Seattle Mariners

The Mariners have lost six straight and have been absolutely pounded the last two nights. The back end of the rotation has performed even worse than usual, putting a significant strain on the bullpen. The offense is struggling again, scoring just 16 runs in those six games, half of those in one contest. After a couple of weeks of more encouraging signs, the glaring weaknesses of the roster are being exposed again. With Thursday as an off-day, expect the front office to take advantage of the respite and decide whether it is time to make some changes. I think there are some changes to be made, but before I make any suggestions, I think it’s important to again lay the foundation of what should drive decisions to make roster moves. As I wrote a week ago, you can’t replace past performance. There’s a school of thought that suggests that people’s job status should be evaluated on a pass/fail basis, and they be replaced when their performance crosses some arbitrary line of unacceptability. You’ve heard this with Brendan Ryan — “they can’t keep running out a guy hitting .150″ — and now you’re going to hear it with Aaron Harang, who has an 8.58 ERA and is probably the most likely player to not make the trip to Safeco Field on Friday night. I find this entire mindset unproductive. It’s a relic of grade school education, substituting test scores for actual evaluations of ability. The job of the front office and coaching staff is not to pass judgment on what players have already done, but to forecast what they are capable of in the future. The primary determinant of a player’s role on a team should be his expected future production. The idea of playing time being available to be earned like a treat for doing ones chores simply serves to relieve the decision makers of the burden of having to make decisions. It’s much easier to simply act as performance judge rather than skilled forecaster, but good teams are built by people who have the ability to see what lies ahead, not those who rely on grading what has just happened. Aaron Harang’s 2013 performance to date has been unacceptable, but you can’t replace Aaron Harang’s past performance; you can only replace Aaron Harang’s future performance. And you should only replace Aaron Harang’s future performance if you actually think that there’s an alternative that presents the probability of improvement. Saying that Harang’s replacement “can’t be any worse” is not only an untrue simplification, it’s an absolutely terrible way to make decisions. The Mariners shouldn’t ship players out because they’re unhappy with how they’ve performed. They should ship players out because they believe that the person replacing them is better suited for the job that the incumbent is currently holding. But now there’s a complicating factor, because at 20-27, the 2013 Mariners season is no longer worth saving. The Mariners have 115 games left to play. If we thought they were the best team in baseball, we might project them to win 60% of their remaining games. A team that wins 60% of their games all year goes 98-64. That’s kind of the ceiling for rational projections. Teams aren’t built to play better than .600 baseball, not in this age of parity. If the Mariners played .600 baseball the rest of the way, they’d finish with 89 wins. Last year, the two wild card teams each won 93. Even with the addition of the second wild card, the bar to reach the playoffs is 90+ wins, because the second wild card incentivizes more teams to keep their rosters together and try to steal a playoff spot. There’s one more playoff team now than there used to be, but the barrier to entry to play in October hasn’t been lowered that much. 89 wins is not going to get the Mariners to the playoffs. And, remember, t

I hate pessimism. In the past I've been an addict of it. The ease that comes from assuming the worst, the safety of not allowing in hope has protected me from who knows what emotional trauma. But awhile ago I decided that the crushing emptiness and depression that never allowing for anything other than a worst case scenario was a poorer option than having my heart broken. As a result I decided that no matter what the circumstance I could choose to find something positive to glean without compromising reality too much. I try my best to be a detached logic/critical analysis machine but it's simply not how I'm wired. I've come to accept my romantic inclinations. All that preamble to say it's been over two hours and I've yet to find anything positive to say about this game. It marks the second game where the team had a less than 20% chance of winning the game before the end of the first inning (the Angels Win Expectancy was 90.3% at the end of the 1st today). Brandon Maurer pitched his first major league game in front of his home town friends and family and looked like William Hung would sound covering Queen. The team has been outscored 19-1 the last 2 games and lost 6 straight. The Mariners playoff odds are at a season low 5.2%. This was uncompromising depressing. Kendrys Morales went 3-4 and raised his wRC+ to 129. There you are you sweet, tiny flake of fun. April 24th: Following a 10-3 defeat to the Astros Eric Wedge called a team meeting. As always with these kinds of things the sacred nature of the locker room was left unviolated beyond the usual two sentence cliches about "addressing expectations". While outside observers remain skeptical of the merits of these kinds of meetings and acknowledging that correlation does not equal causation the Mariners went 12-6 following the meeting. Now, in the wake of 6 frustrating defeats we get this: A players only meeting is the next step in the Baseball Team Emergency Handbook. The whole handbook is:1) Manager calls team meeting.2) Veterans call player's only meeting.3) Team goes out and gets drunk in attempt to bond.4) Miguel Cairo starts at 1B.So we're halfway through the whole process and the season isn't a third over yet. This probably means nothing. Most things mean nothing. But you can be damn sure if the Mariners take the upcoming series from the Rangers we will hear stories about increased focus and effort following this meeting. This is a bullet point about Robert Andino. I don't think I've ever thought, mentioned or written about Robert Andino with anything other than passive dismissiveness. That's wildly unfair. Robert Andino gave the world this. And this. Robert Andino married his high school sweetheart and grew up so poor that his high school's secretary paid for his prom. The odds are good that Robert Andino will parlay his versatility into being traded before the deadline for cash or a PTBNL. This may be the only time I write about Robert Andino's time with the Mariners. Tonight, in the top of the 9th with 2 outs and the bases empty Robert Andino came to bat. Coming into today his .wOBA sat at .226 and he had gone 0-3 with 2 K earlier in the game. Every expectation was another easy out and game over. Instead we got maybe Robert Andino's best at-bat as a Mariner: Pitch 7. That's the one that stands out. Pitch F/X classifies it as a splitter at 86 MPH. With a 2-2 count that pitch comes out of the pitcher's hand headed for the strike zone before diving. All Andino had to do was swing. No one would have ever thought anything of it. It's just another nothing game for a team that's hardly ever done anything playing half its games in front of maybe ten thousand freezing football/soccer fanatics. Swing and it's over and it's good food and a flight back home and an end to this nightmare of a week. But Andino didn't swing, and he didn't swing at the next pitch either and he drew a walk and went down to first as the game carrie

There are going to be the usual jokes made about this, but it was no laughing matter inside the clubhouse post-game as Mariners veterans got all of the players inside a private, off-limits room and held a team meeting prior to everyody dressing for the plane ride home. I know some fans and pundits tend to roll their eyes at team meetings and on some clubs, you can schedule them on your calendar as monthly, or even weekly events. But I would have been stunned to have not seen a meeting after the two-game fiasco we just witnessed here, with the Mariners getting outscored 19-1. There's a reason some of us were asking Raul Ibanez post-game last night about whether he worried some less experienced players might be tempted to get down on themselves after losing that hard-fought series in Cleveland Ibanez gave his teammates the benefit of the dout last night. But today, when they were blown off the field for a second day in a row, Ibanez and other vets made sure the players were reminded of how hard they'd worked the past month or so. And -- it goes without saying -- how close they are getting to throwing it all out the window if they play like they have the past 24 hours. “I think it’s important to remember all the good stuff that happened,’’ Ibanez said. “Not just on the trip, but prior to the trip. I think we’re going to be all right. We have a good group of guys, guys that are going to fight, that are going to scratch and claw.’’ Ibanez didn't want to discuss the content of the meeting, but did add that it was "a good time'' to call one. Brendan Ryan agreed with that assessment. “This is a whole different brand of baseball,’’ Ryan said. “This isn’t the brand of baseball we wanted to come in here and play. The losses in Cleveland were tough, but the hunger and drive was there. "This isn’t good,’’ he added. “We got behind and I don’t know, that determination – that if they score 15, we score 16 – didn’t seem to be there. I don’t know if we were feeling bad for ourselves, or what. But it’s a good time for an off-day.’’ And really, that's the difference. In Cleveland, the Mariners looked like a team that could go toe-to-toe with the game's best, even while getting swept. Here, they looked like the Mariners of 2010. You'll remember back in 2011, when the Mariners played .500 ball until July 4, then lost 17 in a row en route to a 95-loss season. They really needed some guys to step up with conviction back then and help pull the team out of that historic slide. That's one reason manager Eric Wedge was keen on getting more of a veteran presence on to the roster. Hence, today's meeting. An attempt to up the intesity level a bit. Not just sit back and take it. There are things, as I mentioned last post, that the front office and Wedge can do to help. The two losses here were mostly attributable to terrile starting pitching. The Mariners don't have a whole lot of in-house options in Class AAA right now, but Jeremy Bonderman seems worth at least a look. If Bonderman is promoted, it is still unlikely to be at the expense of Brandon Maurer, who lasted only three innings today. Wedge said postgame that Maurer is learning a lot up here, took a beating today that all young pitchers eventually go through, but came out of it OK and will be better for it. Maurer had the bases loaded and one out in the second inning and got Howie Kendrick to ground into a double play. “(Pitching coach) Carl (Willis) came out to the mound…with the bases loaded and said ‘This is how you become a man’,’’ Maurer said. “So, I go in there and throw a two-seamer and get a double play. I guess that was a positive I could take out of it.’’ Now, that's all fine and good. But if Erasmo Ramirez and Danny Hultzen were healthy, I dou

Source: FanGraphs Least non-productive: Kendrys Morales (WPA .020) Least non-un-productive: Brandon Maurer (WPA -.388) Tonight's recap will be somewhat delayed due to the end of the game coinciding with the bed time of my children. I sincerely hope the pent up demand doesn't lead to another SBNation server meltdown. Please, have patience. While you wait, perhaps discuss the what you had for dinner. Or: What ballpark current or past would you most like to visit? Do you think Eric Wedge survives to August? Where were you when you first realized your significant other was someone you wanted to share your life with? Please do not discuss the pronunciation of.gif.

This road trip ended shockingly worse than it appeared it would just five days ago, when the Mariners arrived in Cleveland having taken two of three from the New York Yankees. They haven't won since. And while some of the games in Cleveland went down to the wire, the Mariners were simply blown off the field here. This game ended 7-1 in favor of the Angels, so the Mariners were outscored 19-1 in the two-game series. That's not going to cut it. The pitching here from the starters was not up to MLB standard. And while I'm partial to letting the Brandon Maurer thing play out a little longer -- given some moderate success he's had -- this is not supposed to be a training school. That's what Class AAA is for. If he can't get opposite-handed hitters out with frequency, he's going to have trouble keeping pace at this level. As badly as I feel for Maurer today -- let's fact it, nobody wants to see somebody lit-up like that in his return to his childhood home -- I feel just as badly for the Seattle players who were never given a chance to compete in this game. Trouble is, the Mariners don't have a whole lot of options, meaning that they could probably replace one of Maurer and Aaron Harang, but not both. Not with anything that will lead to a real improvement, at least not this early in the season. But it's not just the pitching. There are too many black holes in this offense starting to show through and the Mariners might want to make an infield change now, rather than wait for the season to further disintegrate. The team nearly got shut out for the third time in four games. If there is any hope for an in-house solution to replace one of the struggling middle infielders -- be it Robert Andino, or Dustin Ackley -- they might consider doing it now. The Mariners keep saying that the time for free rides and developing at the big league level is coming to an end. That may be true for some players, but others look like they could use seasoning in the minors or someplace else. The Mariners don't have a catcher to replace Jesus Montero with, which is why he's still here and will be come Friday. But they do have Class AAA infielders in Carlos Triunfel and Nick Franklin who may or may not bring something to the table. They do have some options to replace some players who have underperformed all year. If they keep trotting out the same old excuses while losing the same old games, more and more fans are going to keep tuning them out. The Mariners were competitive in Cleveland. They got wiped out here. Cleveland is in the rear-view mirror. It's time to look ahead and deal with some issues.

Hope the Mariners have the jet warm because they need to fly off and hide someplace. They might decide to leave Brandon Maurer right here in his hometown. He gave up a third inning run and now trails 7-0. Maurer tonight has allowed 11 hits, walked a pair and uncorked two wild pitches -- in just three innings. At this rate, Aaron Harang might still be on the team come Friday. 5:09 p.m.: Mike Trout hit a one-out triple and scored on a single to center by Albert Pujols to make it a 6-0 game. Mariners are in all likelihood going to stumble home 2-7 after starting the trip 2-1. The heat will be on GM Jack Zduriencik tomorrow to get some moves done. Problem is, the time for significant moves is in the off-season, not the month of May. 4:46 p.m.: Once again, the Mariners just are not getting adequate starting work from the back end of their rotation. One can argue that Brandon Maurer didn't catch a break on that blooper that fell between center fielder Michael Saunders and second baseman Dustin Ackley. But the bottom line is, Maurer allowed the first five batters of the game to reach base and also uncorked a wild pitch. He had a chance to get out of the inning only two runs down but a double to the gap in right center by Alberto Callaspo doubled the score and then a Hank Conger single made it 5-0 after one. It's tough for the offense to get going when the starting pitchers don't keep them in the game beyond even one inning. Maurer has had his moments this year, but he's also had outings where he's looked every bit a pitcher who should be learning his craft in Class AAA. If the Mariners want anybody to take them seriously beyond June 1, they are going to have to start finding more major league pieces to patch up some areas of concern that have been there since Opening Day and gone neglected. Not just on the mound, either. The team has gotten by for a while with stuff it was fortunate not to get burned by. But this rotation, the way it's designed, is now hurting the team big time. Something will have to be done about it tomorrow. The Aaron Harang DFA will be an obvious move. Not sure the team has a move to make with Maurer. But you can only carry one fifth starter per team. This club has carried two -- and sometimes three when it's on the road -- all season so far. 3:57 p.m.: The Mariners enter this afternoon's road trip finale having dropped five in a row to turn what once looked like a promising trip into a 2-6 nightmare. Brandon Maurer will try to snap the skid today, pitching for the first time in the hometown area where he grew up. When I spoke to Maurer yesterday, he told me he'd purchased 32 tickets for family and friends. I asked whether he'd been getting calls from folks coming out of the woodwork that he hadn't heard from in years and he replied that this was indeed the case. "I told some of them they should uy their own tickets,'' he said.

Brock Huard explains why he has a problem with running back Marshawn Lynch missing the start of the Seahawks voluntary organized team activities.

Brandon Maurer vs. CJ Wilson, 4:05pm The M’s of the Zduriencik era will be remembered for many things, most of them bad, but I don’t feel like their volatility gets enough attention. It’s remarkable, in hindsight, that the team was .500 in JULY of 2011 before they went on a losing bender for three weeks. Last year’s team excised any trace of drama well before the all-star break, but then had long spells of solid play in the second half. A week ago, this team was on the upswing, taking 2nd from the free-falling Oakland A’s and beginning to scan AL Central box scores in the hope of moving up in the wild card standings. Now, they look lost again, with a tired, shell-shocked bullpen, a frustrated offense and a defense that’s dealing with some spectacularly poorly timed miscues. They weren’t as bad as they looked when they were 8-15 (easy to say, because they looked baaaaaad), and they weren’t as good as they looked in the Yankees series. That’s part of the problem, really. Five years into the rebuild, we know intellectually that a bad week or two doesn’t mean the team is Astros/Marlins bad, but we’ve heard so much about guys like Smoak and Ackley that we look for hope in the periodic upswings. Ackley just needed to ditch the pre-swing alterations! Smoak is walking! Jason Bay, you guys, Jason Bay! At some point, the team has to get better, so every time they win a few games, it’s easy to slip on that narrative – contention is nigh, we just needed to be patient. So it’s always that Mariner-y combination of dispiriting and expected when that excitement is buried by a stretch of awful games like last night’s. You don’t need to content this year, M’s, but don’t make games like last night’s a habit. So, Brandon Maurer. He’s used his curve more in his last two starts, especially the Oakland game, either because he knows it can be an effective pitch to opposite-handed hitters or perhaps because it’s something he can go to if he doesn’t feel he has great command of the slider on a particular day. In his last outing, he eased back on the curve, and threw a ton of sliders at Cleveland’s lefties. He mixed in the change and curve, but definitely relied on his slider more than he had against the A’s. So we’re still seeing Maurer’s approach evolve – he and Shoppach seem to tailor his pitch mix to specific teams or to specific conditions. And I think it’s worth noting that this’ll be Shoppach third consecutive start for Maurer. I know Montero’s clearly in more of a back-up role now, and it seems like they’re going to want to pair the veteran backstop with the young right-hander. Line-up: 1: Bay, LF (!) 2: Saunders, CF 3: Morse, RF 4: Morales, 1B 5:Smoak, DH 6: Shoppach, C 7: Ackley, 2B 8: Andino, 3B 9: Ryan, SS SP: Maurer That’s…that’s a new line-up. Seager gets a rare day-off, necessitating the always-painful bottom of the line-up pairing of Andino and Ryan (can we add Ackley to that?). The Angels have five lefties in their line-up, including J.B. Shuck, who they promoted when they realized that it’d been a while since they had Reggie Willits, and wasn’t that Reggie Willits something? Shuck can take a walk, slap grounders, and he never, ever Ks. Just throw strikes, Brandon. Tacoma won its fourth straight yesterday on a Stefen Romero walk-off hit. They’re now 28-18. Andrew Carraway starts tonight against Nashville. The M’s continue to scout Brazil fairly heavily, as they signed 17yo Daniel Missaki, who pitched (at age 16!) in the WBC first-round pool for team Brazil this year. -- This post came from: U.S.S. Mariner, and is copyright by the authors. This RSS feed is intended for the personal use of readers and not, for instance, spam blogs.Game 47, Mariners at Angels

Manager Eric Wedge moved some pieces around in his lineup Wednesday in an effort to get a new look against Angels southpaw C.J. Wilson and change things up in the face of a five-game losing streak that hit bottom with Tuesday’s 12-0 loss to the Halos. Left fielder Jason Bay moved into the leadoff spot for just the second time in his career, the first coming April 26 against the Angels when he went 1-for-4 in a 6-3 loss at Safeco Field. Michael Saunders, who has hit just .125 (4-for-32) while leading off on the road trip, dropped into the No. 2 spot. And with Kyle Seager getting his first day off after starting 29 games in a row, Michael Morse was hitting third for the first time this year after spending 31 games batting cleanup and then the past eight games hitting fifth. “Just shaking it up against the left-hander and giving the guys a different look,” Wedge said. “Every now and again I think you need to do that. And we’re giving Kyle a much-needed day off. I’m trying to domino that with an off day tomorrow, too.” Wedge said Saunders has been trying to do too much at the plate recently and needs to get back to the approach that had him hitting .286 coming into this road trip. That number has fallen to .235. “I don’t think it’s fatigue,” Wedge said. “I think he’s expanded the zone a little from time to time. When he stays within his zone, he does damage. I think he’s just expanded his zone, trying to do a little too much. We’re at our best when these guys are willing and able to set the bat down and take a walk and let the next guy get a shot at it. When they try to do too much or get a little greedy up there, that’s when you get in trouble.” As for Morse in the three-hole? “He’s had some success against Wilson and I wanted to give our guys a different look and give them a different look, too,” Wedge said. “Rework the dynamics with him and [Morales] and see how it plays out. We’ll get him up there in the first inning and see what happens.” Here’s the full lineups for today’s 4:05 p.m. series finale:

There are moral victories and then there are real ones. After taking a bunch of moral victories out of Cleveland, the Mariners need the real thing this afternoon as they conclude a road trip currently at 2-6 after starting off oh so promising with two wins and nearly a sweep in New York. For all of the nice things being said about how well the Mariners have played and how hard, they are now just 20-26 on the season and the platitudes won't matter if they finish roughly the same as last year. Mariners manager Eric Wedge isn't panicking yet, or so he says. But his lineup today refelcts just how badly he wants the win here today just to give his team something to build off with the Rangers coming to town this weekend. Wedge had Jason Bay in the leadoff spot once again, a role he occupied in Houston last month after Franklin Gutierrez got hurt with Michael Saunders already on the 15-day DL. Saunders is now healthy, but his offensive numbers have taken a nosedive on this road trip. He is just 4-for-32 (.125) with an on-base-percentage of .152 with a .188 slugging mark for a .340 OPS. It's amazing that the Mariners as a team had done so well offensively on this trip prior to last night, given how poorly the leadoff hitter has been performing. But with two shutouts in three days, the lack of a presence atop the order may be catching up to the Mariners. That's why you see Bay in there today, with Saunders at No. 2 and Michael Morse now No. 3 with Kyle Seager given a rest. Wedge was asked about why he thinks Saunders has seen his numbers go off a cliff. "I think he's expanded the (strike) zone a little bit from time to time,'' Wedge said. "You know what? When he stays in his zone, he does some damage. So, I think he's just expanded his zone, is trying to do too much. So, again, we're at our best when these guys are willing and able to set the bat down and take the walk and let the next guy get a shot at it. "So when you try to do too much, or get a little greedy out there, that's when you get into trouble.'' Wedge said it's important for his players to keep rememering how well they played in New York -- going 5-0-1 in their most recent six series to that point -- and in most of the Cleveland series before getting blasted last night. "You can't compute that,'' he said of the Indians series. "Those things happen once in dozens of years. And then we're one game into here, so you've got to keep it all in perspective.'' Wedge has Jesus Montero on the bench against left-hander C.J. Wilson. He said it's strictly a matter of wanting to better control the running game the Angels have and he feels Kelly Shoppach is best positioned to do that.