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First Half In Review: Passing Out The Grades (Pitching Staff)

Part two of a two-part series. Awwww yeahhhh

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David Aardsma: A-. Aarsdma's been quite a find, helping to somewhat stabilize a bullpen that was sent into disarray by Brandon Morrow. The strikeouts are way up, and he's only had a couple meltdowns through three months. My only concern is that he allows a ton of fly balls, many of them deep. He's definitely benefited from a big park and an awesome defense. He hasn't pitched as well as his ERA.

Miguel Batista: D. It's interesting to me that people don't realize how bad he still is. That 2008 must've left quite the impression.

Erik Bedard: B. Pitched well a lot of the time he was on the mound, but he didn't spent enough time on the mound, and there's not much consistency start-to-start. While it's great that his shoulder MRI came up clean, in some ways mysterious discomfort is worse than the stuff you can explain. I feel about Erik the way aviophobes feel about an overseas vacation.

Felix Hernandez: A. Felix may be a 23 year old All Star with a million-dollar contract and a billion-dollar arm, but I bet he doesn't have an emergency survival blanket in his pocket. You may think you're some kind of hotshot, but come wintertime, we'll see which one of us gets to enjoy complete thermal protection from rain and snow.

Chris Jakubauskas: D+. A few months ago I mentioned how much I liked Jakubauskas' curveball. Recently Harry Pavlidis did some work at Beyond The Box Score showing that Jakubauskas' curve has the lowest swinging strike rate of any curve in the Majors. I will never understand why anyone takes me seriously anymore.

Shawn Kelley: C. Kelley generally did good work on the mound, but he missed a lot of time and his most recent appearances show that he's still not all the way right. I both love Shawn Kelley and wish that he weren't probably the second-most dependable arm in the bullpen.

Mark Lowe: C. Too many balls and far too much contact for a guy with his stuff. USE YOUR CHANGEUP IT WILL HELP YOU AGAINST THOSE SINISTER LEFTIES

Brandon Morrow: C-. The best pitching prospect in our system has 127 games of Major League experience.

Garrett Olson: D+. I like having Olson around, and he has a little decent upside as a 4/5 starter, but his stuff gives him so little margin for error that it's basically impossible for me to feel comfortable in any situation where he's on the mound. I think that's the biggest reason why his bases loaded Houdini act the other day was so incredible. He doesn't miss many bats and he too often struggles to find the strike zone. Hurry up, RRS. And don't take this the wrong way, but you should hurry up too, Brandon.

Carlos Silva: F. Every day for the past three weeks I've thought about posting "Today's Fun Fact: Carlos Silva is still a Mariner" but I couldn't bring myself to do it, so now I'm doing it here. Only $25m left on the books after this season! Silva is living(?) proof that the big league DL system is a farce. Yeah, yeah, he has some wear and tear. That's not why he's sitting. He's sitting because oh my god why why would you ever let him pitch

Jason Vargas: C+. The more I see of him, the more I fall in love with Vargas' changeup. Between that and his ordinary but left-handed breaking ball, he's a starter who's not likely to run a big platoon split. Considering he's not even getting expensive yet, he was one hell of a throw-in, a guy I barely even noticed when we made the trade. I'm worried about how well he'll hold up down the stretch after not throwing in 2008, but to date, he's been quite good for what he is.

Jarrod Washburn: B-. Last year's litmus test of baseball intelligence was Raul Ibanez's defense. This year's is Jarrod Washburn's value as a pitcher. Washburn has taken a step forward - listen to me, everybody, Washburn has taken a step forward - but he's still not very good, and people who want to offer him arbitration or sign him to an extension are pants-on-arms crazy. He's been neat for three months, though. You know what else is neat? This emergency survival blanket. The package says it can be used as a signaling device for air support, and I work right next to Miramar, but for some reason when I took it for a field test the pilots got all uppity.

Sean White: C-. He's last year's Roy Corcoran, only with like 25% less of the only thing that made last year's Roy Corcoran any good. Speaking of percentages, this emergency survival blanket retains 90% of body heat. Great for survival, and great for taking warm pies to a picnic! White probably deserves a D or a D+, but he's flukily avoided home runs, so whatever. I wonder if people back home refer to him as the pride of Pullman. That would suck for Pullman.

Assorted Others: Irrelevant. When Roy Corcoran's on, he covers the ground with his sinker, but nothing covers the ground quite like this emergency survival blanket.

1 recs  |  Comment 62 comments |

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Sigh.

Furness, Divish, Puckett & Sandmeyer on the first half. Listen to all four of them completely miss the boat on Johnson vs Johjima.

by msb on Jul 15, 2009 2:29 PM PDT reply actions   0 recs

I do not agree with that JakubausCaustic grade.

By tRA, he’s been basically a dead-on league average pitcher. By FIP, a bit worse but solidly above replacement level. For a 5th starter/long man they grabbed from nowhere, that’s not bad at all. C.

by marc w on Jul 15, 2009 2:31 PM PDT reply actions   0 recs

I suppose I let true talent evaluations spill over a little too much into first half reviews

Jakubauskas was technically better than a D+ I guess but his LD% is laughably, unsustainably low, and once that catches up with him his inability to miss bats will be a huge problem.

by Jeff on Jul 15, 2009 2:34 PM PDT up reply actions   0 recs

Yes, that was nice and all, but the 10% LD rate had something to do with it.

More LDs = more normal (though still very, very good) GB rates.

by marc w on Jul 15, 2009 2:45 PM PDT up reply actions   0 recs

I had forgotten about Corcoran's hilarious LD%

The GB/FB, though…Jak doesn’t even count as a groundballer at all by that ratio.

by Jeff on Jul 15, 2009 2:50 PM PDT up reply actions   0 recs

Dude.

The pride of Pullman is…um, well…does John Elway count?

by justcougit on Jul 15, 2009 3:53 PM PDT reply actions   0 recs

Huh.

There’s someone missing from that list. I won’t mention Ryan L’s full name. Nor will I refer to a R. Leaf…

This signature space for rent.

by PositivePaul on Jul 15, 2009 4:07 PM PDT up reply actions   0 recs

Let's hope the Batista camouflage holds up until he's traded

Maybe we should let him blow a lead then regain it a couple more times to up his W column before July 31st. [Decatur, that’s a joke!].

Chicks dig the long ball.

by LauraBu on Jul 15, 2009 5:02 PM PDT reply actions   0 recs

KC!

Chicks dig the long ball.

by LauraBu on Jul 15, 2009 5:36 PM PDT up reply actions   0 recs

You're forgetting Eileen and Estefania!

Also, Melenious, but Miguel Batista rejected her love, the poor thing!
[takes cover]

by Decatur on Jul 15, 2009 6:01 PM PDT up reply actions   0 recs

One person's junk is another person's treasure!

That’s the whole raison d’etre behind eBay, Craigslist, and garage sales.

Chicks dig the long ball.

by LauraBu on Jul 16, 2009 5:48 AM PDT up reply actions   0 recs

On mlbtv they gave all 30 teams grades and rated their hitting, defense, starting pitching and bullpen.

John Hart said the M’s defense was average and they are where they are due to their pitching. It made me angry, though I should not really care what John Hart thinks. It just shows that Jack Zduriencik and the M’s are ahead of the curve and that feels good.

by jimmylauderdale on Jul 15, 2009 7:03 PM PDT reply actions   0 recs

I've always wondered how much time those guys spend actually looking at any team they are talking about.

Really looking into them, how the pieces all fit together. Guess they could learn some advanced metrics and shortcut the process, but still.

by Kermit. on Jul 15, 2009 8:16 PM PDT up reply actions   0 recs

What is funny is that their thought process probably goes like:

“I don’t have time to sit here and scout the whole team, each piece, in depth. I will instead rely on some research, some tape and some rudimentary stats.”

Whereas, if you took the initial time to learn good solid measurements like tRA, wOBA, etc. you can pretty much cut out everything else.

by Matthew on Jul 15, 2009 10:25 PM PDT up reply actions   0 recs

I thought John Hart was smart

Maybe he is, and maybe he’s just uninformed because he doesn’t need to keep up in order to run a team

by Poochie on Jul 16, 2009 10:22 AM PDT up reply actions   0 recs

I frequently scream RUN PREVENTION at the radio in my car.

I’m convinced that if the phrase run prevention can be sneaked into common usage ERA will go away.

by Nate Dogg on Jul 16, 2009 10:36 AM PDT up reply actions   0 recs

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