SB Nation User Blog: Graham

Tommy Hanson, His 6/28 Start, and Pitch FX

Graham — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:07:48 -0000

More photos » by John Bazemore - AP

Please welcome Graham MacAree to the BtB community. He's one of the managers of Lookout Landing, SBN's Mariners blog and has accepted the challenge of writing about baseball using saber principles without using a lot of numbers. Let's see how well he's done in his BtB debut... (Hint: quite well.)

Why: I'm pretty interested in whether proper use of pitch FX tools can supplement (or act as a substitute for) detailed scouting reports. We've seen a few teams move in this direction over the past year, so obviously some think it can be done, but I'd like to run through an analysis of a start using pitch FX and compare what I find to the conclusions of the scouts. The problem is, of course, that I watch enough baseball to have seen most of MLB's notable starters pitch in game situations, so I generally have a pretty good idea of what they throw, how hard they throw it, and the relative effectiveness of each of their pitches. Fortunately, in putative Braves ace Tommy Hanson, we have a perfect case study in someone I've both never seen before and have access to scouting reports on. I'm going to have a look at his last start against Boston, play with pitch FX, and then after I'm done go through the scouting report available in BP's 2009 Prospect Handbook and see if there are any significant differences. With all the preamble out of the way... let's dive in.

Tommy Hanson is a rookie 22 year old right handed pitcher, playing in the National League for the Atlanta Braves. Widely regarded as one of the top pitching prospects in baseball, Hanson got clobbered in his first start against Milwaukee but has since bounced back, allowing just two runs to cross the plate in his next four games. On the 28th, he shut down a very hard hitting lineup when he threw six two-hit innings against the Boston Red Sox. But how did he do it? What did he throw?

One of the great tools pitch FX gives us is the velocity and 'break' of each pitch in the x (left and right, from the catcher's perspective) and z (up and down) directions. Break is a somewhat tricky concept to wrap your head around, as it refers to the deviation of a specific pitch from the path of a ball thrown with no spin, i.e. a pitch with no forces other than gravity and air resistance acting upon it. This leads to un-intuitive results like fastballs having an 'upwards' break, due to their backspin, and as a result the actual numbers involved are not particularly useful. When they are plotted, however, we suddenly have a way of distinguishing what pitches were thrown, as different grips will tend to cluster in different areas on a break x/z graph. The other thing we can do to make different pitch types more obvious is to mark velocity on the graph, allowing us to distinguish between pitches which move in the same way but at different speeds. Below is a graph showing the movement on Tommy Hanson's pitches on Sunday, with velocity of each pitch shown using colour.

That looks to me like four distinct pitches: a fastball, two different breaking balls, and a changeup. The fastballs are obvious - they're the ones going fast. They've got some cutting action on right-handers but not very much sink to them. Hiding amidst all the fastballs are two lonely changeups, each thrown around 10 mph slower than their speedier cousins.I haven't seen many pitchers whose changeups move in exactly the same way as their heaters, but hey, there you go. Surprising result #1. I wonder whether having fastball movement would make the changeup more effective at disrupting timing, because otherwise it seems like it would be fairly hittable. That leaves two breaking pitches, and the one with more vertical break is going to be a curveball (the purple cluster located bottom right), with lots of mid-low 80s sliders up and to the left. Gameday's pitch identification algorithm did a good job identifying fastballs and changeups but mixed up the curves and sliders up a lot, which is a good reminder not to put too much faith in it.

So with these four pitches identified, it's time to look at where Hanson threw them. The graph below is from the catcher's perspective, so left is inside to right handed batters and right is away. Pitch types are per my identification, not MLB's

Well that's not a lot of strikes. The first thing that jumps out here is just how many pitches missed the zone, generally in the direction that they break in. Sliders were missing down and right, fastballs up and left. Assumedly the sliders were being used as a strikeout pitch and were left off the plate to bait hitters into chasing, but the lack of fastball command is pretty alarming. The two changeups he threw were nowhere near the zone, but he did much better with the curveball. One thing a graph like this misses is the handedness of a batter. A pitcher's gameplan will never be the same for both right and left handed hitters, and therefore an overall graph doesn't tell the whole story.

vs. LHB	vs. RHB

So it looks like Hanson is currently terrified of major league lefties. Considering the lineup he faced, it's not hard to imagine why. J.D. Drew and David Ortiz aren't exactly the most fun guys to face, but when presented with the Native American version of Reggie Willits Hanson still refused to put anything over the plate. Away, away, away with the fastball. Basically the only time he came inside on a leftie was with the slider, and I'm not entirely sure that that was on purpose. Given that it's probably the single most useful pitch to throw to opposite handed batters, it's a little bit surprising that Hanson stayed away from the changeup, but there were plenty of curves thrown in. Avoiding anything inside against lefties is a habit of pitchers, especially young ones, so it's not like this is a particularly unique situation.

Against right handers Hanson was around the strike zone far more often, hitting it with the majority of his fastballs, sliders, and curveballs. The lone changeup he threw to ended up in the dirt, but it was one of only 18 pitches thrown to righties that wasn't at least a borderline strike. Considering the pitch distribution, I'm inclined to say that Hanson's control was much much better than it looks on the overall chart, but it does seem like he was pitching scared against lefties. The command looks like it needs some work - there were too many fastballs and sliders right down the pipe against right handed batters. But those were just the pitch types; let's take a look at what became of said pitches. I should point out that in the following three graphs, I define swinging strikes as including foul tips, and contact strikes as fouls plus balls in play.

It won't come as a huge shock to you that in general, batters laid off pitches outside the zone, that there was more contact in the zone, and that the umpires were generally pretty good at calling strikes, with only three completely egregious calls over Hanson's body of work. What does come as a bit of a shock is the fact that Hanson somehow managed induce ten swinging strikes while only striking out two batters. Running a ~10% swinging strike rate is a great way to rack up strikeouts, and the fact that Hanson didn't get very many is indicative on some bad luck on the distribution (or maybe batters changed approach when facing a two strike count, or his approached changed. I have no idea). Thirty-two balls over six innings is about right for two walks, though. Let's see if Hanson's fear of lefties was justified...

vs. LHB	vs. RHB

Lefties get screwed a lot on strike calls away, and Hanson was gifted with a few borderline called strikes. He only threw three pitches to a lefthander that I would regard as a definite called strike all game, and the umpire took two of those away, so that probably even things out. He did do a pretty good job of getting batters to chase, however, with his fastball and slider drawing two out-of-zone swinging strikes apiece. His curveball didn't seem that effective against lefthanders - he threw it five times, three of them for balls, one for a called strike, and a batter made contact once. The fact that lefties were making contact with pitches well outside probably drew some weak balls in play, which are even better than swinging strikes.

Against right handers Hanson enjoyed an occasionally expanded strike zone, with one called strike possibly the result of an umpire becoming temporarily insane. Although his fastball and slider were swing-and-miss pitches, righties were no more fooled by the curveball than left handers. Again, Hanson threw five curves, and this time four of them were hit while the other was a called strike. It's interesting that three of Hanson's five swinging strikes to righties were right down the middle, and I'd guess that it might be the result of having the pitcher bat (I probably shouldn't have been in such a hurry to delete the 'opposing batter' column whilst cleaning up the data). Throwing only fifteen balls to right-handed batters is also fairly impressive. Let's now take a closer look at the contact strikes, going straight to the by-batter-handedness graphs.

vs. LHB	vs. RHB

The left handers did not do particularly well against pitches outside, which is no big surprise. I have to assume that the one his on a pitch nearly in the opposing batter's box was a bloop single to left field, which is hardly a recipe for doing a lot of damage. The pitching outside seemed to work, ridiculous BABIP questions aside. Hanson's movement and velocity on the fastball/slider combination seem to be enough to help get him out of mistakes, with elevated fastballs down the middle fouled off not once, but twice. The two sliders he threw down and in, which is normally asking for trouble against lefties were likewise fouled off. If any of those had been well hit the ballgame could have been very different.

I can't think of anything interesting to say about the right-handed graph apart from both balls in play that didn't result in outs came on sliders. In fact, everything put in play and not resulting in an out: the two singles and an error - was the result of a breaking pitch. I'd chalk that up to fluke, however: the slider missed enough bats and drew enough fouls on mistake pitches that I'd be comfortable calling it a legitimate plus pitch. Hanson's start probably wasn't as good as it looked, just in terms of BABIP. You can cite weak grounders as a partial counterargument, but he's not going to get this lucky again while only striking out two in six innings. Fortunately for Hanson, he's probably not going to pitch this well over six innings without getting more strikeouts either, which will help mitigate the effects of a BABIP regression.

The last thing I want to look at is velocity; specifically how well it held up over his start. Below is Hanson's fastball velocity plotted against his fastball count:

As you can see, Hanson started off in the mid-90s but drifted down into the low 90s as the start wore on, even dropping to around 89 towards the very end. The trend is pretty clear, but the drop in velocity isn't severe enough that stamina is a major concern, any more so than it is for any young pitcher. What is obvious is that Hanson is not some sort of supernatural workhorse who's able to keep pumping in 94+ fastballs in the 7th inning and beyond. If you had the inclination (I don't right now), you could graph break by slider/curve count and see if you could spot any trends in movement throughout the course of the game.

Let's summarise what we've got out of the pitch FX data for this game:

Hanson has four pitches: fastball, changeup, slider, curve
Fastball sits in the mid-low 90s, has a lot of cutting motion
Curveball is a slow loopy thing with some horizontal break
His changeup has the same movement as his fastball with a 10 mph speed differential
Hanson stayed away aginst lefties, resulting in a lot of balls, but attacked righties.
Relies on fastball/slider, while neglecting changeup
Control is ok/good, command needs work
Umpires have a weird strike zone for left handed batters
Both the fastball and the slider are legit strikeout pitches
Hanson was unlucky not to get more Ks
Hanson was lucky not to allow more hits on balls in play
Stamina isn't bad, but isn't great

For the last part of this post, I'll compare the above bullets to BA's post-2008 scouting report. I got the pitches right, which is always a relief, and identified his top pitches correctly as the slider and the fastball. BA mentioned the cutting motion on his fastball, which was pretty pronounced in this game, and probably contributed to the lack of hits. Moving fastballs are reallllly hard to make solid contact with. I didn't get enough data on the changeup to make any guesses as to how useful it might be, but I thought far less of his curve than BA did, with them calling it a legitimate plus pitch while I noted that it seemed very hittable (they also like his change). Control was noted as an occasional problem, but in this game it looked pretty good, and it'll have been something he's been working on over the winter and spring. One thing I didn't look at which they brought up is his release point on various pitches being very similar, enhancing his ability to deceive his opponents.

All in all, I'd say that's pretty good for only 'scouting' one game. My differences with BA are minimal and could easily have been caused by a pitch being off that day, etc. Getting a few games analysed with pitch FX seems like a great supplement to traditional scouting, and could also be used to confirm what people are writing about young pitchers if you don't get to see them pitch in the majors live.

Ryan Langerhans: The Ugly

Graham — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 05:25:51 -0000

This doesn't feel ominous at all

Graham — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:43:52 -0000

Tacoma Top 8th

Pitcher Change: Jose Marte replaces Seth Etherton.
Prentice Redman strikes out swinging.
Michael Saunders doubles (11) on a fly ball to left fielder Trent Oeltjen.
Injury Delay.
Offensive Substitution: Pinch runner Jerry Owens replaces Michael Saunders.

Ruh-rohs. Please be nothing.

Update 2212: Apparently it's a strained hamstring which is a pretty happy outcome all things considered. He slid into second a little too hard and had to come out, but it didn't look too severe. H/T: nvn8vbryce at USSM

Fun With Numbers

Graham — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 04:20:00 -0000

More photos » by Tony Gutierrez - AP

Ken Griffey Jr. cropped out of this photo to comply with SBN rules on risque content.

Browse more photos »

So we know that Ichiro's been on fire lately, what with getting 49 hits in May and 47 so far in June. But how good has he actually been? Let's take a look.

Games: 66
wOBA: 0.393
bRAA: 17.5
UZR: 6.1
Replacement+positional: 7.1
WAR: 3.1
(#s per fangraphs, not including today's play)

He is so ridiculously good it's unreal. Prorating those numbers to a 154 game season gives 7.2 wins above replacement. If we ignore the injury and give him the 8 games he missed back, the total goes over 7.6. His season so far, especially considering that he started on the DL, is utterly absurd. Ichiro's getting hits like it's 2004 - except for the fact that his slugging percentage has been flirting with .500 for so long that they're about to get settled down and start a family. And this is all after putting up his worst season in three years in 2008.

Last year he hit .310/.361/.386, which led to some premature calls to trade or bench him. After all, you don't want your offensive powerhouse slugging like a bad middle infielder, and it's not like he drew a tonne of walks either. This year, Ichiro listened intently to calls for improved patience from the fans and proceeded to shove them up our collective ass. He's somehow managed a .405 OBP while drawing 5(!) unintentional walks, and it's not like he's being put on base by the opposing team all the time either. He's already at 110 hits, and could probably have made a run at Sisler again were it not for that unfortunate stomach ulcer which forced him to miss eight games in April.

Defensively, he's as good as ever in right field. Comical misplay last night aside, he's running around out there like he's five year's younger, and has even indulged in a few slides to catch balls he started several zip codes from. His 6.1 UZR is despite Ichiro running a negative arm rating for the first time since 2002, which I'm more than content to blame Rob Johnson for. Apart from minor things (like his arm and baserunning issues), Ichiro is having a perfect season. If Griffey being around is giving us happy Ichiro, and happy Ichiro is giving us this, I'm more than happy to keep Jr. around as the tickling coach next year.

Felix and Fastball Percentage

Graham — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 02:10:16 -0000

We all want King Felix to throw more bendy/slow things in the early innings, especially against left-handed batters. During today's game I found myself wondering if he was throwing more or less fastballs than usual, so I poked around with data from today's game, last week's shutout, and Felix's worst and best starts of the season, per tRA. Here are the starts I looked at:

1) May 9th @ Minnesota

Felix was crushed by the Twins, giving up six runs on the back of homers by Mauer and Morneau. He also walked three, only struck out two, and departed after four innings in what would turn into a blowout loss. His tRA? 10.45. Whoopsies.

2) May 30th @ Anaheim

What happens when you give up no line drives, one walk, have 63% of balls in play stay on the ground, and strike out more than 20% of opposing batters? You get a tRA of less than 0.5. Unfortunately, in Felix's case, you also waste a lot of pitches on Angel foul balls, meaning he was pulled in the 7th after 110 pitches. The Mariners would go on to win the game after tying it up in the 9th on what is now the second most heroic home run of the year.

3) June 16th @ San Diego

Felix took advantage of a lineup full of the MLB equivalent of short bus schoolchildren, holding the Padres to two hits over nine innings and never looking in danger of allowing a run. He didn't really pitch that well though, as evidenced by his frankly silly amount of walks and hbp, and he didn't get that many strikeouts either. tRA's verdict? A pretty good, but not fantastic 3.23.

4) June 21st vs. Arizona

This just happened so I'm sure that you have some idea what went on in the game. I'd guess Felix's tRA was a touch under 3.0, but Statcorner doesn't update until midnight so whatever. He pitched pretty well, despite Reynold's late home run.

So that's two pretty good starts, one absurdly good start, and one level-Silva abomination. But I'm not going to do the analysis this time, you are. Take a look at the graph showing %fastballs against pitch count below and see if you can match up the starts to the fastball percentages. Remember, your choices are May 9th, May 30th, June 16th, and June 21st, with corresponding tRAs of 10.45, 0.54, 3.23, and ~2.90. And just to take away an obvious identifier, I've normalised the pitch count*. When you're done answers may be found here.

How did you do? Any interesting observations or insights?

*Yes, I know this skews the data. Why do you hate fun?

More Morrow

Graham — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 19:52:17 -0000

I didn't quite get around to everything I wanted to on my post yesterday, and these give me an excuse to fiddle around with learning pitch fx a little bit better (and the chance to improve my graphs!), so y'all are getting a little bit more on Brandon Morrow's Thursday start as well as a look at his durability in general. Without further ado, let's go past the gaudy swinging strike numbers he posted and take a look at the pitches the Padres actually managed to make contact on. The following graph shows 'contact strikes' - foul balls, outs, and hits.

Unsurprisingly, there wasn't too much contact out of the zone. The Padres aren't great at putting bat on ball in the first place, Morrow's pitches were moving all over the place, and, well, the reason there's a strike zone in the first place is because it's hard to hit pitches that aren't in it. It looks like Morrow's pure stuff saved his bacon a few times on Thursday, as a tonne of pitches down the middle were fouled off. He didn't fare very well up in the zone, but when he dropped down (assumedly by accident) he generated a few easy outs. Let's look at lefty-righty splits again:

vs. LHB	vs. RHB

Left-handers, as they are wont to do, hit pretty well against inside pitches, with Adrian Gonzalez responsible for two of the hits. The green dot in the middle is Luis Rodriguez flyout to right-centre field which probably should have been much deeper. Morrow also didn't generate very many fouls against lefties, which indicates that he wasn't messing much with their timing despite throwing the occasional changeup. The few fouls he did get were all on the outside edge of the plate or away. Righties, on the other hand, only got two hits in Morrow's four innings of work, fouling off pitch after pitch thrown dead centre. In a pretty strong contrast with the left-handed chart, right-handers just couldn't get the timing down on Morrow's fastball, with only four balls even put in play. David Eckstein was the only one who didn't seem to have this problem - the blue dot dead centre was the double responsible for the Padre's first run, and his other hit was a single on an elevated fastball, again down the middle.

Based on this start, Morrow seems a lot more effective against right-handed hitters than lefties, but there's probably a large bias due to (left-handed) Adrian Gonzalez being the only real hitter in the Padre lineup. Still, if this is a real effect, we can add 'poor platoon performance' to 'command issues' as the reasons Morrow wasn't able to do his job effectively as our closer during the initial portion of the year. It's perhaps fortunate that Morrow was awful as a reliever this season, as it's allowed the club to go back to the Morrow-starting experiment. When I was looked at the pitch fx data for the Padres start, I found myself curious about how well his velocity was holding up compared to pitch count, and whether we could see any sort of 'strengthening' effect for his starts last year. Velocity data for both of Morrow's starts this year and all five of his 2008 starts are shown below:

Well... that's quite pretty, I guess, if more or less entirely unintelligible. You can see that in general that more pitches in a game means a lower velocity, but that's not exactly a massive surprise. The amount of data in the graph makes it very difficult to tease meaningful information out of it, so I'll let the computer do that for me by showing the trend lines for each of Morrow's starts, which should show us what we're looking for. Note that the y-scale on the graph has changed from 90-100 to 92-97 in order to give a better contrast between starts.

Well look at that. The first thing that jumps out is that Morrow actually gained velocity during his three innings in Colorado, which I'll (lazily, and because I can't figure out a good explanation) put down to small-sample weirdness. The Padres start was as expected, with fastball velocity going from about 95.5 mph to a touch below 95 by the fourth inning, accompanied by a little more horizontal break. Perhaps more interesting is the 2008 data. In his first start against the Yankees, Morrow started out at almost 97 mph, and even a century of pitches didn't manage to drag him down much past the 95.5 mph he started off both games with this year. His next start saw his velocity drop by more than 1.5 mph and also fall much faster over the course of his outing. Surprisingly, he bounced back for #3, but his velocity slipped again for starts 4 and 5. He tired out extremely easy last year, and it doesn't look like five days rest was enough for the 100+ pitches he was routinely tossing per start in September. This probably had a large effect on the decision to leave him in the bullpen this spring.

It looks like his outstanding performance against New York hurt Morrow's development more than it helped. By pitching so well and maintaining his stuff for so long against the Yankees, he left himself open to throwing more pitches than he was really ready for over his next four starts, and the velocity data shows that this backfired pretty severely. Morrow's on strict pitch counts this year for a reason, and I think the Mariners will take every opportunity to give him extra rest when they can. Making sure that Adair and Wakamatsu (and by extension the front office) can keep an eye on him as he's getting stretched out this year may be one of the factors keeping him in Seattle. Hopefully they know what they're doing, and his arm isn't agonisingly painful between starts like it was in 2008.

SBN Suggestions Thread

Graham — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:12:44 -0000

So it's been more than a year since we made the switchover to the live-commenting madness of SBN 2.0, and a lot of the initial kinks in the system have been ironed out. However, it's still not perfect, and with that in mind I thought I'd open up a post here to talk about what could be done better. From the authors' point of view, here's a list of things we'd like to see:

1) Auto-updating hidden comments.

2) Easier figure titling/captions

3) Linking to individual comments not requiring a load of the entire thread (the way it used to be in SBN 1.0)

What about the rest of you?

16 is a crazy number

Graham — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:54:54 -0000

From Wikipedia:

15 and 16 form a Ruth-Aaron pair under the second definition in which repeated prime factors are counted as often as they occur.

Since it is possible to find sequences of 16 consecutive integers such that each inner member member shares a factor with either the first or the last member, 16 is an Erdős–Woods number. The smallest such range of 16 consecutive integers is from 2184 to 2200.

Which I suppose is all well and good, but why is 16 such a crazy number in our case? As it turns out, that's the number of swinging strikes Brandon Morrow generated in his start last night against the Padres. In 4 innings and less than 80 pitches (and walking the pitcher). For those of you keeping track at home, that means he'd have equaled Carlos Silva's season total sometime in the fifth had he continued. I know he was getting hit pretty hard, but today was Morrow's equivalent of Felix's start against Texas. To get that many swinging strikes you need to have something special going. So what was he throwing?

Mostly fastballs, to be honest. This is my first attempt at a pitch fx analysis, so hopefully I haven't bollocksed anything up here...

You can see two clear groups here. The one hanging around up top and a little left of centre is his fastball, and the other is the slider. Note that Morrow wasn't really very good at controlling the vertical break on his slider today - sometimes it was a Sean Green frisbee special and other times it went all slurvey on him (Jeff says that the 'slider' with a tonne of drop is actually Morrow's curve, and I'd be inclined to trust him). There's also a little 'grouping' of three pitches down and to the left of the fastballs, which gameday has classified as changeups, a definition which I have no dispute with. So we have a handful of changeups and a decent amount of sliders against a very fastbally backdrop. And where was he throwing these pitches?

Fastballs tend towards the catcher's left and are generally high in the zone or up. From this graph we can both see the run on Morrow's heat (the break is towards the right-handed batter's box, and is pretty pronounced even at higher velocities) and the reason he's a flyballer. It also looks like he loses fastball command in the natural direction of its movement, which... I dunno, it tells you something, I suppose. Were there any noticeable differences between Morrow's approach to left-handers vs. right-handers?

vs. LHB	vs. RHB

Morrow threw no changeups to righties and only a few to lefthanders, which makes sense because it's not a great pitch as it is and changeups are generally more effective to opposite handed batters. He also seemed to have some issues with commanding the slider against lefties, throwing the ball at their feet a few times - although that's likely attributable to small sample size. We also see Morrow trying to work outside when he's around the zone, but his command wasn't great (it's Morrow, after all) and he left a fair share of pitches straight down the middle. Let's take a look at the actual results now, breaking each pitch into one of four outcomes: Balls, contact strikes (fouls, balls in play), called strikes, and swinging strikes.

Umpire wasn't calling balls and strikes very well on the vertical edges of the zone: Morrow got a few extremely generous strike calls over Burke's left shoulder, which were probably made up for by numerous strikes on the black called balls over Burke's right. There are an absolute tonne of swinging strikes showing up in this graph. It's worth pointing out that Morrow was facing an extremely poor lineup here. The Padres have a couple of guys who can't make contact to save their lives (Kouzmanoff and Headley) to go along with a pitcher, and there's where most of the swinging strikes are derived - 4 for Kouzmanoff, 3 for Headley, and 4 for Geer. Still, you can only beat what's put in front of you, and Felix Hernandez got 5 less swinging strike in 5 more innings against the very same team two days prior. Let's see if there's a pattern in terms of batter-handedness with the swinging strike data.

vs. LHB	vs. RHB

Again, compare these charts to the pitch types shown above. You'll probably see that against righthanders, Morrow got 9(!) swinging strikes on his fastball compared to one from his slider, and against lefties he recorded four swinging strikes on offspeed pitches (mostly sliders) against one with his fastball. So, without wanting to draw conclusions from such a small sample, it appears that righthanders really have trouble making decent contact against Morrow's fastball while lefthanders hit it fine but have major problems with the slider. This is somewhat counter-intuitive to me, as I had suspected the opposite when I first saw the relative movements of those pitches. Sliders move towards the left-handed batter's box, fastballs to the right, and I assumed that pitches moving towards the hands makes it a little easier to make contact, which is without doubt a completely false assumption in Morrow's case (for this game, at least). You'll also probably notice that for whatever reason right-handed batters were swinging at absolutely everything in the zone. It's really unusual to only see three called strikes when hitters are swinging and missing so often.

Of course, any time you get 16 swinging strikes in 4 innings of work is going to produce some unusual results. I'm still on the 'send Morrow to Tacoma' bandwagon - mostly so he generates some semblence of command, but this was about as good as we could have hoped for from him today, despite the two runs allowed in the first and walking the pitcher again. Of course, Tacoma's opposition probably have better hitters than the Padres...

Visting SF 9/24-9/28

Graham — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 17:19:24 -0000

Hi everyone. For those of you who don't know me, I'm one of the Mariner bloggers over at Lookout Landing. I'm making a trip down to San Francisco to watch the Giants play the Cubs in late September - rooting for the Giants, naturally, and I figured that this would be the best place to ask for advice on where to eat, what to do in the city, etc.

My tickets are behind third for the Friday game (I think that's the 25th) and in the RF arcade on the day game on Sunday. In retrospect I probably should have asked for ticket purchasing advice here before actually buying them, but oh well. I hope they're good seats. Anyway, what in AT&T Park should I make an effort to check out? Is there any must-have food around? What's the beer selection like (important!)? And as for the sad time of my vacation where I am not at a ballpark, what parts of the city do I absolutely have to see? Oh, and what's the weather going to be like?

Cheers.

Draft Recap

Graham — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 00:30:25 -0000

Yes, I know it's not over until tomorrow. However, I'm not going to have any clue at all about the guys coming in between rounds 31-50 (not that I have much a clue past 10, but I can pretend), and neither will you so let's just pretend it's all done and dusted because there'll be nothing interesting to talk about there anyway.

Overall

If you wanted pitching, it has not been a good couple of days. If you wanted a full restock of the system featuring switch-hitting/left-handed bats with power potential, good news! Seriously though, I don't understand why pitching was such a huge concern. Yes, we're going to have issues with the rotation next year. However, there was one person in the draft who'll be ready to fill in a starting spot in the bigs next year, and he was the only guy in the entire draft we were never going to have a chance with.

The Mariners played it pretty safe all along, favouring relatively polished bats. The big name, of course, is Dustin Ackley, and by taking him the Mariners guaranteed themselves a good draft. Along with Ackley, the M's picked up some solid college and high school bats (especially in Rich Poythress and Nick Franklin), but the pitching taken all have big question marks with blinking neon lights. This was a draft that they could not screw up and one with a budget, which mean leaning towards safe guys in the top few rounds (i.e. not Tanner Scheppers) and forcing a couple of overdrafts for signability. Still, I'm pleased with how things went, and my biggest disappointment was nothing to do with the Mariners, coming when the Twins took Kyle Gibson at #21. Would I have done something differently? Yes, in that I'd have picked Paxton at #33, but that's getting nit-picky. The front office knows what it's doing, and while I'm not blown away post-Ackley, it's hard to argue that they haven't had a good draft.

Get ready to read something along the lines of "Scouts have questioned his power, despite him hitting more homers in his junior year than in the previous two combined" fairly frequently.

#2: Dustin Ackley, CF (UNC) L/R

Ackley was the best position player and the second best prospect in the draft by a wide margin, as those in the running for the number two spot at the start of the amateur baseball campaign - namely UNC teammate Alex White and USC shortstop Grant Green - scuffled while Ackley put in a strong effort during his junior season. Ackley possesses an advanced feel for hitting and commands the strike zone well enough to force pitchers to throw him something he can drive. He's also fast enough to steal his share of bases. His power was a question coming into the season, and Ackley demonstrated that he can hit the ball out of college parks, hammering 22 home runs this season, up from 10 and 7 in his two seasons prior. It remains to be seen whether his newfound power translates to wood bats, but if it does Ackley would be a good bat at first base, his position during most of his college career due to arm troubles. Fortunately, that's not where he'll play in professional ball, as he'll be trialed out in centre field once he signs. His arm should be strong enough after Tommy John surgery to handle the position, and he showed off good range and instincts when he was showcased in centre during a late season series. Ackley's athletic enough to play positions like second as well, but shifting him to the middle infield will take time, delaying the arrival of his bat. Ackley needs a little more polish, but he'll be ready fairly soon. I've heard comps ranging from Darrin Erstad to a CF-playing Todd Helton(!). Look for him in 2011.

#27: Nick Franklin, SS (Lake Brantley High School, Florida) S/R

There were rumblings the day before the draft that Franklin was going to be our guy at #27, and passing on some of the available pitching (particularly Tanner Scheppers) to pick him up caused some consternation. Franklin was considered as a bit of an overdraft by most, but he has a lot of points in his favour. He's rangy and athletic with smooth actions and a strong arm at shortstop, and should stick there as a professional with the ability to be above average with a little bit of work on his feet and positioning. He's no Jiovanni Mier, but nor is he a Jeter out there. Switch-hitting Franklin has a good approach at the plate as sprays line drives to all fields with a smooth stroke, but like Ackley his power has been questioned. He did hit 10 home runs this year as a senior in high school, but the transition to wood will probably drop him down to a below-average power threat. He's not Emmanual Burriss, though, and he should hit enough balls hard to get his share of extra-base hits. Once intriguing comp I heard this morning was a switch hitting Michael Young who plays defence, and if that's what the Mariners saw in Franklin, it's no wonder they drafted him. And for those who are comparing Franklin's downside to Willie Bloomquist, what's a switch hitting Bloomquist with better defence at shortstop? A three win player. He's a way off, but he's a very solid pick at #27: the Mariners signed him because he was at the top of their board for this pick. However, since he was more of a consensus supplemental/second guy than a first rounder, he'll probably sign quickly and below slot.

#33: Steven Baron, C (Ferguson High School, Florida) R/R

Between Ackley at #2 and Baron at #33, the Mariners had most of their first round selection locked down weeks before June 9th. Baron was drafted a couple of rounds ahead of where the consensus had him, and the Mariners apparently took him primarily for budget reasons, having worked out a pre-draft agreement on his signing bonus for below slot at #33. The gap between this pick and his position in the mocks isn't as big as it first appears, though - some of that difference was Baron being considered a tough sign due to Duke's heavy recruitment efforts (he was supposed to be the centrepiece of their incoming class). As a player, Baron's calling card is his defence. For an organisation that puts a heavy premium on catcher defence, it's no wonder they love him. He's not in the Rob Johnson school of catchers who apparently call a good game but look terrible at the things fan can actually see, far from it. Baron moves behind the plate well, does a good job getting behind balls in the dirt and has good footwork with a standout arm - he's genuinely an excellent defender behind the dish. His bat, however, is questionable. Though Baron got into better shape this year and played fairly well because of it, his swing has enough holes that he's unlikely to ever hit for much contact, although he should have average power. His performance at the showcase in Sebring led some to conclude that there's more to his bat than meets the eye, however, so it's not like Baron's totally without upside. I don't like the pick, but I understand where it's coming from, and if I had the opposite stance on catcher defence I'd probably like it.

#51: Rich Poythress, 1B (Georgia) R/R

Here we go. Injury-plagued freshman year aside, Poythress has been terrorising college pitchers since he stepped onto the diamond at Georgia, hitting for a good average while collecting home runs in bunches (15 last year, 25 this year). He's probably the best power hitter in the college ranks, and may rank second only to Dustin Ackley as an overall hitter. Unlike the Richie Sexsons of the world, Poythress doesn't sacrifice contact for a long, powerful swing. Instead, he works the count and when he gets a pitch to hit makes sure to hit it on the button, letting his strength do the rest. The power will almost certainly translate to the professional level, and although Safeco Field tends to sap right-handed power hitters, Poythress has a habit of hitting bombs to right and centre fields just as often as to left. He's also a good bet to maintain a reasonable average at more advanced levels, and his power combined with solid plate discipline will lead him to his fair share of walks. Poythress was trialed extensively at third base, but he's not agile enough to man the position and his destiny lies as a first baseman, where he should be average-slightly above. He was also expected to be a late first-round guy. Getting him here was a steal for the Mariners, and saving money on #27 and #33 will let them sign him without any budget worries. "A poor man's Matt LaPorta" was one of the many things I heard about Poythress on draft day, which I'm more than pleased with. I love this pick.

#82: Kyle Seager, 2B (UNC) L/R

Seager may never hit too many home runs in the majors, but he profiles as a line drive gap hitter in the mould of Jeff Cirrillo before he came to Seattle and went crazy. He's also able to swing the stick left-handed. Noticing a pattern yet? Seager's got a good idea of what he's doing at the plate and has a pretty swing, but as a leftie it's too level to do much real damage, especially with a wood bat. He also lacks the wheels to turn singles into extra-base hits, but despite all this he got his fair share of doubles in college as Dustin Ackley's teammate. Defensively, he's pretty agile in the field; enough to make him an average second baseman as a professional. Don't expect big things from Seager, though. He doesn't have the tools for a breakout, and at this point he is what he is. He's a useful player, tends to play above his tools, and reasonably close to the majors, but you're not going to get an All-Star out of him. Of course, considering what we currently have as middle infielders, that looks pretty nice.

#113: James Jones, OF (Long Island) L/L

Most teams were high on Jones as a left-handed pitcher at the end of last season, but he had a catastrophic junior year which saw him drop out of consideration for the first 70 picks. Lost in all of this was the fact that he was still a pretty good, if unpolished, left-handed bat with some promising power potential and good plate discipline. Defensively, he's fast and has a great arm (he touched 95 as a pitcher in seasons prior), and he could probably work his way to being a reasonable centre fielder with effort and good coaching. The bat is raw enough that he probably languishes in the minor leagues and never amounts to much, but the upside is enough to justify a fourth-round pick. Best case scenario is that he makes us forget about another black outfielder named Jones, and worst case is that we forget this pick ever happened. After making safe pick after safe pick on day one, this is where the Mariners start to roll the dice.

#143: Tyler Blandford, RHP (Oklahoma

Blandford could be a scout's dream. He's got a pitcher's frame and throw great hit, sitting in the mid 90s with the fastball and showing a wicked slider that can make hitters look stupid. He's also got the makings of a good changeup. With this kind of stuff, Blandford should have been an easy first rounder, and he would have been if he had any semblance of command whatsoever. His stuff plays down because he has no idea where the ball is going, leading to a lot of walks and more than a few rockets coming off fastballs down the middle. When his pitches are near the zone, they get swung at and missed a lot, and he still gets more strikeouts than walks, but walking 45 guys in less than 80 innings in college isn't going to cut it as a professional. I had assumed going into the draft that the team taking him would have seen something correctable in his delivery, so the Mariners probably think they can fix him. The minor leagues are littered with guys with stuff but no command, and not many of them ever figure things out, so it's unlikely that you'll ever see Blandford in a Mariners uniform. On the off chance he ever learns to throw that ball at the mitt, we suddenly have a top of the rotation pitcher or a shutdown closer with our fifth round pick, which would be sweet. There's really no middle road here though - this is a pure boom and bust pick.

#173: Shaver Hansen, 3B (Baylor) S/R

What more could you ask than a switch hitting infielder with some serious pop? Well, you could ask for one with power scouts think will translate to wooden bats and one with a better arm and speed... but don't be greedy. This is the sixth round. Although his numbers don't show it (apparently he decided to sacrifice some command of the strike zone in favour of swinging from the heels this year) he has a reasonable eye and he's another one of our draft picks whose power spiked this season after being questioned last summer. Hansen's swing generates questions from scouts wondering how well it'll work with a wood bat, but he put up a good showing in the Cape Cod League last summer, which alleviate those doubts a fraction. He's got the feet and quickness for third base but his arm may not be good enough for the position in the majors - second base was sounding more like the likely destination for him until the Mariners announced him at third. Overall, I really like this pick. Questions of how he'll transition to wood bats are completely valid, but if he does Hansen has big upside with the bat. Did I mention he switch hits?

#203: Brian Moran, LHP (UNC)

Remember everything I wrote about Blandford (if you don't, scroll up two paragraphs)? Invert it and what do you get? A left handed pitcher with no stuff, crazy command, and the weird ability to get people out despite that. Moran's got a mid-80s fastball that he can throw wherever he damn well pleases, but relies on a delivery which sees his throwing arm hiding behind his body for way longer than normal, which I imagine makes the pitch come at the hitter much quicker than the pure velocity suggests. He's got nothing interesting apart from that, flashing a fringy breaking ball that comes and goes as well as a below average changeup. Deceptive bullpen lefties are not exactly a standard player type in the major leagues, so it's questionable whether the same strategy will work in the majors. On the other hand, he was second out all of college pitchers in FIP this year, and first in the non-minor-deity category while striking out 88 in 64 innings against 8 walks. I'm pretty sure that the Mariners spent so much time following Dustin Ackley around that they scouted his teammates more than everyone else in the country, hence a third of our top nine picks hailing from UNC.

Another fun tidbit: Moran is B.J. Surhoff's nephew. He also looks amazing.

#233: Jimmy Gilheeney, LHP (North Carolina State)

Not content with drafting Ackley's teammates to help him sign, the Mariners injected some rivalry in here by drafting NC State's Friday starter. Safeco Field is a place where fringy lefties like Jason Vargas and Garrett Olson can survive, and Gilheeney's upside is that sort of pitcher. However, it's hard to see much in the way of a downside. His command is sharp, his big loopy curveball is good, and his changeup is good with the potential for more. Sitting in the mid-high 80s with the fastball is pretty common for pitchers of this breed, but being that restricted in velocity makes for a pick with no room for growth. If the fastball is more 88 than 86, we might see him in the bigs someday as a real starter, otherwise he's one of those emergency guys that make you wish Brandon Morrow would hurry his ass up and get off the DL.

#263: Trevor Coleman, C (Missouri) S/R

Another switch hitter, this time a catcher. Defensively, think Rob Johnson. Offensively, Coleman is all over the place. He had a great summer performance with wood at the Cape, leading many to believe he'd be a first day pick, but upon his return to college he forgot how to hit and how to catch. When he's on, he's got a long swing with pop, although he swings and misses too often for comfort. He's already shown that his power will translate to wood bats, so that's a question answered, but his massive inconsistency in all assets of the game is a problem - hence the 9th round selection. At his best Coleman is an offence-first, switch hitting catcher, so he has the potential to be a real asset and a steal in the 9th round. But banking on best case scenarios is a good way to get burned, so don't expect too much out of him. If the bat doesn't settle he's Rene Rivera from two sides of the plate rather than just one. Decent risk here nonetheless.

#293: Vincent Catricala, 3B (Hawaii) R/R

More junior-year power spikes. With Ackley, Hanson, Franklin, and now Catricala, the Mariners have really loaded up on guys who've hit a tonne more home runs this season than anyone reasonably expected. For Catricala, his career home run total moved up to 20 this year after a summer of strength training, which is pretty impressive considering that this time last year it had reached the lofty pinnacle of 7. His ability to hit for average has never been in doubt, and his discipline improved with his power - Catricala drew more walks in 2009 than he did in 2007 and 2008 combined. His swing will probably hold up against more advanced competition, as long as they don't throw him too many changeups (or he adjusts to hitting said pitch). Defence at third is not his strong suit - he has no standout tools for a third baseman and may not stick there. For a 10th rounder, though, we got a reasonably polished bat, although he isn't a great fit for Safeco.

#323: Tim Morris, 1B (St. John's) L/L

Continuing the overriding theme of the draft, Morris is a left-handed bat who underwent a big power surge last year, hitting 12 homers to go along with a good average and acceptable discipline. He's also an average defender at first, which is a plus for fans who've recently undergone three-odd years of the Richie Sexson experience. He's had his struggles in college, though, as evidenced by his .059/.158/.059 line as a freshman in Clemson, which may indicate he has trouble with advanced competition. Despite the surge, his power is a question, but if he consolidates his gains he might end up as a big league starter. It's an unlikely bet, though, and that's why he's an 11th rounder.

#353: Andrew Carraway, RHP (Virginia)

Going with the command/no stuff pitchers, Carraway is the right-handed equivalent of 8th-rounder Gilheeney, meaning that his changeup is worse and he throws a little bit harder. His repertoire features a 90-ish fastball, good curve, slider, and a change. He doesn't strike out many, and he doesn't have great stuff, but he doesn't walk guys or make mistakes. He knows how to pitch, as cliched as that is, but I don't really like taking college starters who already are all that they can be. Upside? Chris Jakubauskas. Downside? Probably a slightly worse Chris Jakubauskas. Not much to see here.

#383: Matt Cerione, OF (Georgia) L/L

Tools tools tools. Tools tools tools. Tools tools tools. Cerione has so many tools that they may well have replaced his brain with a power saw at birth, which would explain why he's got a tonne of makeup issues and thinks showboating is more important than playing solid baseball. He also can't hit worth a damn despite being blessed with a quick bat and good power, mainly because his idea of a plate appearance is to swing from the heels at everything. He's probably not going to amount to much, but every now and then one of the tools picks turns good and everyone talks about what a steal it was to take them in the whatever round, and if that happens here then Cerione is a steal in the thirteenth. Since it won't, you can forget his name unless he does something stupid and it becomes a news story around the minors. Did I mention he's got good tools? And, of course, he's left handed.

#413: Adam Nelubowich, 3B/OF (Vauxhall High School, Edmonton) L/R

Our first Canadian of the draft, Nelubowich was ranked as the country's top position player this year, albeit in one of the poorest draft classes our frigid neighbors have produced recently. In showcases against American teams, Nelubowich held his own with a wood bat and drew comparisons to our very own Michael Saunders, although the chances of development along those lines are slim. I suspect any white Canadian outfielder with any pop at all with be compared to Saunders for the foreseeable future. Also he's left handed, so that's a surprise.

Rest of draft

At this point I stop really having a clue about the names involved, so I'll just forward y'all on to the MLB draft tracker and save myself some writing.