; they also got current Reds reliever Matt Maloney. That was it. In 2004 they got J.A. Happ in the third round, Jason Jaramillo in the second, and Lou Marson in the fourth, but they also took Greg Golson as a dubious tools pick in the first round and got nothing in the later rounds. In 2003 they had no first- or second-round pick; they got Michael Bourn and Kyle Kendrick, and that was it.

In 2002 the Phils took Cole Hamels in the first round, which was obviously a great pick, but they got absolutely nothing else. In 2001, it was Gavin Floyd in the first round and Howard in the fifth, and absolutely nothing else. In 2000, they got Utley, Taylor Buchholz and nothing else. In 1999, it was Brett Myers, Marlon Byrd and nothing else. (They also drafted Joe Saunders, but didn't sign him.)

Now, maybe this doesn't sound too noteworthy to some of you. Maybe you think that if you get one good player out of a draft, that's great, and to a certain extent that's true. In this case, the results speak for themselves. But what's odd to me about the Phillies' drafts under Wade is how incredibly thin they were. Wade seemed to get a star player and almost nothing else every year for several seasons in a row. That's strange.

To see what I mean, let's take a look at Wade's first draft for the Phillies in 1998. He took Pat Burrell with the first overall pick (a bit of a no-brainer), but he also got several moderately useful players later on, such as Jason Michaels, Geoff Geary and Nick Punto.

In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter that much if you fail to identify the next Nick Punto in your draft, but it does raise the question of why, if the Phillies are supposed to be a good example of intelligent drafting, they were able to identify so many star players but so few other future productive major leaguers.

Here's an example. In 2000 the Phillies got Utley, who single-handedly made the draft a very successful one for Philadelphia. The same year, the Pirates got Chris Young, Nate McLouth, Ian Snell, Jose Bautista and Sean Burnett. I'd say the Pirates actually did a much better job in that draft, even though it turned out worse--Dave Littlefield stupidly traded away Young a couple years later, and first-rounder Burnett's career was derailed with a ton of injuries. Drafting players who will stay healthy and helping them stay healthy involve skills, of course, and it certainly helps to not take a pitcher in the first round every year like the Pirates did. But there's luck involved too. For example, the Phillies were notably lucky that, for example, high school draftee Hamels basically made it to the majors with his elbow and shoulder intact, particularly after he missed huge chunks of his minor league career with injuries.

In 2001 the Phillies got Floyd, later sent to the White Sox in the Jim Thome trade, and Howard. That was all. Again, the Pirates had a much more robust draft, grabbing a number of moderately useful players in Zach Duke, Chris Shelton, Jeff Keppinger, Chris Duffy, Jonathan Albaladejo and Rajai Davis. (They also might have had some shot of signing 11th-rounder Stephen Drew if Littlefield, who was hired shortly after the draft, hadn't dropped the ball.) The Pirates royally messed up their first-round pick, John Van Benschoten, and that was their fault, but again, I'm not really convinced that Wade and the Phillies had a better idea of what they were doing.

Of course, Littlefield and his team started drafting in 2002, and after that all bets are off. There's no defending much of anything Littlefield did. My point, though, is that I'm not sure the Wade-era Phillies are a particularly good model here. In fact, it looks to me that they repeatedly got very lucky with about one pick each year and totally bombed the rest of their drafts under Wade, with the exceptions of 1998 and 2004. I don't mean to take anything away from the Phillies, who have generally been pretty well run since Wade left. But If there are things the Pirates can learn from this, they are the very basic points that, first, it's generally very important not to screw up first-round picks, and second, that it's important to build a core of homegrown stars. Beyond that, the Phillies' example doesn't tell us a whole lot.

Community Projection Review: Shortstop

Charlie — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 19:23:35 -0000

More photos » by Ben Margot - AP

3 months ago: Seattle Mariners' Jack Wilson swings for an RBI two-run single off Oakland Athletics' Clayton Mortensen in the second inning of a baseball game Friday, Sept. 4, 2009, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)

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Next up in the list of community projections is Jack Wilson.

Community: .271/.313/.360

ZiPS: .267/.317/.358

Actual: .255/.292/.362 (includes 31 games with the Mariners)

Bonus: We predicted Wilson's last game with the Pirates would be August 13; actually his last game was July 27.

The closest guesser was Bolton, who had Wilson at .249/.294/.350.

Wilson actually hit relatively well for him during the portion of the year when he was a Pirate--his .691 OPS with the Bucs was a bit above his career average. After being dealt to Seattle with Ian Snell for Ronny Cedeno, Jeff Clement and minor league pitchers Brett Lorin, Nathan Adcock and Aaron Pribanic, though, Wilson completely fell apart, missing time with a hamstring injury, the flu, and then a heel bruise that shut him down for good in mid-September. He also failed to hit when he did play.

The Mariners have an $8.4 million option on Wilson for 2010, with a $600,000 buyout. Back when the Pirates had Wilson, that option looked somewhat reasonable, especially in light of the mediocre shortstop free agent class and the Pirates' absence of credible shortstop options in the minors. Given the way Wilson finished the season, $8.4 million (or, subtracting the sunk cost of the buyout, $7.8 million) seems like way too much to pay. The Pirates also dodged a bullet by not signing Wilson to an extension while they still had him.

Given all that, Neal Huntington did very well to buy low on Cedeno, ridding themselves of the problem of what to do with Wilson while acquiring a credible alternative. Cedeno isn't Wilson on defense, but he isn't bad, and offensively he did a good impression of a decent Jack Wilson season, hitting .258/.307/.394 with the Bucs. He's also five years younger than Wilson, so he has at least some chance of improving in the next couple of years. Obviously, he hasn't yet proven himself to be a long-term answer at shortstop, but it's equally unclear that Wilson would have been. It is, of course, possible that Cedeno will fall apart next year, but it's also possible he takes a step forward, and anyway the Pirates really just need someone to get through the next year or two until a real big-league shortstop (possibly Chase D'Arnaud) finally emerges from the minors.

Meanwhile, Snell showed few genuine signs of improvement in Seattle--he somehow posted a 4.20 ERA there, but he walked more batters than he struck out. Clement struggled after a quick start in the Pirates organization, but that may have had something to do with an oblique strain that may have cost him a chance at a September callup. Lorin pitched very well down the stretch at West Virginia, and Adcock and Pribanic still look like at least marginal prospects. (Pribanic had a terrific ERA for West Virginia, but he still isn't striking anyone out.) Unless Snell improves, it may turn out that the Mariners get almost nothing from the Wilson trade. Cedeno alone could make it a good one for the Pirates.

83-77, Game Notes

Jeff — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 07:37:14 -0000

More photos » by Ted S. Warren - AP

Seattle Mariners pitcher Mark Lowe swings a carefully switched sock full of marbles as he prepares to throw a pitch high and inside in the eighth inning of a MLB baseball game against the Texas Rangers, Friday, Oct. 2, 2009, at Safeco Field in Seattle.

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On the plus side, a tied-for-2nd-place-in-the-division banner would've just looked really pathetic.

It's a shame Ian Snell couldn't have swapped his last start and this one, because after the excitement that he generated with his performance against Toronto, tonight was a bit of a letdown. He didn't have good command of anything and admitted as much, and though I was keeping an eye on his front foot and thought it looked okay, it (A) both came and went, and (B) clearly isn't going to be some magic insta-fix. It's just one of several adjustments the coaching staff would like to see him make.

The good news is that the stuff was mostly there. Snell topped out at 95mph and threw a ton of sliders or slurves or whatever you want to call that breaking ball of his, and his nine missed bats gave him his second-best swinging strike rate as a Mariner. But the downside - and this has been Snell's problem all year long - is that it's just so incredibly difficult to succeed when you're only throwing 60% of your pitches for strikes. Good Snell - 2007 Snell - was up at 65%. So far this year he's at 59%, and tonight he just couldn't find the zone for the life of him for the first three innings or so. He managed to settle down after that and get through six (quality start!), but three innings of bad and three innings of good is no way to survive as a starting pitcher. Snell needs to be able to find a consistent rhythm, and that he's been just about incapable to date is the reason why he's a work in progress.

What I've found interesting is how often we've seen Snell with a smile on his face. For a guy who as a Pirate was so utterly miserable, it's been nice to see him come over and enjoy himself again. It's a completely new environment, one that Snell says he likes, so there's reason to hope that he can be repaired. It's just going to have to wait until next season. Which I suspected all along, but secretly and irrationally wanted to see a little sooner.

When it's a cold day and he gets all bundled up in the broadcast booth, Dave Niehaus looks like a cuddly little teddy bear. I know we use this word a lot around here, but a cold, neckless, and red-cheeked Niehaus is completely adorable.

So the team MVP award as voted on by the local chapter of the BBWAA was bestowed upon Ichiro before the game, with Franklin Gutierrez finishing as the runner-up. Personally I think Gutierrez's performance in the clutch (.965 OPS in high-leverage situations) should've put him over the top, but Ichiro's awesome and in no way an unworthy pick, and what's really amazing is that Gutierrez got consideration from a bunch of writers in the first place.

Do we care about these awards? Do we care about any awards? I feel like having really good value-based statistics updated on a daily basis kind of diminishes the significance. Back in the day awards were probably both somewhat surprising and considered a high honor, but now it seems the only thing they're good for is getting fans really mad at each other. I'm sure the players care a little, but as an outsider, man, whatever.

Jose Lopez won the team's Heart And Hustle award, which is one of those things I didn't think I'd ever write three years ago, or three hours ago.

Speaking of Jose Lopez, the fourth inning saw him come up with a man on second and hit a single without advancing the baserunner. Which I'm just going to go ahead and chalk up as his 25th walk.

Also in the fourth, Sims and Blowers were talking about how at one point a while ago the Rangers got really close to firing Ron Washington, but then the team improved and his became a popular name in conversations about the AL's best managers. "Sometimes the moves you don't make turn out to be better," said Blowers. Right on. Sometimes it's the moves you make. Sometimes it's the moves you don't make. Chances are, if something works out for you, it's because of something you did, or something you didn't do.

Apparently Mariner catchers are allowed to hang on to throws home after all.

A few days ago I got a text from Red saying that tonight would be Adrian Beltre Appreciation Night. Beltre did him proud by going 2-4 with a double, a steal, a run, and an RBI. It's been a rough year for both Adrian and Red, but these last two nights have been special, and I'm wondering if Beltre's planning one final surprise for his biggest fan before the end of the year. Or the other way around. Either one, really.

That steal, by the way, was so totally Adrian Beltre in a nutshell. Standing on second with two out, attempting a steal would've been stupid and pointlessly risky, but Beltre tried it anyway, looking dead to rights but then by some miraculous feat of reflexes and quick thinking pulling his hand back at just the right moment and avoiding the tag. It was one of the greatest slides I've ever seen, but it was also a slide on a play that shouldn't have happened in the first place. Sunday may turn out to be Beltre's final game in a Mariner uniform, but he will long be remembered for succeeding despite looking like a retard. I'm gonna miss you, you crazy son of a bitch.

On Ian Snell's Front Foot

Jeff — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 22:24:54 -0000

Is everything fixed? Absolutely not. But this is a sign of progress. Or it's a sign of something, anyway. I have no idea if this is the key to unlocking Ian Snell, but I might as well stick to the story.

Be you warned, for here there be .gif(s).

80-75, Game Notes

Jeff — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 23:04:01 -0000

More photos » by Fred Thornhill - AP

God we really are white

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I love baseball in the morning on weekends. Really, I just love mornings on the weekends, but baseball gives me a reason to wake up for them. Getting up early on a Saturday or a Sunday is unpleasant at first, but once I'm out of bed and functioning like a normal person, I get to sit down with a mug of tea and enjoy a relaxing day that's way longer than they usually are. Everything seems less formal and proceeds at a more agreeable pace. The baseball's less annoying. I don't feel the slightest bit of stress. I get to see a side of my backyard that I rarely get to see on the weekend (This is the seldom-observed 9am Saturday lawn. This is the more familiar 1pm Saturday lawn. The 1pm lawn really sucks). And then when the game's over, I still have some of the afternoon and all of the night to make plans. There aren't enough of these days in a year.

Sometime in the early innings Dave Sims asked Mike Blowers about playing these late-season games that don't have playoff implications. Blowers said something to the effect of, every game meant something, because he was playing for his job. I think that's a really important point for all of us to remember. As fans, these games are pretty meaningless to us, but it's not fair to throw that word around all willy-nilly because the games really do still mean a lot to every one of the players and coaches. The coaches want to finish strong. The veterans want to set an example and finish on a good note. And the younger guys or role players are forever fighting for their future employment. This is the biggest reason why I usually don't buy in when someone accuses a bad team of "giving up" - if there were players who truly gave up, they'd shortly be out of a job.

To you and me, these games are meaningless. To the team, they're a chance to finish above .500. To Bill Hall, they're a chance to get a shot as a regular in 2010. To Ichiro, they're a chance to continue making history. To Felix, they're a chance to win a Cy Young. Every player has a reason to keep giving it his all. These games are anything but meaningless to them.

Today made two times in two days that one of the Mariner announcers mentioned that the Maple Leafs haven't won a Stanley Cup since 1967. If you're not a hockey fan or, more specifically, an Ottawa fan, you probably didn't enjoy those remarks as much as I did. God bless the Daves.

Welcome to Seattle, Ian Snell. Thanks for finally showing up. Snell looked nothing like the guy we hoped we were getting in previous Mariner starts. Through ten games, he had more walks than strikeouts and a ghastly 57.9% strike rate. The best thing anyone could say about him was that he clearly still had some good stuff and might benefit from an offseason away from the field.

Today, though - today, we caught a 6.2-inning glimpse of what Snell could look like if the team gets him fixed. Against a lineup with four lefties in it, Snell attacked, throwing strikes with nearly three-quarters of his fastballs and setting himself up for a lot of breaking ball strikeout opportunities. He got to a two-strike count against 14 of 27 guys and was able to throw a lot of good breaking balls down in the zone. It wasn't a matter of getting ahead early - Snell threw just 12 first-pitch strikes - but instead of coming apart Snell was often able to battle back strong and keep himself in control. This was a definite step forward. I wasn't keeping an eye on his foot very often (some people say it was better, but I can neither confirm nor deny), but whatever he did, he should do more of. This was about as good as I ever imagined Ian Snell could look.

13 swinging strikes, by the way, with six on the slurve and seven on the fastball. Speaking of that slurve, today it ranged from 75 to 87 miles per hour. I'm sure there are different pitches in there, but they're impossible to separate; Snell basically just has a ~12mph range on his breaking ball. So for anyone tempted to call him a two-pitch pitcher, that's not necessarily wrong, but it's not exactly right.

Fitting how Snell earned a win in five previous mediocre efforts as a Mariner and then got a big fat no-decision out of his best.

I don't know what Travis Snider or the Blue Jays were doing, but in the top of the third, Snider had Ichiro played perfectly on a sinking drive to left. I thought that was a certain single.

It's kind of interesting that this team has Snell, Bill Hall, and Adrian Beltre on it - three guys with loads of talent that previously posted ~one absolute monster season. It's sort of a lesson in probability: if you take two guys, and they have similar track records, but one of them has more raw talent, the latter will have a higher chance of putting up crazy numbers. Snell, Hall, and Beltre have all struck gold before, but that didn't so much establish a new true talent level as it did simply confirm that they possessed the ability to go nuts. I don't think I'm explaining this very well. Forget it.

Anyway, on Hall, who's been a source of frustration since coming over, it's worth pointing out that while he doesn't make a lot of contact, his plate discipline numbers now are almost identical to what they were in 2006 when he was a 5-win player. He hits the ball only a little bit less often than he used to. He just doesn't hit the ball as well. I don't know what to make of that, but figuring out why that is is going to be one of the team's biggest projects.

In the bottom of the eighth, Wak let Mark Lowe face Lyle Overbay, who's a lefty, before pulling him so that Garrett Olson could face Travis Snider, who's a lefty. That was weird.

In three consecutive innings, the Mariners loaded the bases with one out, and out of those three innings they managed to squeeze a total of one run. Lowe got the blown save and Shawn Kelley got the loss, but this whole thing could have been so easily avoided.

Could the Pirates Lose 110 Games in 2010?

Charlie — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 21:50:23 -0000

More photos » by Alan Diaz - AP

A thought experiment: Brandon Moss may be bad, but if he starts the season hitting .100, is he really a .100 hitter?

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That this post even needs to be written speaks volumes about where the Pirates are right now. But despite the Bucs' spectacular collapse since the trades, I think it's far too early to worry, as many of you have, about losing 110 games next year. It's true that the Pirates' play over the last month would put them on pace for far worse than a 110-loss season. But that doesn't mean a 110-loss season will actually happen. A 110-loss team would be among the worst teams in modern baseball history. In the last 40 years, only two teams, the 2003 Tigers and the 2004 Diamondbacks, have lost as many as 110 games in a season, which means that if the Pirates lost 110, they would have to be considered one of the worst teams in modern baseball history. I think there is plenty of evidence that shows that they are bad. I don't think there is nearly enough to show that they are historically bad.

The irony here is that, way back in 2007, I myself was pointing out that the 2010 Pirates were going to be spectacularly bad. I even suggested what some of you are now saying--that they could lose 110 games. Most of the core players on that 2007 team--Jason Bay, Adam LaRoche, Freddy Sanchez, Jose Castillo, Xavier Nady, Salomon Torres--were scheduled to become free agents after 2009, and Jack Wilson had an expensive 2010 option. In addition, they had one of the worst general managers in the history of baseball at the helm and next to nothing in the farm system. That the Bucs would be quite awful in 2010 has been obvious for a long time now, and frankly Neal Huntington bears very little responsibility for it. In 2007, it looked like a perfect storm of a terrible big-league team, no prospects and inept management was brewing, and I think it was maybe only a little hyperbolic to write that a 110-loss campaign in 2010 was likely.

The reason I don't think it's likely now is that Huntington has taken enough steps to improve the 2010 situation that I think we can remove "historically bad" from the set of likely possibilities for now.

I realize that's a counterintuitive conclusion, since clearly Huntington's eyes are set at a point well beyond 2010 and the Bucs aren't playing very well right now. But without Huntington there would be no Ross Ohlendorf or Daniel McCutchen, who were acquired in the Nady deal. There would be no Charlie Morton, since the Pirates under Littlefield would not allow Nate McLouth to start and therefore to acquire value on the trade market. It's quite possible Littlefield would have started Nyjer Morgan in 2009, but back in mid-2007 his breakout would have been extremely hard to foresee (since Morgan hadn't even made his major league debut at that point), and trading him for Lastings Milledge and Joel Hanrahan would have been even harder to foresee. Without Huntington the Pirates probably still would have had Ian Snell, but they wouldn't have Ronny Cedeno or Jeff Clement. Those guys--Ohlendorf, Morton, Milledge, Hanrahan, Cedeno, Clement--are all major league players. Maybe not great ones, in some cases, but certainly useful ones, and one characteristic of 110-loss teams is that they have very few useful players.

Also, a number of decent prospects--Pedro Alvarez, Jose Tabata, Brad Lincoln, Chase D'Arnaud, Rudy Owens, Ron Uviedo, Jeff Locke, Tim Alderson--will be either in the high minors or on the verge of arriving there. That may sound like a trivial point, but actually it isn't. 110-loss seasons can be avoided simply by having a storehouse of players who might be able to fill in competently.

Now, maybe Littlefield would have traded Bay and some of the other core players, too. I doubted that at the time, though, because doing so would have meant admitting that he basically had nothing after five or six years on the job, and because he was basically acting like 2010 did not exist, as if the Pirates would be contracted before the season started. That was my reason for thinking 110 losses was possible then. Now it appears that Huntington is at least aware that the Pirates will be playing baseball next season. That might not mean much, but it's something.

The most critical point here, though, is that losing 110 games is spectacularly difficult to do. It requires either extreme negligence or a combination of negligence and bad luck. Merely being a very poor team, which I agree the Pirates probably will be, simply does not get the job done. Let's take the two teams that lost 110, for example.

The 2004 Diamondbacks reached 110 losses through both negligence and luck. Not only did they have the worst offense in the league--an outcome that is surely also a possibility for the 2010 Pirates--but they really had no starting rotation after Randy Johnson (who was brilliant) and Brandon Webb. The five pitchers who had the most starts for them were Casey Fossum, Steve Sparks, Casey Daigle, Edgar Gonzalez, and Lance Cormier, and all of those guys had ERAs over six. Arizona finished 27th in the majors in ERA, and one of the three teams that fared worse was the Rockies. And the Diamondbacks still only got to 110 through bad luck--their Pythagorean record was "only" 54-108.

The 2010 Bucs really don't even belong in the same conversation with the '03 Tigers, who lost 119 games. The Tigers only had one pitcher throw more than 20 innings with an ERA below 4.50; the '09 Pirates, by comparison, have seven pitchers currently in their organization who have done that this year. The Tigers basically had one good hitter (Dmitri Young), and the lower part of their lineup and their bench were filled with guys (Brandon Inge, Warren Morris, Ramon Santiago, Shane Halter, Gene Kingsale, Omar Infante, Matt Walbeck, Andres Torres) who just didn't belong in the majors. It wasn't a case of a team merely being bad; it was a case of a team simply not taking the steps necessary to ensure that there was a real team on the field.

When I say that the Pirates are unlikely to lose 110 games next year, I'm not paying the Pirates a compliment. I'm just saying these 110-loss prognostications are the result of either over-the-top despair about the Bucs' recent play, or a misunderstanding about how incredibly hard it actually is to lose 110.

Another possibility is that people think you can extrapolate the Bucs' play the last couple months over the course of an entire season. You can't. By way of example, let's look at Brandon Moss. Let's say he's the Bucs' fourth outfielder next year and he starts the season 6-for-60, for a batting average of .100.

Now, we would be perfectly justified to say that Moss is terrible. We already would have been thinking that Moss is pretty terrible, given the way he hit in 2009. And then he went and started 2010 6-for-60. Ugh! Terrible.

But would be justified to say that he will continue to bat .100? Well, no. True, he already batted .100 in his first 60 at bats, but hitting .100 over the long haul is especially hard to do. First of all, we have to consider that Brandon Moss has, at various points, done things that suggest he can be much better than a .100 hitter. For example, in 2009 he's batting .241. Not very good, but way better than .100. Also, he made his way through the minors and got all the way to the big leagues, even briefly joining a good team, the Boston Red Sox. He has some skill, and players with some skill can usually hit better than .100. Even Mario Mendoza hit .215 for his career.

So we'd be justified to be annoyed at Moss' poor start. We'd also be justified to factor that poor start into our guesses about what he might do going forward. But it wouldn't make much sense to predict he'll be a .100 hitter.

Guessing the 2010 Bucs will lose 110 games is like that. Yes, they've been extremely bad since the trades. But they have three downright functional starting pitchers in Ohlendorf, Zach Duke and Paul Maholm, plus Morton, who easily could make his way into that category next year. They have Andrew McCutchen, who's a plain old good player. They have Garrett Jones who, while due for some serious regression next year, has probably staked a pretty reasonable claim that he's at least going to be useful. They have Ryan Doumit, who in 2008 was a force as an offensively-minded catcher. They have Milledge and Hanrahan, who have shown promise since arriving. They have guys like Ronny Cedeno, Andy LaRoche and Jason Jaramillo who, while they're not exactly inspiring, have shown they at least belong in the majors. There's also at least a reasonable chance that Pedro Alvarez is going to burst onto the scene at some point next season and go nuts.

I'm not saying that's much. It isn't. I'm saying it doesn't take much to avoid 110 losses, and that while anything's possible, I think the Pirates have what it takes. Don't take that as wild-eyed optimism, because again, it isn't. I'm only saying that I think the Pirates can avoid a complete disaster season, and the fact that they've actually been a disaster since the trades doesn't really change that.

Ian Snell Rips Pirate Pitching Coaches

Charlie — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:40:22 -0000

More photos » by Jeff Chiu - AP

3 months ago: Seattle Mariners' Ian Snell pitches against the Oakland Athletics in the first inning of a baseball game Thursday, Sept. 3, 2009, in Oakland, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

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Via the PBC Blog, Ian Snell credits his Mariners pitching coaches with making some sort of adjustment to his delivery, which apparently turned things around for him and proves "how much more they want to win here [in Seattle] than over there."

Not to, y'know, point out the obvious, but:

Snell with Pittsburgh: 80.7 IP, 52 K, 44 BB, 7 HR, 5.36 ERA

Snell with Seattle: 46.3 IP, 25 K, 30 BB, 6 HR, 4.86 ERA

There's no evidence that Snell has improved much of anything. His last five or so starts with Seattle have looked better than his first few, but that could just be normal variance; after all, he walked five batters in his second-to-last start. His peripherals are actually worse in Seattle than they were with Pittsburgh. But hey, you know, whatever. The Pirates are pretty easy scapegoats.

Series Preview: Chicago White Sox @ Seattle Mariners

Jeff — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:37:51 -0000

Seattle: 74-70
Chicago: 71-73

SUMMARY

	MARINERS	WHITE SOX	EDGE
HITTING (wOBA)	-89.1 (29th)	-62.7 (26th)	CHW
FIELDING (UZR)	72.5 (1st)	-38.7 (24th)	SEA
ROTATION (pRAA)	-28.7 (23rd)	61.8 (6th)	CHW
BULLPEN (pRAA)	-24.6 (29th)	30.2 (3rd)	CHW
OVERALL(RAA)	-69.9	-9.4	Chicago

Just another series where we play a team with a worse record and a better overall performance. It's rather remarkable just how poor Chicago's position players have been this year; where the Mariners have at least been able to catch the balls hit at them, the White Sox haven't been able to hit or field, with the result being a group worth something like nine or ten wins below average. What's been able to keep them on the fringes of the race is an outstanding pitching staff led not by a few stars, but by a lot of guys who're average or better. Among them is Matt Thornton, who ranks near the top in pretty much every meaningful reliever metric. How I wish I could have a do-over on that one. Sorry for blasting you so much, Matt. I was young. I was stupid.

The Mariners are playing for pride and a .500+ record. The White Sox are still trying to squeak into the playoffs, and though they're 6.5 back, they still have six more games against Detroit, so not all hope is lost. It's not much, but realistically, this will probably be our last chance to play spoiler, so here's to making a difference. Let's give Chicago as dull a final few weeks as ours.

GAMES

Game 1: Freddy Garcia vs. Ian Snell
Game 2: TBA (Carlos Torres? D.J. Carrasco? Daniel Hudson?) vs. Ryan Rowland-Smith *
Game 3: Gavin Floyd vs. Brandon Morrow

Garcia was a workhorse for Chicago from the minute he got traded, throwing nearly 550 innings over two and a half seasons and helping the Sox win a World Series. He then got sent to Philadelphia in December 2006 and promptly came apart. He's only made 19 Major League starts in the three years since, but he seems to have worked his way back, and in the early going so far he's been pretty difficult to hit, with a 74% contact rate and what Fangraphs lists as a five-pitch assortment. The velocity isn't really there anymore, and he has a difficult time breaking 90, but he should nevertheless have the advantage in a matchup against Ian Snell, who gets rattled when he tries a new cereal.

Chicago hasn't yet officially announced a starter for Wednesday. Two of the candidates are interesting. Three of the candidates could own us.

Thursday brings us a matchup between a guy who's finally learned how to pitch and a guy who's still trying to. Floyd's strikeout and contact numbers are significantly better than they've been in the past, and as a result he's actually somewhat earned his shiny ERA. The four-year contract he signed in March looked kind of stupid then, but looks terrific now. Morrow, meanwhile...God, whatever.

Brushing Up On Ian Snell

colintj — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:48:10 -0000

Good Stuff

The table is ripped from Kalk's tool database and meshes with what I've seen in the brooks pfx stuff, so I went with the one that charted an order of magnitude more pitches. What we see is a pretty decent repertoire. The fastball movement is pretty blah, but throws hard enough. Judging from the brooks graphs, his velocity increases as the inning wears on. He can get up to 95-96, but is usually in the 92-94 range. That's plus velocity. The slider doesn't look particularly good, but that's the hardest pitch to eyeball for me. The Kalk database says 16% of all sliders went for whiffs, which is well above average. The change up looks more like I'd expect a splitter to look, but it gets an average whiff rate and doesn't get too beat up when put in play. That's two plus pitches and an average one. We'd expect perhaps some struggles against lefties, but more or less domination against RHB. Remember the chart from the Dan Hudson BUO?

The suggestion is that an average fastball/slider combo will tear through a right handed lineup (this is actually my guess for the Sox woes against pitchers they haven't faced). Assuming Snell's stuff has been more or less the same throughout his career, what's he done with it?

Undomination

Career vs. RHB: .265/.327/.425, .320 BABIP, ~ .333 wOBA against.

Career vs. LHB: .293/.385/.483, .325 BABIP, ~ .386 wOBA against.

Well, not that much it turns out. Average righties stay average. Average lefties turn into Jim Thome. He's given up about 5 runs per 9 innings pitched over his career and it's become worse lately as his control has imploded. Lookout Landing (ht: WU!) has speculated that there are mechanical issues, especially with his foot landing. I'm not entirely sure there, since the slo-mo may be making it look worse than it is. There's a lot of shock that goes into a pitching motion in the first place. Still, it doesn't look great.

The brooks pfx was somewhat suggestive, but they really aren't calibrated to doing that kind of analysis--the data hasn't been corrected. In any case, the plots for each pitch type were very spread out and every individual pitch seemed to be doing something somewhat different than its similarly categorized brethren. This may be a visual rendering of poor control: if you don't have repeatable mechanics, it's likely that your pitches will vary more than a pitcher with repeatable mechanics. In any case, we can just point to Snell's walk rate, which for the last two seasons has been well above his career 4.12 BB/9 rate. In addition, he's had an elevated BABIP for his career and he's going to make his 125th MLB start tonight. Bad pitches get hit hard and are probably harder to defend. His lack of command is hurting him in more ways than one.

Nonetheless, he's obviously talented. It's why the M's acquired him when they had the chance. Frankly, it's too bad the Sox weren't in the running for his services. To echo some SSSers before the trade deadline, I'd be very interested to see what Coop could do with him.

Group Project

Jeff — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 23:25:57 -0000

I've been thinking a little more about Ian Snell's front foot today, and what effect (if any) it might be having on his performance. I'm generally loath to talk about pitching mechanics in terms of implications for health or success, since it's nigh impossible to identify any particular strong correlations, but I just did a Google image search for pretty much every good pitcher I could think of off the top of my head and to a man their front toes all point towards home plate, so I'm thinking there might be something to this.

So here's where you guys come into play. As sufficiently dedicated baseball fans to be reading a site like this, most of you should have at least a basic understanding of a typical pitching motion. For those of you who do, I'd like you to do three things for me:

1) In the safety of your own home or office or private space or whatever, slowly go through a normal pitching motion with your front foot pointed towards the plate (with an angle of 0-20 degrees)

2) Slowly go through a normal pitching motion with your front foot pointed at an angle more (but not completely) towards first or third base (depending on handedness; lefty = first, righty = third)

3) In the comments section, post your impressions

Thank you to anyone who participates. And if you can't sense any differences between the two motions, please, by all means, say so. Don't just post what you think you should feel. Post what you actually feel.

(Bunch of pictures after the jump.)

And so on.