Seattle Mariners

Justin Smoak spent the spring convincing people that he's primed for a full-season breakout. Smoak has been known as a tease, and those who succumbed in the past tried valiantly to resist. It's just a mirage! But his swing is noticeably different! It's just a mirage! But he's hitting the ball the other way! It's just a mirage! Another double! Look at that dinger! It's just a mirage! But what if it isn't? I did my best to hold out, but a training camp's-worth of optimism began wearing me down. Maybe there is something different. Maybe Smoak will defy the odds and break through. Whether Smoak would actually get his career back on track, I was just happy to approach his at bats with a sense of curiosity rather than one of dread. It injected some intrigue into April baseball. Then Smoak started the season with just 5 singles through his first 37 plate appearances. He had a little more aesthetic appeal and his peripherals suggested that he might have deserved a few more hits, but all of that damned optimism quickly began to fade and I, once again, began kicking myself for being the slightest bit open to the idea that Smoak could turn a corner after nearly 1,500 trips to the plate. But just as everyone -- finally, everyone -- was about to write off Smoak for good, he does what he does. On April 21, through 74 plate appearances, he was hitting .200/.297/.215. On May 21, through 164 plate appearances, he's hitting .252/.366/.367. It's been interesting. Smoak has improved his plate discipline, tacked on a bunch of walks, and seems to be hitting the ball hard. But he wasn't hitting for the power his frame suggested he should have -- the power required to punch down a tree -- leaving us a way out. He didn't have the home runs but he also didn't have the oomph. He appeared weak. As Dave wrote a month ago: "This is, essentially, the inevitable conclusion that evidence forces us to draw: Justin Smoak is just not very strong. He’s never been very strong." Smoak may have made himself into a semi-interesting player. Maybe even a player that will stick in the big leagues. Maybe even a player that will start in the big leagues. But he isn't a player worth building around on a team desperate for players to build around. We could still be free. Oh... that tease. During the 10th inning Monday afternoon, Justin Smoak did this: According to ESPN Home Run Tracker, this ball's "true distance" was 422 feet, making it the fifth longest home run Smoak has hit at the big league level, and the longest home run he's hit outside of Rangers Ballpark in Arlington. As impressive, the speed off the bat was measured at 113 MPH, the fastest of his big league career, fastest among all Mariners this year, and 30th on the league-wide list so far this season. This ball was crushed. The swing had a ferocity we're not used to seeing from Smoak. We've seen Smoak in way over his head for most of the past three seasons. Right now it feels like we're seeing Smoak the prospect. We're seeing a kid with a big body, a sound approach at the plate, and -- on Monday -- the ability to "flash" 70 power. But this kid is 26, not 21, and odds are that he doesn't have another plateau leap in him. But baseball isn't baseball if we know. There is one side of me that would like Smoak to crash and burn so badly that the Mariners have no choice but to finally move on and try something different; change for the sake of change, but hopefully change for the better. But there is a small, teeny-tiny slice of me that cannot shake that stupid, unreasonable, nagging hope. Because baseball. Because Michael Saunders. Because Jose Bautista. Maybe Smoak is finding something. Maybe Smoak revamped his approach and is now getting comfortable enough to start swinging with intent. Maybe Smoak's story is an outlier. Or Smoak simply ran into a 92 MPH fastball just right. And we're just grasping at straws because it beats trying to convince ourselves t

Date Time Pitching Probables 5/21 7:05 pm PDT Jerome Williams vs. Aaron Harang 5/22 4:05 pm PDT C.J. Wilson vs. Brandon Maurer The Rally Monkey thing first popped up over a decade ago for reasons I cannot remember and has stuck around for reasons I cannot fathom. This series' Q&A is with primate gifs because two game series against the Angels. Jon: The Angels were considered World Series contenders by many coming into 2013. How are fans feeling about the season at this point? Rally Monkey: Jon: How did the Angels play during Mike Scoscia's more successful seasons? Rally Monkey: Jon: And this season? Rally Monkey: (Albert Pujols) Jon: So... now what? Rally Monkey: Jon: ...

Justin Smoak may have said it best yesterday when he opined that any time a team loses three walk off games in four days, it's not going to be a good thing. Tom Wilhelmsen had the other great observation of the day that his club seemed about ready to catch the first plane out of town. I know there was plenty of teeth-gnashing, hair-pulling and all-around second, third and fourth-guessing taking place in the blogosphere after the game and that's fine. It's what sports fans do everywhere and the fans of Seattle are no different. We all need time to vent and there was certainly some vent-worthy baseball on display late. But a part of me wonders whatwe all would be saying had Wilhelmsen just caught the danged ball that Smoak flipped to him in the ninth inning. Because a big part of me thinks -- knows -- that we'd be hearing a whole different storyline about resiliency and the team's improved power and ability to come back and stay in games. About how Hisashi Iwakuma grinded it out on a day his best stuff missing. Or, how Smoak is starting to find his power stroke. So, if we're going to play that game, then let's at least do it properly. Because we can't plan a season around Wilhelmsen catching or not catching a routine toss. Stuff happens. But once the anger dissipates, and the venting subsides, we all have to take a deep breath, use our heads and think and then try to come to some rational and objective analysis about what is actually going on. And if we were going to conclude some things were looking OK had Wilhelmsen hung on to the ball, that doesn't all change because he dropped it. Look, I know that some things went wrong in Cleveland. I know that things have gone wrong in other points of this 20-25 season. Want to argue that there is a bit too much mixing and matching going on in the bullpen at times? Hey, I'm with you. I'm getting tired of these three-hour, 20-minute games we're seeing, even for routine, low-scoring affairs. The games this year have taken longer to play than any season I've covered in my 15 years of working a major league beat. And I do blame all the bullpen shuffling by manager Eric Wedge. But I also understand the difficulties Wedge faces in melding together a bullpen of largely inexperienced pitchers who are being thrust into new roles because of injury and the decision to dump Kameron Loe one week into the season. That part is still being worked on and sure, Wedge has made some missteps along the way. But yesterday's loss is on Wilhelmsen, not Wedge. If Wilhelmsen catches the ball, there is no debate about whether Wedge should have usedhis closer in a second inning of work rather than Charlie Furbush. I heard groans the other night when Wedge went to Oliver Perez -- a guy who had been striking out every batter he'd faced going on a week --  in the ninth inning of a non-save situation. Those fans doing the griping have to understand that most managers won't use their closer in a non-save situation on the road, while the majority will do it with their closer at home with the game tied because there is no such thing as a save situation once a tie game reaches the ninth inning inyour own ballpark. So, yeah, Wedge has his ways of doing things. Fire him and another manager will have his own set of quirks and ways that you won't like. What you want is a manager who believes in what he is doing and has the conviction to stand behind it even when it inevitably fails from time to time. This whole business of blaming the manager, or the umpires, anytime something doesn't go the Mariners way is getting a bit tiresome, and frankly, it's a sign of immaturity in terms of the analysis being done locally. Wedge makes mistakes. So did Joe Torre. So does Joe Maddon. The Mariners aren't going to change all that drastically as a team with a new manager. Get over that notion, please, for the sake of your own sanity. We've had years of th

When teams hit some kind of extreme, good or bad, people come out of the woodwork to drop I-told-you-so’s like it’s nobodies business. And it really shouldn’t be anyone’s business. Keep that crap to yourself. But, it happens. And the M’s recent embarrassing series qualifed as one of these ego-endorsing extremes. One of the I-told-you-so’s came from The Seattle Times’ Geoff Baker, in regards to the Mariners passing on Michael Bourn, who is hitting well this season. He has posted a .364 wOBA and 131 wRC+ this year, which have helped attribute to his 0.9 fWAR to this point. Seeing Bourn play and his team trounce the M’s gave Baker the opportunity to criticize Jack and company for failing to do more in the offseason. Baker said this of the situation:  But the Bourn thing, for me, is a classic example of how this rebuilding process has played out for the Mariners. It’s taken a long time to get where we are and I do think we could have seen some better baseball a bit quicker had the Mariners spent some dough this winter and in prior ones to shore-up where they were lacking. He was a big Bourn advocate all offseason, probably more than he should have been. He may have overstated his value a little. But he is right: Bourn would have helped this team. He may not be hitting the way he is now, but he would be a clear improvement over what the Mariners have going on right now. The thing is, he is right for the wrong reasons. Baker does not seem like a sabermetrically-inclined guy, so I doubt he likes Bourn for the 6 WAR he posted last year. I doubt he likes him for his 22.3 UZR last year. Heck, he may not even like him for his 10% walk rate. He probably likes him because he is fast, plays defense, and is generally thought of as one of the better leadoff hitters in the game. But that doesn’t take anything away from Bourn. He is a valuable player, as seen in the 6 WAR I mentioned above. However, there is another problem with Baker saying what he did. This is a team that has suffered a lot of injuries that have forced them to play certain guys more than they planned to. It’s not like they came into the year with Raul Ibanez, Jason Bay and Endy Chavez penciled in as a time-share in left field. Chavez wasn’t even on the opening day roster, and Raul and Bay were meant to be 4th and 5th guys, pinch hitters, and spot-start DH’s. But when you lose Michael Saunders for a month, Michael Morse for a week, and then Franklin Gutierrez for eternity, plans change. My first thought when I read Baker’s article was “You are wrong Geoff Baker.” This team didn’t need a defensive minded player and speed-only guy. But then I realized that he was only partially wrong, as stated above. And I was also partially, or mostly, wrong. People tend to put players into certain categories based on what they do and who they are. Bourn is the speedy leadoff hitter. Morse is the bat-0nly “outfielder”, et cetera. Even us all-knowing sabermetricans do this at times. We look at a team that lacks power, and think they need to add power and nothing else. We forget something very important. Value is Value. It really doesn’t matter that much what kind of value that is. Sure, if the M’s had their choice of a 6 win player like Bourn, or a 6 win power hitter, they would probably take the latter. But 6 wins are 6 wins, and value is value. Bourn would have made this team a lot better than they are now. Only one of Morse and Kendrys Morales would be here, as Bourn would have replaced the other, which would be an improvement. So if you want to criticize the front office for not getting Bourn and settling instead for Morse, then by all means. It is a very valid criticism, one worth roughly 4.5 wins. But don’t pull a Geoff and just say “this is a slow team. Bourn is the opposite of slow, and thus would make them better,” while simultaneously saying missing

Ten observations that only a backup, middle child, left-handed quarterback can provide from the Seahawks first OTA practice on Monday.

If two 40-year old Cub fans (dudes) are in town on a Fri and Sat night in late June, where should we hangout late at night after the games? Not looking for the douchebag club scene, or the 21-year old scene. Casual but lively with lots of drinkers and good scenery preferred. Staying at Silver Cloud Hotel by stadium, but will cab downtown if needed. We will likely be the last ones in Seattle to go to bed. If two 40-year old Cub fans (dudes) are in town on a Fri and Sat night in late June, where should we hangout late at night after the games? Not looking for the douchebag club scene, or the 21-year old scene. Casual but lively with lots of drinkers and good scenery preferred. Staying at Silver Cloud Hotel by stadium, but will cab downtown if needed. We will likely be the last ones in Seattle to go to bed.

As a sports fan, you can’t just look at a season as championship or bust. Maybe in select cases that makes some sense, but we’re all still here, and the Mariners have never won a championship. It’s about the experiences along the way, the things that lift your spirits, even if hope for a title has long since deteriorated. Approaching things as championship-or-bust isn’t sustainable. There have to be other upsides, other things that make it all worthwhile, and usually, there are. We’re all rational enough that we would’ve abandoned the Mariners entirely if we weren’t getting anything out of it. There’s something there, even if it too often feels like a barren emotional hellscape. What is a baseball game but a baseball season crammed into three hours? Just as a season shouldn’t be winning-or-bust, a game shouldn’t be winning-or-bust, because of the same principles. A single baseball game is a collection of hundreds of individual events, all stringed elegantly or inelegantly together. Even if the ultimate event is a disappointing one, there can and often will be preceding events of worth. Moments that you’re glad you watched, in a game you sometimes wish you hadn’t. Moments you remember longer than you remember the final score. Early Monday, the Mariners lost to the Indians. That much is typical, and that the Mariners lost in devastating fashion also seems typical. They wasted leads in the ninth and the tenth. Errors were committed in the bottom halves of both. Tom Wilhelmsen had the game in his glove, and he dropped it on the ground. If the Mariners were contending for the playoffs, this would’ve been a heartbreaker. As is, it just sucked. This game will subconsciously contribute to your negative impression of the city of Cleveland, even if you’ve never been for a visit. Ten years from now you’ll be in the Cleveland airport on a layover, and you’ll just feel kind of agitated, and you won’t be able to put your finger on why. There are much more palatable ways for a baseball team to lose. But though the Mariners lost, this game came with particular moments of worth. There was Endy Chavez’s miraculous pinch-hit home run. There was Justin Smoak’s extra-innings home run. And there was a curveball. A curveball I’ll remember as long as I remember Tom Wilhelmsen dropping the baseball at first. An element of sports fandom is wanting to feel superior to other fans. A big part of that is a team seeming superior to other teams. A big part of that is a team making another team look feeble and stupid. In the bottom of the ninth on Monday, Tom Wilhelmsen made Asdrubal Cabrera look feeble and stupid. Wilhelmsen, of course, would look stupid himself moments later, but by that point the curveball was seared into my memory. You don’t soon forget a batter looking like this: (.gif 1) (.gif 2) Baseball players, almost all of the time, manage to look like legitimate, talented baseball players. Tom Wilhelmsen threw a curveball that could make a man wonder what he’s doing. Yes, absolutely, the Mariners would lose the game. But they sure as hell didn’t lose all of it. -- 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.Moments Of Worth

So much of baseball writing, it seems to me, ends up being the act of finding new ways to say the same thing as before. I don’t know how many times I’ve prefaced a post by saying something along the lines of “you already know this.” There are a lot of people writing about baseball, and things in baseball tend not to change that quickly. So there’s a lot of repeat coverage, with the challenge being to keep people interested. It’s not always easy, but it’s fun to feel tested, and let’s get this out of the way: you already know the gist of what’s going to follow. But, a list, of four numbers: 113 81 65 62 Those are four wRC+ numbers, through today. In case you’re not aware, wRC+ is basically OPS+, for smarter, smugger people. Now, a list, of four names, to whom those wRC+ numbers belong: Justin Smoak Munenori Kawasaki Jesus Montero Dustin Ackley I’ve jumbled everything up. Try to match the number to the name. When you’re ready, proceed, for the answers: Justin Smoak Munenori Kawasaki Jesus Montero Dustin Ackley This is why I said you already know the gist. You already know that Ackley is a huge disappointment, and that Montero is a disappointment of some other but similar magnitude. Whenever the Mariners lose, people get to talking about the letdowns on the team, and Ackley and Montero are two of the bigger ones. It’s not just that Ackley and Montero are failing to establish themselves as members of the Mariners’ core — it’s that, when you watch them, it can be hard to believe they were thought to be core components in the first place. They play bad and look bad. It’s like the Mariners wanted to make enchiladas, so they bought Quikrete and fabric. They’re both being out-hit by Munenori Kawasaki. Kawasaki is basically the starter in Toronto right now with Jose Reyes injured, and while Kawasaki hasn’t been good, he’s been passable, and he’s been better than Ackley and Montero. The team didn’t even give serious thought to retaining Kawasaki on a minor-league contract last offseason. This was justifiable, because based on the observations, he did not look good, or even mediocre. There’s a reason Kawasaki was considered something of a mascot last summer. His one skill was his personality. He looked like one of the weakest-hitting position players in Mariners history, and I found it impossible to believe he’d homered before in Japan. I saw video and still I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that Kawasaki possessed some sort of offensive competence. He’s slugging .301. He’s Reggie Willits. He just hit maybe the deepest batted ball of his career, and it came down in front of the track. Kawasaki’s offense is funny, even when it isn’t absolutely dreadful. But, at varying points, Dustin Ackley was considered automatic, Jesus Montero was considered an elite-level future slugger, and Munenori Kawasaki was considered perhaps baseball’s least threatening bat. It’s May 20, 2013, and Kawasaki’s out-producing the other two. Maybe it isn’t going to last this way. But it shouldn’t be this way at all. Thankfully, there’s Smoak, and Smoak’s improvement. Smoak’s improvement allows us to try to reconsider Smoak, and it also allows us to be a little more patient with Ackley and Montero, perhaps. For the first time all season, Smoak’s slugging percentage is ahead of his OBP, and his OBP is good. He’s been swinging at more strikes and fewer balls, and there are signs the power is coming along, trailing the improved command of the zone. If you arbitrarily select April 22 as a starting date, here’s Smoak since then, including Monday: 86 plate appearances, .314/.442/.529, 16 BB, 17 K That right there is a hell of a hitter. A better hitter, naturally, than Justin Smoak actually is, bu

(Here is today's Mariners minor-league report). Endy Chavez, shown above celebrating his go-ahead, pinch-hit homer in the ninth inning, got to be a hero for about five minutes today, long enough for Tom Wilhelmsen to blow his first save of the season by giving up the tying run in the bottom of the ninth. And doing so in forehead-slapping fashion, dropping a throw from Justin Smoak (who had made a diving stop) while covering first for what would have been the game-ending out. Smoak then hit a homer in the 10th, and got to be a hero for about five more minutes, long enough for Charlie Furbush to not only blow the save, but the game, by giving up a three-run homer to Yan Gomes in the bottom of the 10th. Yeah, THE Yan Gomes. It's hard to imagine a more heartbreaking, agonizing series for the Mariners. In the first game on Friday, they fought back from a 3-1 deficit to tie the game on a two-run homer by Raul Ibanez in the sixth, only to have Lucas Luetge give up a three-run, walk-off homer to Jason Kipnis in the bottom of the 10th. On Saturday, they fought back from a 4-0 deficit to tie the game in the ninth on back-to-back, two-out homers from Ibanez and Smoak, only to give up the winning run in the bottom of the inning -- when Jesus Montero didn't keep his foot on home plate on what should have been a force out. On Sunday, they lost when their ace, Felix Hernandez, gave up six runs in five innings, and they managed just four hits. And then there was today's roller-coaster, in which they had it won twice, until they didn't. Throw in the first game of this roadtrip, when the Mariners couldn't hold a 3-0 lead against the Yankees with Hernandez on the mound -- that was the game he tweaked his back, and had to come out after six -- and it's been one body blow after another. You can't deny they've battled, but you also can't deny that the bullpen, and defense, have both been inadequate during this stretch. I'll let Geoff, who is in Cleveland, explain why Eric Wedge didn't send out Wilhelmsen for a second inning, which is the No. 1 second-guess from this game. I would have done so, I believe, but I understand the arguments against -- mainly, pitch count. Wilhelmsen had thrown 22 in the ninth. Add another 15, and you're getting close to 40, which is an awful lot for a short reliever. Wilhelmsen has worked two innings once this season (against Detroit on April 17), and had a peak pitch count of 34 way back on April 5, his second outing of the year. Since then, Wilhelmsen had not gone over 23 pitches; last year, he exceeded 30 just three times, with a high of 37 (before he became closer). Contrary to the belief of those adamantly ripping Wedge, there is no right or wrong answer to this one. The manager has to look at the big picture. Going back out for a second inning can be problematic for a guy who's not used to it -- Stephen Pryor landed on the disabled list after such an instance earlier this year. On the other hand, Wilhelmsen was rested (he hadn't pitched since Thursday) and has gone beyond one inning a few times since he became closer. But Furbush had pitched 3 2/3 innings in two appearances in this series without allowing a Cleveland baserunner, striking out five. Of course, he had blown a game in New York earlier on this road trip. Here's the best answer to this dilemma: Wilhelmsen should have caught Smoak's toss. The question now is whether the Mariners will use these tough losses as motivation, or if the cumulative effect will be a demoralizing one. I've seen it work both ways. The most recent stretch I can remember that equates to this one for pure heartbreak occurred in 2011, when closer Brandon League had about as bad a week as I've ever seen. He lost a game to the White Sox in Seattle on Sunday, and then after a travel day, blew saves in walk-off fashion on Tuesday in Baltimore, Thursday in Baltimore, and Friday in Cleveland. (On Wednesday in Baltimo

Over the last four games, the Mariners launched eight home runs, getting two each from Smoak and Ibanez and one home run from Seager, Morales, Ryan (!), and Chavez (!!!). Over the last four games, the Mariners scored a grand total of 15 runs, and went 0-4. The Mariners entire plan to turn the team around in 2013 revolved around “hit more dingers”. They’ve succeeded in that goal, as with 53 home runs, they are now 6th in the majors in total home runs hit. They are 25th in the majors in runs scored, and are 20-25, on pace to win 72 games. Trading pitching, defense, and on base percentage for home runs has made them no better. There is more to winning baseball than hitting home runs. -- 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.The Cleveland Takeaway