The Yankees This Week - Seattle and Tampa Bay

The New York Yankees enter the second week in May and continue to hang on despite their incredible string of injuries. The two-game sweep by Arizona last week was unfortunate but taking two of three from a much-improved Minnesota Twins helped ease the pain a little bit. This could be an important week as the Yankees face two unexpectedly good teams in the Mariners and Bay Rays.

As expected, the Red Sox are starting to right their ship and are only a game under .500. They just lost David Price with elbow problems, but are in good shape otherwise. Also as expected, the Rays are not running away with the AL East as the opening weeks of the season seemed to portend. I did not believe it then and I do not believe it now. Still, they are a smart team and will pose problems for the Yankees this coming weekend, especially at their stink-house, Tropicana Field. More on that later.

First, the Yankees must deal with the Seattle Mariners who come to Yankee Stadium for a four-game set. The Mariners started on fire and were the big story (along with the Rays) in the AL at the start of the season. But they have lost nine of the team's last twelve games and the Astros have regained their expected spot at the top of the AL West. Frankly, the Mariners are a team with a ton of holes.

First off, the Mariners' current rotation consists of Felix Hernandez who, at this stage of his career, sort of resembles Pedro Martinez in his Mets days. There has been a lot of gas leaked out of his arm over the long haul and his reputation will get him a while, but he's no longer a great pitcher. The rest of the rotation consists of Mike Leake, Marco Gonzalez (who will come back to earth), Yusei Kikuchi and Eric Swanson. Despite Gonzalez's early success, Kikuchi and Swanson might be their best two. The Yankees will face the entire rotation except for Swanson.

The Mariners lead the American League in homers. Who saw that coming? But along with those homers comes many, many strikeouts as they lead the AL in that category too. This drags their OPS down to third in the AL and falling. However, Edwin Encarnacion always gives the Yankees fits and they have a DH named, Daniel Vogelbach, who is killing the ball and does not strike out a lot. Mitch Haniger is probably the team's best all-around player.

The Yankees will start CC Sabathia tonight which means two starting pitchers with 951 combined MLB starts, but their better days behind them. Which one can spin the most magic tonight? Masahiro Tanaka--always a 50-50 proposition--will be battling with Marco Estrada tomorrow. The Yankees have not announced a starter for Wednesday, but it could be Jonathan Loaisiga taking what was James Paxton's spot. JA Happ will face Kikuchi on Thursday.

Clint Frazier is back and in the lineup for the Yankees tonight and will play right field. That should help. The Yankees have wisely listened to me (heh) and are DHing Miguel Andujar and starting Gio Urshela at third. Nice. The lineup looks more potent than it has in more than a week now but Luke Voit has been slumping the last couple of games.

It would be nice if the Yankees could win three of four of these games and they are certainly capable of that. The Mariners' bullpen and the Yankees' bullpen have both been an adventure and it might come down to which team's pen performs better. The minimum is that the Yankees have to at least split this series.

After Thursday's game, the Yankees will fly down to that house of horrors in St. Petersburg to play the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays' offense is just middle of the road and the Yankees will catch them with Joey Wendle and Austin Meadows on the DL. Meadows has been a nice break out star and losing him hurts the Rays. Brandon Lowe and Tommy Pham are their two best remaining offensive players.

It will be a tough three game series for the Yankees offensively. They will miss Charlie Morton who gives them fits, but they will probably see Blake Snell at the end of the weekend (though he has struggled a bit lately) and definitely will see this year's wunderkind, Taylor Glasnow. Glasnow has been amazing thus far. I mean, super amazing.

There is a possibility of Aaron Hicks being ready for the weekend series, but frankly, the Yankees should wait until after the Tampa series. Why have Hicks running around on that green concrete as his first taste back?

My gut feelings is that facing Snell and Glasnow and thinking about the Yankees at that horror field and their lack of success there, the Yankees will be fortunate to win one of the three games. That is why winning three against the Mariners is important. This is certainly a week where the Yankees need to hold their own because, on review, it could be a long, long week for Yankee fans.

Rickie Weeks, Mariners?

Rickie Weeks just signed a $2 million deal with the Seattle Mariners who happen to already have a second baseman named Robinson Cano. The deal is a pay cut for Weeks to the tune of 82%. Ouch. It doesn't seem that long ago that Rickie Weeks was an All Star and seemed to be one of the most dynamic players in the game. What the heck happened?

The timing of Week's descent from All Star to mediocre was not great for the Milwaukee Brewers. They based their 2012, three-year, $31 million contract for Weeks based on his five-year run beginning in 2007 of averaging 3.12 WAR a season with good pop, high on-base, stolen base and decent fielding skills. That contract was a bust in just about every way.

Beginning in 2009, Weeks had a three-year run of scoring a 120+ wOBA a season. 2010 was a particularly productive and break out season in which Weeks compiled over 300 total bases and got on base 276 times. Both were career highs as were his home runs, RBIs and runs scored that season. He led the league in getting hit by pitches in 2010 for the second time in his career.

Weeks missed about a third of the following season of 2011 but still scored in the same ranges in the time he did play. Thus, it might have seemed reasonable for the Brewers to extend the deal they made to their second baseman. It just didn't work out that way.

In 2012, the first year of the deal, Weeks played a full season and compiled 677 plate appearances. But his OPS dropped 90 points and his wRC+ dropped 27 points. According to the numbers, his defense also totally crapped out.

In 2010, Weeks was rated the second most valuable second baseman in baseball behind only Cano. In 2012, he was only the 20th best. But it would get worse...much worse.

Weeks started 2013 badly. He had a .615 OPS for April. It was even worse at .506 in May. He had a great June and seemed to be back to himself. But in July, he plummeted to .582. On August 8, mercifully, he was shut down for the rest of the season for a hamstring injury for which he had surgery and did not play again the rest of the season.

For 2013, in 399 plate appearances, he compiled a woeful triple slash line of: .209/.306/.357. Scooter Gennett finished out the season for the Brewers at second base and come on gangbusters (cliche alert) and was named the starting second baseman for the Brewers for 2014. Weeks was now a pretty expensive bench player.

The funny thing is, Rickie Weeks' bat bounced back. He played 57 times at second base and compiled an .861 OPS as a starter there. He also pinch hit 56 times with less success and DHed twice. But otherwise, he was no longer in the Brewers' plans. Add in the fact that his fielding was still abominable.

Since he played in only 104 games in 2013 and only 121 in 2014, he did not reach the totals necessary for his option for 2015 to kick in automatically. His Brewers days were over.

How are the Mariners going to use him? Obviously, they already have a VERY expensive second baseman on board. Weeks has never played a position other than second base in his entire MLB and MiLB career. Can he suddenly play the outfield? Will he be tried at third? First? It seems a rather strange signing.

Then again, if Weeks is back offensively, he is a right-handed batter and the Mariners have needed that in their lineup. Will he be the DH? It is hard to say what the M's are thinking when signing Weeks.

It might be a good thing for Weeks to learn a new position and rebuild his value. His annual salary took a beating and his former team gave up on him. Those two things can be highly motivational. The things we do know are that Weeks might not be done as a hitter but is quite done as a viable second baseman. The Mariners could still make that work and turn this head scratching into something none of us would have thought about.

No arrows for Fernando Rodney

You have to hand it to the Oakland Athletics. They are a smart team that uses their information very wisely. The A's had tied a huge game with the Seattle Mariners up with a home run by Josh Donaldson off of perhaps the best pitcher in the American League. The homer ensured that King Felix could not seal the deal on perhaps the biggest start of his career in Seattle. In the tenth inning, they drew Fernando Rodney. And they nailed it.

The A's didn't hit the guy who has averaged 43 saves the past three seasons. They simply would not swing. Rodney has one big flaw. He walks people. Last year, his rate per nine innings was 4.86. This year, Rodney is walking people at a rate of 4.04 per nine. But he usually succeeds because he gets people to swing.

Fernando Rodney does not like the strike zone. Only 47.7% of his pitches are thrown in the strike zone. He likes to stay off the corners and throw his change below the knees. It usually works. It did not work against the A's. All the A's had to do was stand there.

Four walks later, the A's scored the winning run. It was a huge victory in the chase for the wild card. It was a huge win because they have Jon Lester pitching today. It was a huge win because ever since they traded for Jon Lester, they stopped hitting.

But in the tenth inning, they didn't have to hit. They just had to stand there and let Rodney do all the work for them. Four walks. Rodney threw 28 pitches. Only ten of them were strikes. Only six of them were in the strike zone but the A's swung at eight of Rodney's offerings. They needn't have.

Here, courtesy of Brooks Baseball is Rodney's evening in all its glory. The A's aren't hitting. But they know what to do when they don't have to hit. The only arrow shot in this one went into the hearts of Mariner fans.

Robinson Cano don't you know

The heading comes from Yankees' radio play by play man, John Sterling, used whenever Robinson Cano hit a homer. The homers for Robinson Cano have been harder to come by playing up in Seattle's Safeco Field. But the loss of power is the only blip on Robinson Cano's season, a season that has seen him be just as valuable a player as he was on the Yankees.

Yes, the power numbers are down. Cano put up an ISO average of over .200 for his last four years with the Yankees and was at .199 the year before those. It currently sits at .135. His home run total will likely finish half of what his average year with the Yankees was. But don't let that fool you into thinking that Cano has not been as valuable a player for the Mariners. He is right there giving the Mariners the same kind of value he provided for the Yankees.

Robinson Cano was credited with 6.0 fWAR last season. He is credited with 4.6 this season. The projections of both ZiPS and Steamer have him finishing the season at 6.1. To use full disclosure, Baseball-reference.com had him at 7.6 last year and at 4.9 this year. It does not seem likely that Cano will finish as high according to that site to his value from last year.

But WAR isn't the only calculation to look at. According to the two sites, Cano is having a very good year running the bases. Cano has a career high nine stolen bases in eleven attempts and his fielding is its usual fine self. So if the base running is better and the fielding is as good, what about the batting?

People always predicted that Robinson Cano would win a batting title someday. He might just do that this season as he is batting .330. That is his highest mark since his second season in baseball back in 2006. But batting average isn't the same stat it used to be in the minds of experts. Let's look at some other things.

First, there is his on-base percentage. At .399 this season, if he was to maintain that for the last month and a half of the season, it would be his highest OBP of his career. He has walked 47 times (15 intentional walks) giving him a walk rate that is the highest of his career.

Meanwhile, in this strikeout prone era, he has only struck out 51 times. While his 10.5% strikeout rate was bettered in 2008 and 2009, as a percentage of the league average, it is much more impressive this year.

The walk rate, the strikeout rate and his on-base percentage have helped his wOBA to be right in the ballpark of last season. He finished last season at .384 and he is at .373 this season. That figure is above his career average of .369.

There certainly is a ballpark difference between Yankee Stadium III and Safeco. Because of that park difference, his wRC+ of 141 is right there with his figure last year of 142 and above his career average of 127.

But there is something else to think about there. With the Yankees, most of the time, Cano was just another All Star bat in the midst of a lineup filled with All Stars. In Seattle, he toils in a lineup that only has two other regulars with a wRC+ over 100. Seattle ranks 14th in runs scored in he American League out of 15 teams and 15th in OPS. Cano's OPS of .864 is 190 points above the team's average.

In other words, despite being a rock star in the midst of amateur garage bands, he is having just as valuable a season as he had with the Yankees surrounded by a lineup of All Stars most of the time he was there.

I was one among many who joked that Cano was going to a team without the tradition of winning after being on one where winning is the only option. We all look silly as the Mariners are a game ahead of the Yankees in the wild card chase and have the kind of pitching that could keep them there for the second wild card spot. Whose laughing now?

It is not surprising that Cano's slugging is down playing in the vast expanses of Safeco for half his games (and away games at Oakland and Anaheim). But don't let that fool you into thinking is he is a less valuable player. He is not and has been worth every penny and then some to the Mariners. Yeah, you have to think about the back end of that deal. But for right now, Cano has been terrific and the Mariners have to be thrilled.

The two luckiest pitchers of 2014?

We reside in a numbers-driven baseball world where players are no longer measured by wins, losses, runs batted in or batting average. Instead we measure batters by wOBA and WAR and pitchers by FIP and WAR (among others). As such, players who buck the trends and are considered successful in the old way of looking at things compared to the new way end up being considered lucky. Alfredo Simon and Chris Young are the luckiest of this year's pitchers by those standards.

I find some discomfort with that bottom line. Pitchers can have amazingly successful seasons and still not be considered worth very much by today's standards. I should qualify that a little bit and state that Fangraphs.com and Baseball-reference.com rate pitchers differently. Fangraphs bases their pitching WAR calculations on FIP. B-R does not.

For example, despite amazing success on the field with a 12-3 record and a 2.70 ERA, Fangraphs rates Simon's season thus far as only worth 0.6 fWAR, only the sixth most valuable member of the Reds' pitching staff, while B-R gives him 2.2 rWAR, the second most valuable member of his pitching staff. With each win above replacement worth about $5 million, one system would rate Simon as worth $3.2 million this season while another at $11 million. That's quite a swing. Which is correct?

I wanted to see how rare Simon's and Young's seasons have been thus far. And so I did a search going back to the year 2000 and looking for starting pitchers with more than 100 innings in a season with an ERA less than or equal to a 3.40 ERA while compiling a FIP of 4.30 or higher.

With Simon and Young both in those categories for 2014 (with quite a bit of the season left to go), such seasons have only occurred twelve other times. So we are looking at something quite rare here. Of the twelve (fourteen if you included Young and Simon), only Jeremy Hellickson has done it more than once.

Of all the new statistics--and to reiterate for the thousandth time: I love them!--The devaluation of the win stat for starters does not sit right with me. FIP is a calculation that measures things a pitcher can control such as walks, hit by pitches, strikeouts and homers allowed. A pitcher with high strikeout rates, low walk, homer and HBP rates will score well. A guy with low strikeout rates combined with league average walk and homer rates will score much worse.

But the thing here for me is that I believe that a pitcher can control other things like weak contact instead of strong contact by keeping a batter off balance and getting less than ideal swings.

And so, on the one hand, you have a pitcher who seems to be succeeding despite substandard peripheral stats balanced by the fact that few of these pitchers mentioned in my search can repeat their success. There is a bit of a fluky element to both Young and Simon's seasons. But does that take away the fact that in the majority of their 18 or so starts each, they pitched well enough to win the game?

The interesting thing about Alfredo Simon is that he scored similarly last year when he pitched entirely in relief. He pitched 87+ innings in 63 relief appearances and had an ERA of 2.87 with a FIP of 3.96. He has found a way to get MLB hitters out for two seasons in such a way that makes him the non-darling of places like Fangraphs. Last year's season netted Simon a fWAR evaluation of -0.1. A negative worth for 87+ innings of 2.87 ERA?

Let's look at the two pitchers a little more closely. Let's start with Chris Young. As my buddy, Brandon Warne mentioned on Twitter, the guy really has a huge discrepancy between his ERA and FIP.  His ERA is 3.12 and his FIP is 4.95! Whoa.

Young has had several things going for him. First, the greater part of his success has come at home where his fly ball tendencies are a bit forgiven. His BABIP of .206 seems like something that cannot be sustained. Plus, a guy who only has a 1.66 strikeout to walk ratio still has managed to strand 82.7% of the base runners he has allowed. Neither look good for long term success.

But then again, Young has a .248 career BABIP against. That is amazingly low for the amount he has pitched over the years. I would lean on his second half being a bit rockier than his first half. I think we have already seen some of that happening in his last few starts.

Let's go back to Alfredo Simon. His BABIP against has been .232 after a career mark of .277. Both are lower than average, but much lower this year. His strand rate is even more remarkable than Young's at 85.1%. Simon's K/BB ratio is better too at 2.68, but still not amazing.  Simon is a remarkable 12-3 thus far. It may be lucky, but that is still twelve times that he has pitched better than his opponent has.

The season is not yet over and over a third of the games remain to be played. But as of right now, of those fourteen pitcher seasons I spoke of earlier, Young and Simon have the lowest OPS against of any of the other twelve. Simon's is .637 while Young's is .659. Fluke or not, that is dealing.

Here is something else to think about. Seattle and Cincinnati or one and two respectively out of 30 teams in defensive efficiency. For two pitchers that allow a lot of contact, great fielders support them in both cases and that has to remove some of the fluke factor.

Alfredo Simon and Chris Young might be having very fortunate seasons and perhaps you can say statistically--or at least make the argument--that the results they have achieved have been better than they have pitched. Or you can say, "Man, they have 2o wins between them at the half and that sure has helped their teams stay in the race." I'll leave it up to you and smarter people to decide.

Can the Seattle Mariners compete in 2014?

Last night I was tweeting that writing was coming hard for me lately. After cranking out over 3,000 long-form posts over the last five years, the cupboard has gotten a bit empty. After bemoaning my state, a long-time Twitter bud, Chris Cochran (@kingkube), suggested I write about the Seattle Mariners' chances of winning the AL West. I wrote back that I had to believe that was a possibility before I could write it. But for Chris' sake and since Mariners fans are about as passionate as there are in baseball, let's take a look anyway.

Before we start assessing where they currently are, we need to look at what happened last year. According to Baseball Prospectus, the Mariners ranked 22nd out of 30 teams in runs scored, 26th in runs allowed giving them the 26th worst scoring differential in baseball. The team's Pythagorean win/loss record should have been 67-95, but the team actually won 71 games.

On top of this tough season, stories blew up from their former manager and a former front office guy that the organization was a disaster and they are currently looking for a new president of team operations. All these factors do not point to a pretty picture.

But the Mariners made a gigantic splash into the free agent pool and got the biggest fish of the off season in Robinson Cano. Most Mariners fans are not mindful at the staggering cost and years of the contract and instead are focusing on the short term benefits, as they should. Cano is going to help.

They also signed Corey Hart and traded for Logan Morrison. On top of those items of good news, they will start the season (so it seems) with two great prospects in the rotation with Taijuan Walker and James Paxton, who won't have to pitch all that well to beat the likes of Joe Saunders, Aaron Harang and Brandon Maurer (though I am not giving up on Maurer just yet).

Such developments lead Mariners fans to hope for much better results in 2013. But will they be enough? The A's are still tough, the Rangers have weakened a bit and the Angels should be better. Is there any chance at all they can leap frog all of those teams this coming season?

Let's look at the starting lineup:

• Batting First (projected): Dustin Ackley. Mariner leadoff batters had an on-base percentage of .296 last season (Yuck!) and an OPS of .688. Ackley has a career OBP of .315 and while that is not very good either, he showed ability to get on base in the minors. He is still young and could finally start to figure things out. Improvement possibility here.
• Batting Second: Kyle Seager. The batting order position for the Mariners had a .700 OPS in 2013. Seager had a .764 OPS last year, so that is a big improvement. Seager has to figure out how to hit in his home ballpark. His OPS on the road was 147 points higher in 2013 and 189 points higher for his career. If he can lick that, he can be a star.
• Batting Third: Robinson Cano. The third batters in the Mariners' lineup compiled an OPS of .697 in 2013. If Cano cannot beat that by more than 150 points, it will be a huge disappointment. He should considering his history.
• Batting Fourth: The fourth batter in 2013 for the Mariners had a compiled OPS of .782. It was their most productive batting order position with Kendrys Morales batting there. He is not back and Corey Hart takes his place. Hart has a lifetime OPS of .824 and he has been around that area consistently. But the Mariners play in a park that is much tougher on offense than in Milwaukee and Hart has missed an entire season. He should be able, despite all this to at least equal .782.
• Batting Fifth: Justin Smoak: While Smoak still has a ways to go to prove he can be an offensive threat in MLB, his OPS last season was .746, or 57 points higher than what Mariners' fifth batter hitters compiled last year.
• Batting Sixth: The sixth batter for the Mariners was their second most productive in the lineup with an OPS of .782 in 2013. Logan Morrison is penciled into that lineup slot according to MLB Depth Charts. Morrison's career OPS is .764, but has not risen above .709 the last two seasons. My thought is that he will finish around .730 to .740. So I am giving this position in the order a -42 points.
• Batting Seventh: Michael Saunders. Saunders had a .720 OPS in 2013 and the batting order position for the Mariners compiled a .717. So let's call that one a wash.
• Batting Eighth: This one is difficult because new catcher, Mike Zunino is there backed up by John Buck. Zunino was fast-tracked with only two years of minor league ball. His .775 OPS in Triple A and .690 in his brief MLB experience gives some indication that perhaps .730 is a decent range for him. Buck is a career .701 OPS guy. But combined, they should beat last year's .650 OPS by Mariner eighth place hitters by 50 points.
• Batting Ninth: Brad Miller finished his short season at the MLB level at .737 and was much higher consistently in the minors. A .750 OPS is not a stretch for him this year and it could be much higher. Mariner ninth batters compiled a .530 in 2013, so we have a 200 point plus there--at least when the pitcher does not have to bat there during interleague games.

As you can see, the offensive is actually looking quite improved this season. Every position in the batting order except one should be better, most by a long shot. If Walker and Paxton are the real deal and greatly enhance the rotation after Felix Hernandez and Hisashi Iwakuma and the bullpen can be better anchored from the beginning of the season with Lord Farquhar...er...Danny Farquhar, then perhaps the optimism is warranted.

Will the Mariners compete in 2014? Maybe I am more optimistic than when I started this process. But all these things mentioned have to go well just to get them close to the A's and the rest of the AL West. It should be a lot more interesting to watch than I originally thought.

Nick Franklin and his 50/50 future

One thing I learned a long time ago was not to make sweeping statements that I cannot back up with facts. Doing so is one reason that Tim McCarver was so often skewered by the Twitter crowd. Facts are much harder to argue about. I have been curious about Nick Franklin ever since Robinson Cano signed his mega-deal and made Franklin moot for the Mariners. That team has been taking trade offers and his market appears to be a strong one. If a team is successful in obtaining him, that team has about a 50/50 chance Franklin will improve on his rookie season.

I have a blessing and a curse in that I am very, very curious. That is a good thing in this day of number analysis in baseball. The curse is that I was very good at math when I was young, did not do anything with it and now do not have the chops today's market requires to boldly state number observations. But I dug in with Franklin anyway.

I saw that he was a first round draft pick for the Mariners back in 2009. I noted his more than respectable .819 OPS in the minors. I also noted that much of his minor league career was playing for teams in Arizona and California and includes two years in the PCL, a noted offensive league. So the two facts sort of equaled themselves out.

But I did note him making several top 80 prospects lists from 2011 to 2013. So people have been high on him. His team, which took him in the first round, now has no regular spot for him because it signed Cano and likes Brad Miller better as a hitter.

I dug a little deeper into his rookie season. I, naturally, figured that his home ballpark would have put some dent on his offensive numbers. I found just the opposite. Nick Franklin hit much better in Seattle than he did on the road. That was weird. Those away games do feature a lot of games against the Angels and A's, two teams that play in tough hitting parks.

I also noted that he slid hard in the second half of last season and had a major slump in August. I mused a little bit on Twitter about my confusion about Franklin and a very good follow that I follow piped in to my musings. Here is the brief discussion:

@FlagrantFan His struggles were from being 22 & his first callup. Count him among the thousands who you can say that about.
— Howard Cole (@Howard_Cole) December 20, 2013

I like Howard Cole a lot and I respect him even more. But even respected people make those sweeping statements I was talking about. The "count him among thousands..." caught my attention the most.

So I did a search using Baseball-reference.com's Play Index. I searched for players since 1961 (53 years) who played their first year at the age of 22 and in their first year had more than 350 plate appearances (both true of Franklin). Doing so led to only 44 players since 1961. Nick Franklin's OPS finished 32nd among those 44 players. Using OPS+ would have been better, but I used OPS.

Of those 44, Franklin was joined in 2013 by fellow rookies, Arenado, Puig and Myers as new members of the start-at-22-and-get-350-plate-appearances club. So that leaves us 40 other players we can look at.

Of those 40, only thirteen players had a career OPS significantly higher than their rookie OPS. By significantly higher, I meant at least 20 points higher. They included guys like Pete Rose, Ellis Burks, Omar Vizquel and Will Clark. Just as many (13) finished with a career OPS that was lower than their rookie season OPS.

That leaves 14 players whose career OPS was very close to what they did in their rookie seasons. So maybe the 50/50 was generous.

That is not to say that Nick Franklin cannot be a useful player. He can. The Oliver projections for him show an OPS that does not move significantly at all over the next five years, but shows solid defense making him a two and a half to three WAR per season player for the next five seasons. Many teams would take that.

But those projections are based on his fielding holding up well and his batting being about as mundane as it was in 2013. That is hardly a clarion call for teams wanting to take a look at him. But, he is young and controllable (read: cheap) for a while and that is attractive in itself.

 I would certainly like someone to check my data as, again, it is not my strength. But from what I am seeing, the player some Mariners fans and other teams pine for has just as good a chance at panning out as he does of crapping out as a baseball player. As always, time will tell.

Career Player 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Career vs first yr Austin Kearns 0.907 0.819 0.740 0.785 0.830 0.765 0.627 0.641 0.746 0.764 -0.143 Evan Longoria 0.874 0.889 0.879 0.850 0.896 0.842 0.870 -0.004 Andrew McCutchen 0.836 0.814 0.820 0.953 0.911 0.869 0.033 Gordon Beckham 0.808 0.695 0.633 0.668 0.694 0.694 -0.114 Nick Markakis 0.799 0.848 0.897 0.801 0.805 0.756 0.834 0.685 0.801 0.002 Will Clark 0.787 0.951 0.894 0.953 0.805 0.895 0.860 0.799 0.932 0.880 0.093 Pete Incaviglia 0.783 0.829 0.788 0.745 0.721 0.643 0.749 0.848 0.716 0.758 -0.025 Robinson Cano 0.778 0.890 0.841 0.715 0.871 0.914 0.882 0.929 0.899 0.860 0.082 Andy Van Slyke 0.777 0.723 0.774 0.795 0.866 0.851 0.677 0.832 0.801 0.792 0.015 Rafael Furcal 0.776 0.691 0.710 0.794 0.758 0.777 0.814 0.687 1.012 0.749 -0.027 Jason Kendall 0.773 0.825 0.884 0.939 0.882 0.693 0.706 0.815 0.789 0.744 -0.029 B.J. Surhoff 0.773 0.611 0.626 0.706 0.691 0.635 0.709 0.821 0.870 0.745 -0.028 Ellis Burks 0.765 0.848 0.836 0.835 0.736 0.744 0.793 1.066 0.856 0.874 0.109 Steve Kemp 0.765 0.778 0.941 0.851 0.809 0.808 0.718 0.771 0.664 0.797 0.032 George Scott 0.757 0.839 0.473 0.716 0.821 0.758 0.746 0.858 0.777 0.767 0.010 Chris Chambliss 0.749 0.724 0.732 0.645 0.770 0.765 0.781 0.703 0.764 0.749 0.000 Oddibe McDowell 0.735 0.767 0.751 0.666 0.724 0.652 0.718 -0.017 Ron Hunt 0.730 0.763 0.635 0.711 0.689 0.667 0.702 0.776 0.759 0.715 -0.015 Gerardo Parra 0.729 0.679 0.784 0.727 0.726 0.731 0.002 Blake DeWitt 0.728 0.633 0.709 0.718 0.705 -0.023 Garry Maddox 0.725 0.810 0.720 0.750 0.833 0.772 0.741 0.729 0.664 0.733 0.008 J.J. Hardy 0.711 0.693 0.786 0.821 0.659 0.714 0.801 0.671 0.738 0.740 0.029 Pete Rose 0.705 0.645 0.828 0.811 0.808 0.861 0.940 0.855 0.793 0.784 0.079 Everth Cabrera 0.703 0.557 0.347 0.648 0.736 0.672 -0.031 Chuck Knoblauch 0.701 0.743 0.699 0.841 0.911 0.965 0.800 0.765 0.848 0.783 0.082 Dave Collins 0.700 0.699 0.613 0.536 0.765 0.736 0.735 0.646 0.671 0.689 -0.011 Bernie Williams 0.686 0.760 0.734 0.837 0.878 0.926 0.952 0.997 0.957 0.858 0.172 Dale Sveum 0.682 0.757 0.621 0.560 0.685 0.570 0.620 0.538 0.676 -0.006 Mark Bailey 0.661 0.787 0.590 0.674 0.013 Mariano Duncan 0.633 0.589 0.589 0.641 0.821 0.699 0.680 0.721 0.713 0.688 0.055 Jerry Remy 0.622 0.615 0.633 0.671 0.697 0.700 0.706 0.661 0.639 0.656 0.034 John Bateman 0.583 0.543 0.637 0.781 0.495 0.635 0.578 0.658 0.623 0.621 0.038 Jack Brohamer 0.565 0.597 0.660 0.639 0.688 0.748 0.612 0.644 0.637 0.633 0.068 Enzo Hernandez 0.545 0.492 0.512 0.562 0.539 0.640 0.550 0.005 Omar Vizquel 0.534 0.593 0.595 0.692 0.618 0.650 0.684 0.779 0.715 0.688 0.154 Hector Torres 0.510 0.400 0.633 0.550 0.436 0.295 0.633 0.533 0.628 0.542 0.032
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When striking out might not be a good thing

Strikeout rates have steadily risen in Major League Baseball, which just about everybody knows. And there has been much written about whether the increase is bad or not. But when you consider that the MLB strikeout rate is now at 7.51 per nine innings and compare that to 6.52 per nine just seven years ago, you have a significant culture change. I have had people tell me that an out is an out and it does not matter if it is a strikeout or a ground out. And while I have never quite bought that idea, articles like this one do not give me solid footing. But there really is one game situation where a strikeout might not be a good thing.

It is here that I need to remind you that I do not have the chops to be a numbers analyst. I see things and try to make sense of them. But I lack the depth of some of these great analytic writers to make much sense of what I am seeing. At best, all I can do is present a question that an analyst can run with. 

Such a question is found in strikeout rates in one particular situation--runners on third with less than two outs. If you have a runner on third with no outs or one out, it seems to me that contact will make a big difference whether that runner will score or not. And I wanted to see if teams that struggle to score also have trouble striking out when such a situation exists. From the data I collected, it seems to be a factor.

The Major League average for striking out with a runner on third with less than two outs is 17.64%. This is less than the overall league strikeout rate of  19.75%. While this could mean many things such as struggling pitchers, etc., it could also mean that as a whole, baseball tries to cut down on strikeouts in such situations and on average does so.

While all strikeout rates have risen, strikeouts in this situation are no different. For example, in 1980, the MLB average strikeout rate in such situations was only 11.94%. Such numbers do fluctuate as ten years earlier in 1970, the rate was around 14%. But it is safe to say that 17.64% is a significant increase.

My overall thought was that teams that were the worst in this category would correlate somewhat with the team's overall scoring average per game. For the most part, this seemed to be the case. Of the top ten lowest teams in runs per game average, only two of them (Giants, Brewers) beat the league average for strikeout rates in this particular situation.

The Giants here do pose a problem. The Giants are the fourth lowest in the league in runs scored per game. But only five teams strikeout less than the Giants' 14.86% in situations where a man is on third with less than two outs. But again, they are one exception to my "theory". The other, the Brewers, are just a little under the league average and are 21st in runs per game.

Two teams also blow up my theory a little bit on the flip side. Of the top nine teams in terms of runs per game, two of them strikeout more than the league average. The top scoring team in baseball is one of them. The Red Sox strikeout 19.19% in such situations. Cleveland is the other team and they are just above the league average.

The Red Sox lead the majors in on-base percentage and slugging. So it makes sense that they can afford to strikeout more often in such situations because they throw more spaghetti at the wall.

The Mariners and Astros are by far the worst teams at striking out with a man on third and less than two outs. Their rates are 26.02% and 26.55% respectively which is just amazing to me. In many of these cases, any kind of contact has a chance of bringing the run home and these two teams could not make contact more than 25% of the time. Wow.

The best two teams in such situations are the Oakland A's and Arizona Diamondbacks at 10.69% and 12.41 respectively.

But there is another factor here and that is whether a team strikes out at a lower rate or a higher rate with runners on third with less than two outs than the teams' overall strikeout rate. I have already shown the league average in such situations being 2.11 percentage points lower than the overall strikeout rate. While there are a lot of factors that go into such a number, there has to be at least some league-wide mindset that getting contact and putting the ball in play gives a team a better chance to succeed in those situations.

First on the bad side. There are eight teams that have a higher strikeout rate in such situations than their overall rate. Two, the Rockies and Rangers are just slightly higher. The five others are the White Sox, Phillies, Mariners, Twins and Nationals.

The Mariners rate a special place here. That team's difference in strikeout rates from this situation to overall is so much worse that it requires special consideration. The Mariners' overall strikeout rate is 21.53%, but it jumps, as we have seen, to 26.02% with runners on third with less than two outs. That is a higher rate by 4.49 percentage points!

That might go a long way in understanding why despite an improvement in offensive statistics this season, they have scored the 25th highest runs out of 30 teams despite being 20th in team OPS.

On the flip side, thirteen teams have a better spread than the league average (2.11 percentage points) between overall strikeout rates and strikeout rates with runners on third with less than two outs. The best at it are the A's (8.27 percentage points!), Mets (6.28 percentage points), Reds (6.11 percentage points) and Diamondbacks (5.73 percentage points).

Again, this might explain why the Mets are 27th in wOBA in baseball but are 19th in runs per game.

The amazing A's and their low strikeout rate in these situations, especially compared to their overall strikeout rate, might take some of the wonder out of how they are playing so well. You look at that lineup and scratch your head. But perhaps this one situational statistic might explain some of their success.

For these teams, concentrating on contact in these situations has to be stressed as part of their overall strategy. Does the A's performance in this situation have anything to do with that team having the highest WPA in the Majors? Perhaps.

I do not know if I have proven anything here. The numbers are interesting, but again, I am not an analyst. If this were a courtroom, I have left reasonable doubt and perhaps another "lawyer" can take a better look at it. But I have convinced at least myself that there is some factor in teams that cannot score often enough that has to do with how often they strike out and how often they strikeout with a runner on third with less than two out.

Here is my data in case you are interested:

Home is not a good place for Kyle Seager

If Kyle Seager of the Seattle Mariners could play all of his games on the road, he would be a beast. But since he plays half of his games in Safeco Field, he is merely a very good player and one of the young bright spots on his team. Most players prefer to play at home. Most players feel more comfortable at a place they play half of their games. But for Kyle Seager, home is a miserable place that could ultimately cost him money.

To give you an idea of how different a hitter Kyle Seager is at home, you only need to look at his splits and wOBA. If Seager played all of his games on the road, his wOBA of .389 while on the road would place him in a tie for eleventh place among all Major League batters. Instead, his overall wOBA of .352 puts him in 45th place. It is still a productive number and puts him alongside guys like Torii Hunter, Jonathan Lucroy and Colby Rasmus. He really seems to be a better hitter than all three of those guys.

But his wOBA at home is .316. That is quite the split. His isolated power or ISO is even more dramatic. At home, that number for him is .136. On the road, his ISO is .237. That is more than a hundred point difference. In the voice of Inspector Gadget, wowzers.

Many times, such splits are one year flukes. But that is not the case with Seager. Last year, his ISO at home was .102 while it was .219 on the road. Last year, his wOBA was .284 at home and .357 on the road. Now in his third season with the Mariners, Kyle Seager has an ISO of .113 at home and .216 on the road. His career wOBA at home is .291 and .370 on the road. Remarkable.

Just to break it down into simpler numbers, here are his career numbers on the road and at home in several categories:

• Doubles:  44, 32
• BABIP:  .318 road, .271 home
• Homers:  31, 12
• Walks:  60, 48
• Hits:  193, 145

This year, of his twenty homers, seven have been hit at home. His OBP at home is .371 compared to .322 at home. His slugging percentage is .527 on the road and .397 at home. That is a 130 point swing!

The last time I can remember a swing this different and against a player at home was Adrian Gonzalez in his years with the Padres. For example, A-Gone's OPS at home in 2008 was .788 and was .946 on the road.

Seager's struggles at home and the large disparity in splits do not carry through for the Mariners team as a whole. The Mariners as a whole have a split of a .695 OPS at home compared to a .711 OPS on the road. Yes, there is some better success on the road than at home, but not on the level of Seager's.

Seager seems to share his struggles with fellow lefty-swinging Michael Saunders whose OPS is 119 points better on the road than at home. But another lefty swinger, Raul Ibanez is better at home and Dustin Ackley is just about the same.

Kyle Seager is an optimistic part of the Seattle Mariners' future. He is a very good player and has become a fan favorite. But unless he can adjust and hit at Safeco (where he plays half of his games), then that will keep him from becoming a superstar.

Hope yet for Smoak and Hosmer

Prospects will rip your guts out. For every Trout and Harper, there are disappointments. There have been no bigger disappointments in the last year than Justin Smoak and Eric Hosmer. Both seemed to symbolize their respective team's failures. Both play first base, a position that requires offense. Neither provided any in 2012. Smoak's failures go back further than Hosmer's. Eric Hosmer came in third in Rookie of the Year voting in 2011. He seemed like the next big thing until falling apart in 2012 and the first two months of this season. Smoak was given up by the Texas Rangers and has walked a tightrope of falling out of favor for the Mariners after years of disappointment. But both are showing a bit of hope in the last month or so. Maybe these two guys will pan out after all.

Both of these players finished with negative fWAR last season. Hosmer finished with a .291 wOBA and Smoak even worse at .274. Those are the kinds of wOBA you might expect from a shortstop and not a first baseman. If you prefer OPS+, Hosmer finished at 82 and Smoak at 86. That kind of lack of production will lead you into the doghouse with fans and become symbolic of an impatient and angry fan base.

But both have played really well since the start of June and suddenly, their respective numbers look pretty good. Smoak has a wOBA of .337, easily the highest of his young and sputtering career. Hosmer's wOBA is up to .333 which is much closer to his final tally in 2011 than his woeful 2012. While those offensive statistics are still not what you want from a first baseman, June and July have shown promise for both and for that period of time, both players have produced at a more first baseman kind of level.

Since the first of June, Justin Smoak has slugged at a .553 clip with a .407 on-base percentage. That .960 OPS in that time period is the kind of production you want from a first baseman. His on-base percentage for the season sits at a very respectable .362 and his 13.7% walk rate for the year shows a guy who looks like he has figured some things out. His power numbers are not that great, but if his success continues, I have a feeling that it will come, especially since his homer per fly ball rate is below is career average.

The quality of Smoak's batted ball contact has been much improved. His current line drive rate of 22.3% is very healthy and shows that he is getting good wood on the ball on a more consistent basis. This shows up in his BABIP. His batted balls have tallied up to the following averages from 2010 to 2012: .255, .273 and .242. Having that low a BABIP over that long a period of time does not seem due to bad luck but more due to bad contact. His BABIP this year is a much healthier .324.

Eric Hosmer has also been great since June 1. He has slugged at a .573 clip with a .356 on-base percentage. That comes to a .929 OPS in that time period. And his power has really been coming on. He has hit eight homers since June 1 and has hit five homers in his last six games.

Like Smoak, Hosmer's line drive percentage is up this year. After two years at 18.7% and 18.5% respectively, his line drive rate is up to 21.7% this year. The line drives have offset what seems to be a very high ground ball rate. Hosmer has Jeter-like ground ball rates the last two seasons. I believe that if I dug further into the numbers, that ground ball rate dropped significantly in June and July over the early part of the season.

It will be very interesting to follow these two first basemen over the rest of the season. Both had really rugged 2012 seasons and looked like busts. Both started the season poorly to the point that the fans were screaming. But both have been terrific since the first of June and could be on the way to becoming viable big league players. I am rooting for them.

The Arizona mirage

Spring Training has been traditionally described in two ways. For veterans who have established jobs, it is a time to get in shape, get repetitions in to get ready for the season. For everyone else, it is a time to compete for jobs, rotation spots and future consideration. The former description can happen anywhere. The outcomes do not matter. But for the latter, where the competition takes place has to be largely taken into consideration. If that place is in Arizona, evaluating that competition has to be difficult because Spring Training in Arizona inflates offense.

In 2012, the top three Spring Training offenses were the Seattle Mariners, the San Diego Padres and the Oakland Athletics. As most know, the Mariners finished dead last in offense once the regular season came to a conclusion. The Athletics came in third from the bottom and the Padres were 22nd out of 30 teams. Obviously, what happened in Spring Training in Arizona did not translate to the regular season.

You should also notice that all three of those teams play in pitcher friendly (and batter unfriendly) parks. The problem is that hitters are having fun in Arizona and then once they get to their home parks, what flew around the stadiums in Arizona are settling nicely into gloves once the seasons starts. There has to be some sort of mind blowing that happens there.

A quick look at the spring statistics this year shows that the top five offensive teams by team OPS are all teams that play their spring games in Arizona. The Royals are on top. The Mariners are again right up there in second. Then the White Sox, the Angels and the A's. This kind of production gets the fans in Kansas City and in Seattle all excited, of course. "We are going to hit this season!" But will they?

Let's take the Mariners as a microcosm of this Arizona phenomenon. The Mariners currently have nine batters who have had at least ten spring plate appearances with an OPS over 1.000. Jesus Montero, for example, is batting over .400 with an OPS of 1.180. A year ago, his spring OPS was .923. Once the season started, he had trouble getting going and finished with an OPS of .685. Now personally, I believe Montero is a much better talent than that .685 finish of a year ago, but his Arizona numbers are highly inflationary.

Justin Smoak has a spring OPS of 1.285! Last spring, he compiled an OPS of .966. So how can you get all excited by what Smoak is doing this spring when last year's spring success did not lead to anything during the season?

Now let's look at the same team's pitching. Pitchers who can miss bats will hold their own. Felix Hernandez has decent stats this spring. Fire-ballers like Brandon Mauer blow people away. Kameron Loe is having a good spring because he can miss bats. But pitchers that rely on contact are getting whacked at an alarming rate. Joe Saunders is getting his head handed to him. Blake Beavan is getting blown up.

Joe Saunders has never been a great pitcher, but he has proven that he can at least get Major League batters out a league average number of times. If you are trying to evaluate whether Saunders should get a rotation spot, how do you do that based on his pitching in Arizona in the spring? Do you go by his history in the majors are by what is happening this spring?

I would love to see some people that are great with statistics to see what kind of lag there is with teams that train in Arizona for the first month or two of the season. I would bet that there is a direct correlation that can be proven between the giddy times of hitting in Arizona to the reality of hitting at the teams' regular home base once the season starts.

I would guess that teams that train in Florida have a much easier time to evaluate players than managers and GMs do in Arizona. I would love to see some statistically smart people do a study on this. It is for this same reason why teams sending young pitchers to the Arizona Fall League should do so with caution. These five teams that lead the majors in OPS this spring will be interesting to watch during the regular season. I would love to believe that the Mariners are going to hit better this season. But I'll believe it more when I see it.

Dustin, Justin and Jesús - ready to explode?

What happens when you trade a big chip for a can't miss prospect, a can't miss prospect for another can't miss prospect, and draft a guy first round and put all these hot prospects all in one lineup? Well, if you are the Seattle Mariners and their fans, you watched all three collectively flop in 2012. We, of course, are talking about Dustin Ackley, Justin Smoak and Jesús Montero.  None of the three topped the .300 mark in on-base percentage. And Smoak and Montéro finished below ground in the fWAR department. Can the trio reverse their fortunes in 2013?

Spring Training is such an illusion. The games don't count. Pitchers of every stripe are thrown out there to either get experience or just work on some pitches. Plus, a large number of teams, including the Mariners, now train in Arizona where the ball just sails through the hot, dry air making the offensive numbers dubious at best.

All those disclaimers aside, it is very encouraging to see what Dustin Ackley, Justin Smoak and Jesús Montéro are doing this spring. Smoak and Montéro are both batting .500 with half of their hits being of the extra base variety. Ackley is batting .400. Certainly, spring training is no predictor about regular season success. But success sometimes builds on itself and there is something to the group dynamic where success is contagious. Maybe we have something here.

Consider also that Safeco Field is going to have new dimensions this year that could favor Smoak and Montero specifically and Ackley occasionally. Montéro hit .295 on the road last season and .227. Smoak hit 197 at home in 2012 and .235 on the road. Ackley had ten homers on the road and only two at home. Safeco definitely got into these players' heads. The differences in the dimensions are not drastically different. But they will be different enough to change the mindset.

Another thing to look at is BABIP. Dustin Ackley had a BABIP of .265 in 2012. Justin Smoak's BABIP was an insanely low .242. Even Montéro's .292 was a bit on the low side. Perhaps some of that is bad contact. But perhaps some of that is bad luck and bad approaches too. If all three just have league average BABIPs, there is will be vast improvement.

Dustin Ackley is a former first round draft pick. In his minor league career, he showed a far higher walk percentage and lower strikeout percentage than last year's numbers. He has good plate discipline and only swung at 24% of pitches outside the strike zone last season. His walk totals will improve and the strikeouts will come down. Knowing where he was drafted, Ackley will have every chance to turn things around.

Montéro was the big chip in the trade with the Yankees that cost them one of their best young arms. He will get every opportunity to turn things around too. With John Jaso gone, Montéro is being depended on to catch, which is still quite the dicey proposition. But the gut here says that he is going to explode offensively a year removed from the shock of switching coastlines and leaving the only organization he had known.

Justin Smoak is probably on his last "Get Out of Jail Free" card and will need to either start showing what he can do or fade away into the sunset. He is only 25 and can still turn it around. If this spring is any indication, he looks like he's figured some things out.

Time will tell on these three. But, without being overly analytic here, all three could jell this season and make this a much more fun season for the long-suffering Mariner fans.