Position players report

The gang's all here!  The position players check in today, workouts for the whole team tomorrow. Soon games will be underway.  Baseball is back and eight months of drama, excitement and fun are just ahead.

But some essential, but boring, things first.  I so enjoy using statistics to analyze the world around me that students pinned a nickname on me years ago... Dr. Data.  And it stuck and I liked it, because I enjoy trying to understand reality by representing it in different ways, numbers, images, narratives, metaphors, models.  So it follows I have been intrigued by baseball stats since my first reading of Bill James in the mid-1980s (I was introduced to him by my son, Matt, who was in his teens and used James' stats to clobber me in game after game of Strato-Matic).

Long before my fandom, part of following baseball was keeping track of the stats and at an early age, like all of us, I relied on the time-honored numbers of batting average, on base percentage, slugging percentage and ERA.  After James and other pioneering "sabrematricians," the game has been flooded with what are, today, called "analytics."  And Michael Lewis popularized their use with his profile of A's general manager Billy Beane in Moneyball.  So today we have BABIP and PECOTA and WAR and all manner of trying to understand what happens after a pitch is thrown.

The latest trend is the use of devices designed to breakdown physical performance for closer analysis.  Within a couple of years the the video camera and speed gun have been supplemented by instruments, handheld devices, to register and calculate all manner of data on every single pitch or swing.

One of them, RAPSODO, tracks twelve different features of each pitch: things like spin rate and release angle and a lot of other more obscure details.  Similar information is collected for hitting.  I've never pitched so I have no idea how useful or valid any of these data might be, but it's clear some players and coaches pay attention and used to make adjustments to improve performance.  Judging by the sight of them at the M's bullpen sessions, we must be, too.

This practice, I would argue, represents the best application of statistics: to make comparisons over time or between situations (good versus bad) to pitch or hit better in the future.

If you doubt the sensibility or efficacy of that approach look at Kyle Seager.  The use of analytics to shift the position of infielders player by player (and sometimes pitch by pitch) had a crippling effect on Seager.  In fairness he had a broken toe for much of last season, but it was frustrating to watch Kyle hit last year.

Against the radical shifts analytics commanded, he'd either futilely try to pull the ball where there
were no longer openings or weakly attack the opposite field.  In 2016, before he started seeing radical shifting, Seager hit a career high .278 with 30 home runs.  In '17 and '18, respectively, his average fell to .241 and .221.  More telling perhaps, to use one of my favorite stats, BABIP (his batting average in balls in play, balls he actually hit) fell from .295 to .251.

Another way to look at it is to use a stat called WAR (wins above replacement) a rough way of gauging a player's contribution to his team's winning (compared to an average player).  Seager's WAR has fallen from 5.1 in 2016 to 1.6 last year.

These numbers tell is his performance has fallen:  37 fewer hits over a season, roughly one less hit every four games. 10 more players left on base, 21 fewer rbi's, almost 4 less wins. (Thanks to Fangraphs.com for all these great numbers.

What's really scary, is that for all his difficulty in fighting the shift, he pulled the ball more (hit into the shift rather than to center or left) than he had the previous two seasons.

I know some fan don't like breaking the game down like this, it robs baseball of  some of its art and romance.  But in the end, baseball is just balls and strikes and even the smallest things add up.

Pitchers come and gone

Yusei Kikuchi had his first public bullpen work-out yesterday and, judging by the number of videos posted, he got a lot of attention.  And given the publicity surrounding the M's successful bid to bring him from Japan to the US, that makes sense.  There is no question general manager Jerry Dipoto sees Kikuchi as a critically important piece in rebuilding the team, enough so to trade off ace James Paxton.

I had not seen video of Kikuchi pitching and I was surprised by a couple of things (I'm avoiding posting links in the blog, you can easily find these videos and any other thing I cite by simply typing in the player's name to Google).  He has an easy fluid motion that seems to generate a lot of power.  The surprise is that he lifts his leg in a funny kind of double kick.  He raises it, then drops it a little, and raises it again before completing his motion.  Is this legal?  Is this a balk?  Can't wait to see how umps handle this once the games start.  I looked at some of his archival video from Japan, his double clutch wasn't as pronounced, so maybe he just warms up that way.  

Sad to see the retirement of Doug Fister.  I always liked him.  He broke in with the Mariners in ten years ago.  He didn't do much with them in three seasons, going 12 and 30, but he matured and had some decent years with the Tigers and Nationals. He went 4 and 2 in post-season and the press in Detroit wrote a nice tribute to his years of service there (in the shadow of Verlander and Scherzer). 

Fister was tall, 6-8, but he had an easy, coordinated motion and you could see he had a "good head," he was always in the game.  I think it was that concentration, that composure, that caught my attention.  He was traded for a bunch of Tiger junk in mid-2011, another Zduriencik blunder.

Baseball fans go through this their whole lifetime: a players comes up, you like them for the unlikeliest of reasons, they retire.  Sometimes as stars, sometimes as busts.  Usually with a career of up-and-downs with a couple of moments of glory...  he once struck out nine consecutive batters in a row.  You can look it up.

The rotation?

It's a sure bet that the Mariner's pitching rotation at the end of this upcoming season will not look like opening night's.  And between now and March 28's opener there are many, maybe too many, decisions to be made.  

With Paxton gone and no reason to believe Felix is going to turnaround his steep four-year decline, Dipoto is banking on Marco Gonzalez to assume the ace spot. Only 27, Gonzalez has shown some good things and made a full recovery after missing 2016 to Tommy John surgery.  He seems to have both the stuff - a nifty change-up - and the head to improve on last year's 13-9, 4.0.  He tends to be overpowering in the first four or five innings, then to fall off around the sixth.  Tired? Batters figured him out the third time through? Concentration?

Mike Leake and Wade LeBlanc are still around, both better suited to handle the 3 or 4 hole in the rotation.  Unfortunately Felix's proficiency has slipped him to the back of the rotation, too.

Faces on the horizon?  Dipoto made headlines obtaining Japanese leftie Yusei Kikuchi, who they plan to phase in carefully, adjusting him to the rigors of MLB and easing his return from a shoulder injury.  Also in the wings are highly regarded, but untested, off-season acquistions Justus Sheffield, Erik Swanson and Justin Dunn.  Roenis Elias is still out there, Kuma, however, returned to Japan.  After that there's a cast of 23 more roster/non-roster pitches to choose from.

Oh yes, and a brand new pitching coach with no major league experience.

February is baseball's month of question-marks and, right now, the M's starting rotation doesn't present many answers.