Series Preview: Seattle Mariners @ Cleveland Indians

by Matthew on Aug 21, 2009 1:30 PM PDT in Seattle Mariners Previews

Seattle: 62-59
Cleveland: 52-68

SUMMARY

	MARINERS	INDIANS	EDGE
HITTING (wOBA)	-74.9 (27th)	51.3 (5th)	CLE
FIELDING (UZR)	52.1 (2nd)	-23.0 (26th)	SEA
ROTATION (pRAA)	-19.1 (23rd)	-7.3 (17th)	CLE
BULLPEN (pRAA)	-28.8 (30th)	-21.0 (27th)	CLE
OVERALL(RAA)	-70.7	0.0	Cleveland

What are the odds that roughly 120 games into the season you would find a team that came to exactly average? Incredible.

The previous Cleveland series chopped a leg out from under us. I, for one, would like to similarly embarrass them in their podunk city. A couple lefties in the rotation for Cleveland means more of Mike Sweeney and the likely introduction of Bill Hall into the lineup. Third base seems like a natural place for him to play, but do not be surprised if he gets some time in left as well given our options there, Ryan Langerhans and Michael Saunders, are both left-handed.

I would prefer to get Langerhans some more playing time if sitting Saunders against lefties is the short term plan, but I feel it's one of those times the team will do the opposite. And frankly, it's not that big of a deal. One could argue that the team has a pretty solid idea of what Langerhans brings to the table already and so getting further PAs for Jack Hannahan is more important as the team still has to figure out third base for 2010. To which I reply, yes, but shut up, I love Langerhans. I also love Hannahan though, so I will just shut up now.

GAMES

Game 1: Lucas French* vs. David Huff*
Game 2: Doug Fister vs. Aaron Laffey*
Game 3: Felix Hernandez vs. Fausto Carmona

David Huff's swinging strike rate is still down, he's not getting strikeouts and he does little job of generating ground balls. If that sounds like a below average pitcher, or Luke French incidentally, then yes! It is.

Aaron Laffey makes David Huff look like Rich Harden. Among starters with at least 1,000 pitches tossed this season, Aaron Laffey has the third worst missed bat rate in the Majors ahead only of John Lannan and Anthony Swarzak. He does get ground balls, but he does not pound the strike zone and has 32 walks and 32 strikeouts in 65 innings pitched so far.

Fausto Carmona continues his Magellanic voyage to re-find the strike zone. Only 45% of pitches he throws are inside it and he has accumulated 53 walks in 82.2 innings this year, a super high number not balanced by his merely average swinging strike rate and pedestrian strikeout totals (46).

The lesson for this weekend? Take pitches! And aim low, Laffey and Carmona are big time groundball pitchers.

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Comments

Let's get right to it.

Bill Hall is starting in LF today:

RF Ichiro
CF Franklin Gutierrez
2B Jose Lopez
DH Mike Sweeney
1B Russell Branyan
LF Bill Hall
3B Jack Hannahan
C Rob Johnson
SS Josh Wilson

by ThundaPC on Aug 21, 2009 1:37 PM PDT reply actions

That lineup enjoys mayonnaise and the soulful sounds of Michael McDonald.

by waldo rojas on Aug 21, 2009 1:51 PM PDT up reply actions

Bill Hall begs to differ.

by abender20 on Aug 21, 2009 2:03 PM PDT up reply actions

And Ichiro.

angels fan in seattle

by Eyebrows on Aug 21, 2009 2:21 PM PDT up reply actions

Franklin Gutierrez enjoys mayonnaise in a slightly different way than the rest of the lineup

by Dewey N on Aug 21, 2009 2:27 PM PDT up reply actions

Ask Jeff.

by msb on Aug 21, 2009 2:31 PM PDT up reply actions

Remember when Carmona had that good year back in 2007?

Yeah, he’s going to look like that against us on Sunday.

A Mariners fan in Seattle

by Coach Owens on Aug 21, 2009 1:39 PM PDT reply actions

No

He’ll pretty much suck in a game that will conclude with a walk-off single for Cleveland.

by ThundaPC on Aug 21, 2009 1:45 PM PDT up reply actions

We're 9.5 games better than that team somehow

by Jeff Sullivan on Aug 21, 2009 1:46 PM PDT reply actions

We say this every series!

by Matthew on Aug 21, 2009 1:49 PM PDT up reply actions

Yeah, add the W/L record to that table, and it's pretty wierd.

Seattle: 62-59 with -70.7 RAA
Cleveland: 52-68 with 0.0 RAA

Seattle’s been really lucky and Cleveland’s been incredibly unlucky.

Fuck the Angels! And the Yankees and Red Sox while we're at it.

by urchman on Aug 21, 2009 1:49 PM PDT up reply actions

M's have the leagues best record in 1-run games

at 28-15.

I dunno why Cleveland’s been so unlucky though.

Fuck the Angels! And the Yankees and Red Sox while we're at it.

by urchman on Aug 21, 2009 1:53 PM PDT up reply actions

They play in the AL Central too (Which should help them some)

I’m amazed we have the record we do seeing how the AL West is apparently good.

Its amazing how we’ve somehow outperformed our suspected record. Remember a couple of years ago we were trying to justify how we outperformed our pythag record because of our “great” bullpen. Yeah can’t use that excuse this year.

by Edgar for Pres on Aug 21, 2009 3:08 PM PDT up reply actions

ERA ERA ERA ERA ERA

by Matthew on Aug 21, 2009 3:09 PM PDT up reply actions

Are you saying Putz wasn't real?

Cause if I remember right, he was alot of the reason some people proposed we were able to do so well in close games which pushed our record so high compared to the pythag.

If you are saying his ERA (or RA?) was better than it was suppose to be then I think we just will have to disagree.

by Edgar for Pres on Aug 21, 2009 3:11 PM PDT up reply actions

Wow, that was about as wrong of an interpretation as you could have

and still manage to make it about the same subject.

My comment was a joke that people still think our bullpen is good this year because of it’s shiny ERA.

by Matthew on Aug 21, 2009 3:14 PM PDT up reply actions

Hah. Ok cool. I thought I was being really stupid.

by Edgar for Pres on Aug 21, 2009 3:17 PM PDT up reply actions

I wouldn't really say our bullpen has too shiny of an ERA even though.

Its probably about average considering park effects. Once taking into account defense helping them out….they kinda suck just like you showed.

I don’t want to say cheap bullpens suck because I agree with you guys that it should be possible to make a good bullpen without shelling out big money but man, our relief pitchers kinda suck. Imagine what they’d look like without the defense (and some of their good luck). I don’t really want to think about it too much.

Growing up with the 90’s Mariners, I think I’ve grown to despise bad relief pitchers. They just exist to piss you off. Hopefully (and should be possible) the pen next year is stronger. I don’t want to go through a year of a bad bullpen with bad luck that kill a team’s potential.

I can take bad starting pitching because you expect to lose a game where Carlos Silva pitches. This year I’ve discovered watching a team with an utter lack of offense isn’t even that bad as long as they play amazing defense. The one thing that destroys my spirit is when everything is going great or at least the game is close and in the 8th or 9th inning some piece of crap from the bullpen comes in and fucks everything up. That’s the only time I question why I care so much about a game because there is nothing enjoyable about watching a meltdown of those sorts.

by Edgar for Pres on Aug 21, 2009 3:32 PM PDT up reply actions

Probably just because our hitting is so god-awful.

Put that at 0.0 wOBA and we’re actually a little bit better than them.

A Mariners fan in Seattle

by Coach Owens on Aug 21, 2009 1:53 PM PDT up reply actions

So, basically, I don't think that it's necessarily all that accurate.

No offense, Matthew. I appreciate how you put one up before every series.

A Mariners fan in Seattle

by Coach Owens on Aug 21, 2009 1:54 PM PDT up reply actions

Are you saying you do not think we're a poor hitting team?

by Matthew on Aug 21, 2009 2:24 PM PDT up reply actions

No, I'm saying that I don't think we're as bad of a team as our hitting makes us look.

A Mariners fan in Seattle

by Coach Owens on Aug 21, 2009 2:34 PM PDT up reply actions

Because... ?

by Matthew on Aug 21, 2009 2:40 PM PDT up reply actions

Just from seeing the team play their games.

We look like a team that has the ability to actually contend for the playoffs, but we just can’t put it all together.

A Mariners fan in Seattle

by Coach Owens on Aug 21, 2009 2:45 PM PDT up reply actions

Next on 'Your opinion counts!'...

by Graham MacAree on Aug 21, 2009 2:47 PM PDT up reply actions

Okay, let's look at it this way.

Take out players like Betancourt, Cedeno, Balentien, Burke, Chavez and Woodward, guys who aren’t even on the team anymore, and our bRAA goes up -17.3. Which is what I’m trying to say. Our team isn’t as bad as it was, and is better than that -74.9 makes us seem.

A Mariners fan in Seattle

by Coach Owens on Aug 21, 2009 3:02 PM PDT up reply actions

And that doesn't apply to other teams? Bad players get dropped from teams all the time.

But yes, the team is better now than it was at the start of the season (hitting-wise).

by Matthew on Aug 21, 2009 3:06 PM PDT up reply actions

I'd say it's better defense-wise as well.

And maybe rotation-wise but that’s probably a stretch.

by Aaron Campeau on Aug 21, 2009 8:43 PM PDT up reply actions

Definitely not, rotation-wise.

Defense is probably true.

by Matthew on Aug 21, 2009 11:57 PM PDT up reply actions

Oh yeah, Bedard.

by Aaron Campeau on Aug 22, 2009 12:33 AM PDT up reply actions

I would argue.

That given the way our team has been constructed and the way it has performed this year the team HAS put it all together…as much as it can anyway. This really isn’t supposed to be a 90+ win playoff team but it most certainly could’ve been worse. Every other team that’s score as few runs as we have are struggling just to get 50 wins at this point in the season. Here we have 62.

by ThundaPC on Aug 21, 2009 2:58 PM PDT up reply actions