Seattle Mariners Build New Wagon, Debate Painting it

The last time the Mariners played the Rays*, the Mariners won two of three and then traded Ichiro Suzuki to the Yankees. Remember how they traded Ichiro? Remember Ichiro?

*whoops, just typed Rats instead of Rays. Do you think there are dumb Tampa haters who call them the Rats? As if that would somehow wound their fans? I bet there are. People are the worst.

The Mariners smacked around the Angels a bit over the weekend and were just so close to completing a road sweep, which would have been oh so sweet. Still, they got to demoralize Angel fans who probably were giddy with excitement after the wild pitch run-off and the prospect of facing Hisashi Iwakuma, Jason Vargas and the Mariner hitters with the likes of Dan Haren, Jered Weaver and the Angel hitters. Ha! Not to be, this time!

Coming into the series, CoolStandings put the Angels' chance of a playoff berth at 49%. It is now 35%. It was just a three game series, but the Mariners just did legitimate damage to the probability that the Angels get to keep playing after game 162.

The Rays come in on a six-game winning streak, having swept both Toronto and Minnesota. The Blue Jays are now last in the AL East, the Twins had been last in the Central for quite some time until the Mariners put the Royals briefly into that spot and now the Rays play the Mariners, last in the West. They're probably licking their chops over the prospect.

The current playoff picture has the Yankees, White Sox and Rangers winning the AL divisions. The Nationals, Reds and Giants are the leaders in the NL. The Wild Card teams would be the Rays and Orioles and the Pirates and Braves, which would be chuckly to me to see the Pirates finally break their two decade long under. 500 streak and reach the playoffs only to face the damnable Braves again.

P/PA = pitches per PA [avg~3.8], nBB = uBB + HBP, Sw = swinging [avg~45%], Ct = contact [avg~81%], Qual+ = a measure of quality of batted balls [avg=100, higher is better]

Remember when Dustin Ackley drew way more walks than strikeouts in the high minors? Chase Utley was the name most oft dangled as Ackley's peak upside, but Wade Boggs in one that struck to me. I miss thinking that was a realistic possibility. Get better, Dustin!

I remarked on Twitter during yesterday's game that among hitters with at least 200 PAs in 2012, John Jaso was the seventh best hitter in the AL judging by wRC+. Also that Miguel Olivo was the eighth-worst among all of MLB. Jaso is now sixth behind Mike Trout, David Ortiz, Edwin Encarnacion, Miguel Cabrera and Josh Willingham. Miguel Olivo is now seventh-worst.

The Mariners have played seven games so far against the Rays and six have been decided by one run. The other was by two runs. No team has scored more than five runs in any of the seven games. See, these offenses are not good.

The Rays' infield defense probably suffered the extended absence of Evan Longoria. But he's back now! So who knows. I could point to their marks in the previous preview, roughly 20 games ago, when the Rays' defensive mark stood at -20 runs. I could and I just did. You may also draw your own conclusions.

The charts got tweaked and based on helpful feedback, were tweaked again. I figured out how to make the bars a little wider and hopefully easier to see, the charts are a little taller, I set the cutoffs to be a little above and below the 2/-2 mark so you can quickly tell who's exceeding those thresholds, and the mean and standard deviation benchmarks have been replaced with median and median deviations. You can scroll down a bit to Felix's graph and compare against the link above to see three of the four changes at work.

The values may still not be immediately graspable for everyone, but the overall points I hope are evident. Blake Beavan throws a lot of strikes and otherwise sucks. Alex Cobb gets a lot of grounders and is okay otherwise.

Matt Moore is one of the more unhittable pitchers within the strike zone, a very desirable trait. While the league average contact rate on pitches in the zone is 88%, Moore's is at 79% this season which is lower than the league average contact rate across all pitches (81%), regardless of location. Being able to pitch in the strike zone and still miss many bats makes success easy for a pitcher.

So Jeremy Hellickson has fallen off quite a bit. Don't trust pitchers.

Unless the pitcher is Felix Hernandez.

Str% = strike rate [avg~63%], Ct% = contact rate [avg~78%], GB% = groundball rate [avg~45%], Qual- = a measure of quality of batted balls [avg=100, lower is better], LI = leverage [avg~1.2]

Josh Kinney does not get called strikeouts. Seriously, not a single one this entire season*. I think it is because Josh Kinney doesn't throw anything except sliders out of the strike zone and he somehow gets batters to swing two-thirds of the time.

*with Seattle. Statement void in Tacoma.

Series Drink: Pumking
Pumking is out you guys!