Lookout Landing: An SB Nation Community

Navigation: Jump to content areas:

Around SBN: MLB postseason scores, schedules and blog coverage Bar-right-arrows

Series Preview: Cleveland Indians @ Seattle Mariners

Tiny by Matthew on in Series Previews

Seattle: 37-58
Indians: 41-53

GAMES

Game 1: Felix Hernandez vs Aaron Laffey
Game 2: Jarrod Washburn* vs Jeremy Sowers*
Game 3: Carlos Silva vs Cliff Lee*

Laffey made a mark last year by running Felix-like groundball rates, but for 2008 his groundball rates have retreated like, well, Felix. In the absence of prodigious groundball rates, Laffey has instead fallen back on his mediocre stuff and bad control. Wait, those aren't good things.

Jeremy Sowers is quite an example of the consequences of yielding far too many line drives... and homeruns... and walks.

Unlike these two losers, Cliff Lee is awesome. He throws strikes, he misses a good number of bats, he's reasonably neutral on groundballs, he's below average nowhere.

Star-divide

Likely Starters:
C Kelly Shoppach
1 Casey Blake/Ryan Garko
2 Jamey Carroll
3 Andy Marte
S Jhonny Peralta
L Ben Francisco
C Grady Sizemore*
R Franklin Gutierrez/Shin-Soo Choo*
D David Dellucci*

Looking over this lineup it suddenly becomes clear why the Indians have been so disappointing this season. A couple hitters that the Indians were counting on (Asdrubal Cabrera and Travis Hafner chief among them) turned into pumpkins and as we know from watching our own team day in and day out, black holes kill an offense.

CONTEXT

FELIX!

Washburn gets another patsy offense to start against and barring the unexpected get to face the Blue Jays next and avoid Boston. That's going to be the ideal time to deal him though as he closes out the month against Texas. In Texas.

Carlos Silva against Cliff Lee. Cliff Lee is a lefty and it's a day game. That means there's a better than fair chance that Reed and Clement sit. Burke and Willie play. And Maybe LaHair too! The Nationals are off playing the Braves so hopefully Atlanta's star-crossed luck continues and they drop a couple one-run games to the Nationals.

THIS SERIES BROUGHT TO YOU BY:

12th Anniversary Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout
Stone Brewing. Escondido, CA

It's pretty tasty, what can I say? The name and brewer tells you all you need to know.

0 recs | Comment 142 comments

Read Related

Story-email Email Printer Print

Comments

Display:

Laffey

He’s got below average LD rates, and while his GB rate isn’t where it was, it would rank him what, 6th or 7th in the AL if he qualified? Couple that with pretty good command, and he seems a decent, average starter. Sorry, I’m getting flashbacks to the Blanton debates of yesterday….

Sowers: just another in a long line of pitchers who suck prodigiously, but who have a nice shutout vs. the M’s on their resume. What the hell happened to this guy? He seems to be the guy many thought Cha Baek was – that his ‘good command’ comes at the expense of allowing tons of HRs.

Andy Marte – this is one of the most interesting prospect busts in years, and it’s fascinating that it’s happening at the exact same time as Joel Guzman. They can move Pronk and AsCab, but they’ve still got a huge black hole at an important offensive position.

by marc w on Jul 18, 2008 10:42 AM PDT   0 recs

Laffey doesn't have good command, over 39% of his pitches are balls.

Though he is around average.

Sowers doesn’t have good command either.

by Matthew on Jul 18, 2008 10:47 AM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Sowers is terrible

that’s why I put ‘good command’ in quotes. That was his ‘skill’ in the minors – a low walk rate. But he doesn’t have the stuff to translate that into the majors… not only are his strikes hammered, but decent hitters don’t chase his pitches outside of the zone. Ergo, huge HR rate, terrible BB rate. Bad, bad pitcher.

On Laffey – I was referring to his half-decent walk rate. To what degree is BB% (percentage of balls thrown) correlated with walk rate? I can see why it would be, but I can also see that it would be nowhere near 1:1. Cha Baek has thrown over 36% balls this year, but I’d argue that he DOES have good command. Not everyone’s Roy Halladay.

by marc w on Jul 18, 2008 10:59 AM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Pretty well correlated.

Furthermore, Laffey’s HBP rate is well below average, another strong indicator of !good command and since really the number you want to look at is BB-iBB+HBP you have Laffey at 9.70% of BFs against a league average of 8.68% this year and 7.7% last year against 8.63% league.

by Matthew on Jul 18, 2008 11:05 AM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Pretty well as in 0.7, or pretty well as in 0.5?

Interesting stuff… cheers.

In another echo of the Blanton debates, what we have on Laffey is a half-season of good pitching (low walks, extremely high GBs), and a half season of a-bit-below-average pitching. We don’t have much of a track record to use to regress these samples toward. So what is he? What’s his career tRA?

Laffey in 2007 threw balls 38% of the time, and walked 2.19/9IP, incidentally.

by marc w on Jul 18, 2008 11:27 AM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Around 0.5 I think. I don't have the actual number in front of me right now

but swinging strikes to Ks was 0.62 and balls to walks was below that.

Career tRA is around 4.6, but yeah we just don’t have much data yet.

And again, BB+HBP-iBB. That’s better than just walks by themselves.

I don’t want it to sound like Laffey isn’t valuable. We have a limited sample for now, but he strikes me as a roughly league average pitcher which is damn good for a 23 year old and quite valuable at the league min. I just think his command is overrated (average+ instead of good/great) and unless he goes back to insane GB rates, he’s going to hover around league average.

by Matthew on Jul 18, 2008 11:35 AM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Thanks for the numbers

and I agree with all of this, by the way.

by marc w on Jul 18, 2008 1:52 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Did you hear that Philadelphia got a new pitcher yesterday?

it was Blantonly obvious that they would make a move, but that’s not the one I expected!

The Jose Lopez Watch - 113 H - 12 BB - 67 G Left

by seattlebruin on Jul 18, 2008 12:05 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Better for Gillick to get him

than to get Washburned by the Mariners.

by Gomez on Jul 18, 2008 12:06 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

And then it Pierces your heart to see it disappear

The Jose Lopez Watch - 113 H - 12 BB - 67 G Left

by seattlebruin on Jul 18, 2008 12:11 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

But Perkins up, Phillies fans - Blanton's not half bad

The Jose Lopez Watch - 113 H - 12 BB - 67 G Left

by seattlebruin on Jul 18, 2008 12:13 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

On Marte

I have a bunch of friends who are Indians fans, very up-to-date, saber-friendly guys. They contend he’s never really gotten a legitimate chance to play everyday – looking through his game logs, that seems to be the case. He played about every day down the stretch in 2006 and did reasonably well for a rookie, and ever since then has been jerked around a lot. Not that his recent AAA stats should have forced Cleveland’s hand or anything, as they’ve been rather miserable – but he has more talent than this and I’m curious to see how his season plays out if they do allow him to continue to play every day, as they have basically done this month.

by patsfan on Jul 18, 2008 11:28 AM PDT to parent up   0 recs

They gave him the opening day job in 2007

and he had a month of solid playing time. Yeah, it’s a month, but the Indians were planning on winning a pennant, and I can understand their impatience.

He’s certainly received a lot of starts, and he’s not gotten the 1-start-a-week treatment that Adam Jones got in 2006. I think there’s something mechanical or injury-related, personally. The indians fans would probably know more, but I’m suspicious of that argument….

by marc w on Jul 18, 2008 11:32 AM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Oh, I definitely understand their impatience

I’m just hoping they give him the last 2.5 months of this busted season to really see what he’s got, and I imagine they will… since, you know, they are a smart organization and not the Mariners.

by patsfan on Jul 18, 2008 11:40 AM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Hey, Indians fan stopping in from Let’s Go Tribe…

You guys are touching on a long-debated subject for us, but patsfan’s buddies have summed it up pretty well. Andy got hurt in 2007, is the greater context, and Blake had two good weeks at third while Marte was out, and we haven’t seen more than a handful of consecutive starts from him since. But the fact remains we’ve got somebody who flatly dominated AAA at 21; that kind of talent (and especially the discipline) doesn’t just evaporate.

The party line has been that the organization has been showcasing Blake (insert “snerk” noise) for trade, leading to Marte’s rather epic non-use this season. This is all a very long way of saying he’s got at least another year before I’d use the word “bust.”

by fleerdon on Jul 18, 2008 3:04 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

OK, but

He’s over a full year older than Joel Guzman, the guy I was comparing him to.

I agree that it would be phenomenally odd if he never got better; if he was a AAAA player at 22. But you’ve got to admit, he’s just not developed the way many thought he would.

Aside from a great 2/3 of a season in AAA back in 2005, he’s stagnated if not regressed… in the minors (forget the MLB struggles for a while). I’d buy the argument that his usage pattern has impacted his MLB results MORE if he’d developed as a hitter in the minors, but he’s still the same, albeit with a lower BB%.

Injuries may be a big part of this, it’s true.

thanks for the Indians fan perspective on this….

by marc w on Jul 18, 2008 3:18 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

It gets circuitous, for sure. He’s bad, but he never plays, but he never plays because he’s bad, but he’s bad because he never plays. This front office has gone increasingly radio-silent about injuries, so how much of 2007 was Andy being mediocre and how much was Andy being hurt, we’ll never know. 2006 I’m willing to give him a pass for. Looks to me like a 22-year-old, still ridiculously young for AAA, making some adjustments, getting called up for the hell of it, and struggling as a rookie. It happens.

I’ll say this: The more consecutive starts he gets, the better he’s looked at the plate. Obviously I’ve got a touch of the rah-rahs for Marte - he solves a huge problem for the Indians if he pans out - but I don’t think it’s entirely unwarranted. And, look. This organization has rammed Aaron Boone and Casey Blake down my throat for more than 4 years now. Forgive me if I’m not ready to give up on the alternative.

by fleerdon on Jul 18, 2008 5:57 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Another big reason for Cleveland's offense struggling

Victor Martinez and he’s power outtage before he got hurt.

Midnight Baseball - No Lights - Only in Alaska!

by MfaninAlaska on Jul 18, 2008 10:59 AM PDT   0 recs

Has he passed Shoppach yet

in total XBHs?

The poster formerly known as Matt.

by bluemax on Jul 18, 2008 11:17 AM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Matthew/Graham

You once remarked that Andy Sonnanstine was “what happened when you have good command and an iota of stuff”

What do you guys think is more important to a pitchers success, stuff or command? e.g. do you think it’s more important to be able to avoid walks or to get swinging strikes/induce ground balls?

The Jose Lopez Watch - 113 H - 12 BB - 67 G Left

by seattlebruin on Jul 18, 2008 11:26 AM PDT   0 recs

If you include getting groundballs with missing bats

than that one. Fausto Carmona would be your ideal far end of the spectrum here, getting insane GB rates and missing an ok number of bats but being quite wild. Or Tim Lincecum if you want more missed bats and less GBs. The end result is still pretty good.

On the flip side, a guy who doesn’t walk people but doesn’t miss bats and has a neutral or worse GB ratio would be like Paul Byrd or 2008 Greg Maddux. Pretty mediocre.

by Matthew on Jul 18, 2008 11:40 AM PDT to parent up   0 recs

So I guess that leads to the obvious follow-up:

What if you take GBs out of the equation?

The Jose Lopez Watch - 113 H - 12 BB - 67 G Left

by seattlebruin on Jul 18, 2008 11:42 AM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Much closer call then, I'm not sure which is more important.

Well, in a vacuum a walk hurts more than a K helps, but we’re not talking a 1:1 ratio here.

by Matthew on Jul 18, 2008 11:45 AM PDT to parent up   0 recs

That's a really interesting case

Given how scouts always hated Sonnanstine’s stuff (there’s a reason he went in the 14th round of the draft out of college)....

Sonnanstine’s garnered swinging strikes on just shy of 7.3% of his pitches. Laffey’s at 6.8%.
Sonnanstine’s average fastball clocks in at 86.8 MPH. Laffey’s at 86.6.

I’m not denying that there are differences here, and they probably matter. But we should keep in mind how razor-thin these gradations are.

Sonnanstine avoids the ‘stuff’ problem a bit with genuinely good command, of course.

by marc w on Jul 18, 2008 11:41 AM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Worth noting that the swinging strike difference was far more pronounced last year.

Andy: 9.2%
Aaron: 5.7%

but yes, the main difference between the two is the Sonnanstine has good/excellent command while Laffey just doesn’t. I’d break it down thusly on a 20-80 scale

Stuff (Miss bats) – Control (throw strikes) – Command (GBs, Avoid LDs, etc)
Andy: 55 – 70 – 45
Aaron: 45 – 50 – 65

by Matthew on Jul 18, 2008 11:50 AM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Is Cliff Lee due for some regression in the 2nd half of the season

or has he just got it figured out?

Obviously it won’t be against our offense, but I have to think that he’s not going to hold up at his current level of performance for the entire season. His GB% and GB/FB being well above his career lines somewhat support this theory (although its only a half season worth of data).

by thenatural on Jul 18, 2008 12:04 PM PDT   0 recs

If someone does something exceptional over a small sample

expect heavy regression unless there’s convincing evidence that something has changed.

by Jeff on Jul 18, 2008 1:32 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Cliff Lee = my favorite LHP Indian since Brian Tallet.

"Holy Shit, It's Steve Perry lead singer of Journey". "ha, FORMER Lead Singer."

by RafaelCarmona22 on Jul 18, 2008 12:16 PM PDT   0 recs

Cliff Lee = should be Chinese with a name like that

The Jose Lopez Watch - 113 H - 12 BB - 67 G Left

by seattlebruin on Jul 18, 2008 12:17 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Heh...

Chinese/Korean families like the name Clifford

The Jose Lopez Watch - 113 H - 12 BB - 67 G Left

by seattlebruin on Jul 18, 2008 3:10 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Also,

I’m thinking about going to the Stone Sour Fest this weekend. Don’t know if I’ve ever had a sour beer.

by Teej on Jul 18, 2008 12:45 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

If you end up going

you’ll be seeing a certain lady twice in three days.

by Jeff on Jul 18, 2008 1:32 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

You don't say.

You’re not going?

by Teej on Jul 18, 2008 1:44 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

M's game.

How sad is that?

by Jeff on Jul 18, 2008 1:46 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Man, you're dedicated. At least you'll get some good beer this evening.

Some friends of mine are also going to the Stone 12th Anniversary Party thing in August, but I can’t make it.

by Teej on Jul 18, 2008 1:53 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Completely.

I’ve pretty much used up my quota of Saturdays off for the summer.

by Teej on Jul 18, 2008 1:57 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Do they sell that stout in Seattle? Whole foods maybe?

And how does it compare to Young’s double chocolate and Old Rasputin?

...and now I'm here

by Librocrat on Jul 18, 2008 12:46 PM PDT   0 recs

Yes. Yes.

Different, but on the same overall level.

by Matthew on Jul 18, 2008 12:51 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Excellent. I will mosey over there shortly.

I picked up a somewhat random assortment of Aventinus Eisbock, Ayinger Celebrator dopplebock and Delirium Nocturnum a few days ago. I should pick up more and make it a taste filled weekend.

...and now I'm here

by Librocrat on Jul 18, 2008 12:58 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Not the biggest fan of Delirium Nocturum

but perhaps it’s jsut because Delirium Tremens and Delirium Noel are so fucking fantastic.

I did the same thing (WF trip 2 days ago) and nabbed the Stone, Hale’s 25 anniv, Belhaven Wee Heavy, Dupont Saison, Dogfish Head Immort Ale, a Kolsch I cannot remember, Orval and something else I think.

by Matthew on Jul 18, 2008 1:29 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Crap...cancelled the comment... long story short,

it’s ‘Saison Dupont’ not ‘Dupont Saison.’ I like it, some hate it – there’s a citrus taste to it that can almost taste like grapefruit.

Have you tried the Hale’s kolsch? Nice stuff.

I just grabbed Laughing Buddha’s Pandan brown ale, some Tennents lager (brought it back from scotland), and Victory brewing’s Prima Pils, which so far I’m pretty impressed with. Also been having a lot of belgian strong dark ales to balance the light stuff.

If you’ve got an opportunity, I’d love to hear your thoughts on how Wee Heavy compares to Traquair House’s Jacobite Ale.

by marc w on Jul 18, 2008 1:41 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

thanks for the correction.

I have tried Hale’s Kolsch, liked it. FWIW, the something else was Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye Ale, which I’ve heard good things about.

Victory makes some great brews. I haven’t have anything from Traquair House yet.

by Matthew on Jul 18, 2008 2:03 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Hop Rod is out of this world good.

Bear Republic is one of my new favorite breweries.

by acblue on Jul 18, 2008 3:01 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

Going to the bar tonight, and my first purchase will be a pint of Racer 5 IPA.

That’s the only one I’ve had, but I quite enjoyed it.

by Teej on Jul 18, 2008 3:07 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs

That's really good stuff as well.

They’ve got another one called Red Rocket Ale that I’m dying to try, but I haven’t seen it around. I can’t believe I still haven’t been to Bottleworks.

by acblue on Jul 18, 2008 3:12 PM PDT to parent up   0 recs