SB Nation User Blog: Matthew

One(?) More Year of Junior

Matthew — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:45:28 -0000

Well that actually did not take very long. Larry Stone is reporting that Griffey will return to the Mariners in 2010 on a one year contract. No word yet on the terms or expectations, but um... well... it's sort of weird after the send-off this last October. Will they do the same thing at the end of 2010? Awkward.

AL Gold Gloves Announced

Matthew — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:20:30 -0000

Blah blah, they don't matter. I know. People will still talk about them, so talk about them in this meaningless thread. Feel free to not talk about them too. Or whatever.

Just for fun, I listed each player's rank in UZR amongst qualified players at his position for 2009.

P - Mark Buehrle
C - Joe Mauer
1B - Mark Teixeira (7th of 9)
2B - Placido Polanco (1st of 9)
3B - Evan Longoria (1st of 8)
SS - Derek Jeter (5th of 10)
OF - Adam Jones (17th of 34)
OF - Torii Hunter (13th of 34)
OF - Ichiro Suzuki (12th of 34)

Jeff's note: emphasis on "they don't matter." They don't. They don't matter. Do not get up in arms over poor selections, because they don't matter. Matter, they don't. You may think that they matter, but further investigation will reveal that they do not.

Congratulations, Derek Jeter!

More on Adam Dunn

Matthew — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 03:42:32 -0000

More photos » by Evan Vucci - AP

Washington Nationals' Adam Dunn seen playing his best defensive position.

Browse more photos »

On May of 2008, we published an article here looking at whether Adam Dunn might be a good investment for the Mariners during the 2008 offseason. Yeah, remember those days? It was the first of May and we were already looking forward to the offeseason. Anyways, the negatives on Dunn boiled down to these two views:

1. His skills were old player skills and thus prone to rapid aging, making a long term contract bad news.

2. His defense is horrible.

Jeff equated Dunn's defense to:

have you ever tossed the ball around with a friend on the beach? Have you ever missed the ball and had to go get it in the ocean? You sprint after it with all your energy, but you're limited by both the wet sand and the foot or three of water, so while you never really lose sight of the ball, and while it's not in danger of drifting away, it still takes forever to get there.

Now, little to be known at the time, but the market completely crashed in the offseason and Dunn, despite our fears of getting between a 5Y/$75M and 6Y/$90M contract, ended up at two years and just $20 million. That short of contract effectively eliminated concerns about his decline phase. He was just 29 this year so a contract running his age 29 and 30 seasons seems like pure gold. It's like getting the first two years of the Richie Sexson contract. That would be awesome. Well done, Nationals.

On the second point however... Keep in mind that this is not an isolated incident. Adam Dunn's defense has been atrociously bad for years and the fact that it's horrible is as unanimously agreed-upon as you'll find a defensive statement in baseball. His UZRs the four years prior to 2009; -19, -15, -19, -28. That's bad. But you know what they say, if you're ugly, just find an uglier person to be your friend and you'll look more attractive in comparison. So Adam Dunn went out and had 2009, a season in which he rotated through 1B (67 games), LF (62 games) and RF(22 games). Combined from the three, Adam Dunn tallied a -36.4 UZR.

-36.4.

Adam Dunn was the 20th best hitter in baseball this year according to StatCorner's park-adjusted wOBA. FanGraphs equals pretty closely on his hitting value. He had a career year in batting average and nearly one in OBP and OPS as well. Because of his defense and position, he netted 1.1 WAR. Endy Chavez played 54 games in the outfield, had a sub-.700 OPS and managed 0.9 WAR.

-36.4 UZR. Unfathomable.

Russell Branyan's Missing Games

Matthew — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 22:50:01 -0000

More photos » by Elaine Thompson - AP

Mariners' Ichiro Suzuki, left, demonstrates a proper pimp slapping technique to Russell Branyan.

Browse more photos »

On August 29th, Russell Branyan went on the disabled list with a herniated disk in his back. That may be the last we hear of him in connection with the Mariners. I hope not, but he is now a free agent so the possibility is a strong one. I was sad that Russell was unable to make it back into the lineup before the close of the regular season and not just because I was tired of watching Jose Lopez and Jack Hannahan be wasted at first base. I hoped that Branyan would get to receive a tribute from the crowd for his surprisingly great season, a season which was instrumental in keeping the Mariners afloat in the AL West.

But how might that season have turned out if not for the back injury?

Up to that point, Branyan had played in 116 of 129 possible games, accumulating 505 plate appearances. If we hold him up that pace for the remainder of the 2009 season, he would have seen action in an additional 30 games and made another 129 trips to the plate. Assuming that his rate stats up to that point held throughout those 129 appearances, his final line (.251/.347/.520) obviously stays the same, but his counting stats obviously increase.

By how much? Well his RBIs top out at 95, leaving him one behind Jose Lopez and still depriving the Mariners of even one cresting the 100 plateau. We don't really care about RBIs though, I just wondered if it would have gotten him to 100. Home runs on the other hand are always fun, but again Branyan would fall just short of nice round figure, getting to 39 home runs. That would have been the first time any Mariner had hit that many since 2005 Richie Sexson also belted 39. Can you name the last Mariner to hit 40+? Branyan's projected strikeout total would have been 187, sorry to those who were hoping he'd reach 200.

Is it fair though to assume Branyan would have kept hitting at the same rates? I think so given the sample size we're working with, but there are other rational arguments to be made. For instance, he was starting to drop off in the second half. His line from July 1 on was a measly .184/.279/.411 (note that OBP is still higher than Yunieskey Betancourt's was). Now that woeful line was somewhat a result of some BABIP issues, but there were also some noticeable decreases in skill. Russell's home run rate did drop, but from one home run per 15 PAs to one per 18, his walk rate fell from 13% to 10% and his strikeout rate rose from 26% to 34%.

Scary stuff, but it's just the last 50 or so games and there's not much of a reason to just ignore the first 70 games in favor of the gloomier picture just as there's not much of a reason to ignore those last 50 games in favor of the more optimistic picture.

Anyways, I just wanted to give some love to Russell Branyan and explore what his final counting stats might have looked like. And because it's been awhile, here's a poll!

The last Mariners to eclipse 40 home runs in a season was Alex Rodriguez, in 2000.

Poll

I think Russell Branyan, if not for the herniated disk, would have finished the season:

2010 Watchdogs: Ichiro and Making Contact

Matthew — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:49:20 -0000

Ichiro Suzuki's walk total this past season, 32, marked his lowest total since his inaugural 2001 campaign. Granted, he had fewer plate appearances this season than he's ever had in America, but even as a rate, his walk numbers were down.

Using rates, Ichiro drew a walk in 4.7% of plate appearances, (2.2% intentional and 2.5% unintentional). It was the highest rate of intentional free passes since his 2005 season, which is no big surprise there. Ichiro was great this year. It is somewhat of a surprise when you consider who was batting behind him though. Franklin Gutierrez and Russell Branyan both had 55 starts apiece in the second lineup slot and neither of them would be considered offensive slouches.

Still, Ichiro's 2.5% unintentional walk rate was by far the lowest mark of his career, even lower than that 2001 season (2.7%). Is that a cause for concern going forward? After all, we don't expect Ichiro to post a .384 BABIP each year, so we would all rest a little easier if he didn't need to bat in the mid .300s just to have an above average OBP.

On the surface, this would have seemed a good year for Ichiro to post a banner year in the walks department. Afterall, he was thrown first pitch strikes at the lowest rate since 2001 and was thrown strikes overall at the lowest rate of his career, continuing a three year trends that has seen pitchers suddenly shift away from throwing him more strikes than average.

Unfortunately, Ichiro responded to these extra out of zone pitches with more swings. His 48.9% swing rate is back up to his 2001-5 level after a three year hiatus. Interestingly, it appears to be a roughly equal jump in swings at both strikes and balls as you see his Z (strike) Swing% jump 3% and his O (ball) Swing% rise 3.4%. Coupled with a decrease in contact rate (mostly on pitches in the strike zone curiously), and you have a recipe for both more strikeouts and fewer walks. Ichiro posted his worst-ever contact rate when swinging at pitches in the strike zone and he also posted his worst-ever swinging strikeout rate.

There was a slight dip in his contact rate on pitches outside the zone as well, but I am not concerned about that as the drop was small and it still leaves Ichiro at a super high level. In fact, I wonder if Ichiro's prowess at making contact at pitches outside the zone has given him more confidence to swing in general. Compare 2004 to 2009, Ichiro swings at almost twice as many non-strike pitches as he did back then and at fewer strike pitches. It would be nice to see him go back to those levels.

Regressing his 2009 BABIP to his career level costs him 14 hits and 20 points of batting average and that represents a sizable slice of his OPS gone. Now I don't want to come across as saying Ichiro needs to draw more walks in 2010. He could hit for more power. He could maintain his high BABIP. He could steal more bases. There are lots of things Ichiro, or anyone, can do to improve their game in the face of a declining isolated discipline. It's just... it would probably be a lot easier to just draw a few more walks. We know you can avoid swinging at those non-strike pitches, Ichiro and it didn't seem to hurt your offense any.

I wonder if his missed time at the beginning of the season caused him to press a bit to collect base hits in order to ensure that he got to 200 on the season. If so, then perhaps he'd relax a bit next year and we'll see the walks go back up. Who knows, really? I learned years ago to stop actively worrying about Ichiro. One of these years, probably, we'll be able to look back and be able to point at some moment in time and say, "there, that's when he started to actually decline." That hasn't happened yet, but Ichiro's plate discipline numbers are going to be something that I will pay attention to in 2010.

Turnover

Matthew — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 18:36:17 -0000

You know how testy we get when people make comments about how awesome our <fill in unit of team> could be in <insert range> years? Remember the Nageotte/Blackley/Meche/Anderson rotations, Clement/Johjima/Johnson/Moore catching caches and Ichiro/Gutierrez/Saunders/Ackley outfields? We do our best to try and keep people grounded on these types of issues because, as it turns out, the future is incredibly hard to predict and a hell of a lot of things change in a very short period of time.

Here is a hopefully good example of what we mean. The following is a list of every player used by the 2008 Mariners:

Kenji Johjima -- Opted out
Richie Sexson -- Released
Jose Lopez --
Yuniesky Betancourt -- Traded
Adrian Beltre -- Contract expired
Raul Ibanez -- Contract expired
Jeremy Reed -- Traded
Ichiro Suzuki --
Jose Vidro -- Released
Wladimir Balentien -- Traded
Miguel Cairo -- Contract expired
Jeff Clement -- Traded
Willie Bloomquist -- Contract expired
Bryan LaHair -- Demoted
Jamie Burke -- Traded
Brad Wilkerson -- Released
Tug Hulett -- Designated for assignment
Luis Valbuena -- Traded
Matt Tuiasosopo --
Rob Johnson --
Greg Norton -- Traded
Mike Morse -- Traded
Charlton Jimerson -- Released

Felix Hernandez --
Jarrod Washburn -- Traded
Carlos Silva --
Erik Bedard -- Contract expired
J.J. Putz -- Traded
Ryan Rowland-Smith --
Sean Green -- Traded
Roy Corcoran -- Designated for assignment
Mark Lowe --
Miguel Batista -- Contract expired
R.A. Dickey -- Contract expired
Brandon Morrow --
Ryan Feierabend -- Injured
Cesar Jimenez -- Demoted
Cha Seung Baek -- Traded
Arthur Rhodes -- Traded
Jake Woods -- Designated for assignment
Randy Messenger --
Eric O'Flaherty -- Waived
Jared Wells -- Demoted
Justin Thomas -- Demoted

Number of players used: 44
Number of players remaining: 10
Number of players traded: 13

A single year later and under a quarter of the players used still remain with the team. That's two seasons of play and one offseason of moves. A lot changes and it changes quickly. This is why you don't draft for positional need and you should not concern yourself too much with what the roster might look like two or three years down the road. It's nice to keep a general idea, but I wouldn't get too worked up over exact names when looking that far down the line.

10/19: ALCS Open Game Thread

Matthew — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:43:26 -0000

Andy Pettitte

#46 / Pitcher / New York Yankees

Height: 6-5

Weight: 225

Bats: L

Throws: L

Born: Jun 15, 1972

Jered Weaver

#36 / Pitcher / Los Angeles Angels

Height: 6-7

Weight: 205

Bats: R

Throws: R

Born: Oct 04, 1982

We now join this game thread, already in progress.

SonicsGate: watch the doc

Matthew — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:37:47 -0000

SonicsGate: watch the doc

I hate the title (can we stop with the -gate suffixes please?), and I think there were two important parts not touched on (what the team meant to the city because it held the only active championship trophy and the renovation which was also designed to squash any chance for an NHL team here), but on the whole it's well done.

Fun With Numbers: Captain Clutch

Matthew — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:28:04 -0000

With the start of the ALCS this evening* and having to endure wading through some previews, the mantra again of Alex Rodriguez not being clutch in the playoffs finally drove me to investigate it.

* assuming the weather cooperates.

You can read my full treatment of the subject on FanGraphs: here, but I will pass along the money shot

POSTSEASON CLUTCH SCORE 2002-PRESENT
Alex Rodriguez, 0.73
Derek Jeter, -0.80