Can't say I didn't warn you

I told you they would be streaky.  Three losses in a row, all to the Astros, hurts, no two ways about it. Sunday's game was pretty much nine more innings of Saturday's: a few, scattered hits, too many strike-outs.  It's great to work the count, but to get called out on strikes 3-2 or 2-2 is not good.

Ms need to take their lessons and turn it around.  Streaks run both ways, Cleveland will be as tough as Houston, but if they get runners on base and don't strike out, they'll start winning again.

Two championship words

Last night's 3-1 loss to Houston, the first time the Ms have dropped two in a row this season, can be summarized in two words: Verlander and Altuve.

And while watching the Ms descend to earth is disappointing, there are encouraging lessons to be learned by comparing the two teams.  Watch carefully, in everything they do the Astros play like the champions they are.  They are a smooth, efficient winning machine snd they best you methodically with their hitting, pitching and defense.  Last night, their outfield play was particularly impressive, running down the M's powerful drives to the wall.  If the Astros are a machine, the entertaining and, so far, winning Mariners are a keg of gunpowder.  The Astros just win, the Ms explode... sometimes.

If, as many suggest, DiPoto has used the rebuilding of Houston as the model for reimaginig the Ms, the next few years could be fun.  Remember, these are the Astro's who lost 111 games in 2013.  That came at the end of three consecutive seasons where they barely won fifty games... that's low-mid .300s baseball. Last year, in five years, they picked up 52 wins to notch 103 (which was a disappointing season because they had won the World Series the year before).

Last night's game proved Houston is not as easily beaten as the teams the Ms have handled easily already: Oakland, California, the White Sox, KC and probably the Red Sox.

The Ms need and should learn from this.

This loss is on Sevais

There are plenty of narratives to describe the M's loss to Houston last night.  Whatever the reason, the  Astros did to Seattle what the Mariners have done since the season started, they clubbed them to defeat, hitting three home runs, two of them grand slams.

The common narratives, live by the gun, what goes 'round, upstart schooled, phoney unmasked, quality will out, even my regressing to the mean, are irrelevant right now.  They lost snd whether this game means anything depends less on what happened ladt night than what occurs next.  Now we will see what this team is really going to be.

Good teams shake it off and get back to doing what worked so well up until the sixth inning last night.  Bad teams start to believe the narratives that their 13-2 start was all illusion or good luck and begin to play like the .500 (or worse) team they were predicted to be.  

They may have provided a clue already.  An inning after losing their 3-2 lead to Altuve's salami, the M's pulled within one run on some heads-up small-ball of the purest sort.  Gordon singles, steals second; Smith strikes out but makes it to first after Peacock throws a third-strike wildpitch, allowing Dee to score from second.  Haniger strikes out as Smith steals second.  Peacock throws the ball away trying to pick-off Mallex which allows him to score when Santana grounds out to the right side.  Two runs on one hit, a single?  I'll take that to the bank all day.  

That leaves the M's down one run with two innings to go... at home.  They've just won two games like that, coming from further behind against KC.  It's not a sure bet, but it's not a long shot either.  But, KC is not Houston and R. J. Alaniz is definitely not Rosscup, Swanzak, Elias, Brennan, Swanson or Sadzeck who held off the Royals so the Ms could come back.  The Ms had two losses before last night, both the result of a bullpen failure.  Make that three now.

And this failure might be more Servais fault than Alaniz.  Alaniz, called up from Tacoma the night before was making his major league debut.  What were Servais or pitching coach Paul Davis thinking?  Alaniz had pitched the previous inning.  He wasn't impressive.  He gave up back to back singles, one to Gurriel.  The 8th starts ok, two outs then a single (warning?) a walk (alarms go off?) another walk to load the bases (red lights flashing?).  

So here we are.  Down by a run.  Astros have the bases loaded.  A 27 year-old making his major league debut, starting in on the Houston line-up for the second time, facing Gurriel who hit a line drive single the first time he saw Alaniz...   Alaniz has just given up back to back walks.  Scott turns to Paul, I imagine, and asks "think he's tired?  Time for a change?" There had been a mound visit after the first walk.  Who know what Servais thought, whatever, he left the new kid in, who throws ball one, then grooves a 91 mph fastball to Yuri G.

They had all those relievers who had done the job in KC, minus Swanson, and they stay with Alaniz?

I feel sorry for the kid.  He should have been out of there after his first debut inning.

To their credit the fightin' Ms rally a little in the ninth... too little too late.

After this one you can select whatever doomsday narrative you want... I'm sticking with this team.  They got something.

This loss is on Servais.

A deeper look

We're all running out of adjectives to describe the 13-2 start to the Mariner's season.  And for good reason.  Scoring this much, hitting these many home runs in consecutive games, the team is putting itself in the record book.  Doing anything that breaks a record of the 1932 Yankees of Ruth, Gehrig and Dickey is legitimately noteworthy.  And all those dingers are undeniably dramatic and satisfying, at least to power freaks like me.

But there are a couple of other, less exciting, but maybe very important stats that tell us something about this team.  The M's lead everyone else in MLB in hit batters, stolen bases and sacrifice flies and they are second in walks.  First in doubles, first in all hits for that matter.  All that adds up to first in runs.

It is the walks, stolen base and sac flies that catches my attention.  These numbers simply verify what we've been seeing.  This team can players get on base, move them and score them.  As the last two wins have shown, the homers can be a difference maker.  But just as noteworthy, ten of Seattle's last 13 runs came not from home runs, but other devices.  Indeed on Wednesday two score in one inning with no hits at all.  A nice trick, one suggesting there is more to the team than home runs.

Another incredible win

Around the end of the seventh with the Ms down 6 to 3, I started to compose this post.  The title reflected exactly how I felt given the end of this 5-1 roadtrip, a Credible Loss.  Kansas City, in a losing streak as depressing for their fans as our winning streak has brightened the last two weeks, simply outplayed the M's who played pretty average game.  And then it all turned around.  What a start!  What a team.

Houston and Cleveland coming up.  Can they keep it going?

An illuminating win

Of the Mariner's wins in this 11-2 start, last night's seemed most instructive.  All the other wins, except a 2-1 pitcher's duel, have been absolute thrashings of their opponents as they crushed homer after homer.  Last night's 6 to 3 win over the Royals, the victory was tied to 14 additional hits, only three of those for extra bases.

When the Ms were clobbering four or five dingers a night there wasn't much to say or learn about the offense except, "good luck; keep it up."  A homer-centric approach to the game, no matter how entertaining, is not sustainable.  Eventually to win consistently, the team has to crank out a lot of 6-3 (or less) games like last night.  In other words, play real baseball.

Yesterday they moved runners and scored them in all sorts of ways and that is, I think, the best thing I have seen this season.  The defense continues to frighten me, but solid pitching and getting men on base could take this team a lot further than predicted.

Love that power

Like many of my generation my introduction to major league baseball came through the medium of baseball cards.  Their appeal to an 11-year old was undeniable.  A small pack of cards illustrated with a picture of a ballplayer on one side and a bio with stats on the other, all packaged with a thin sheet of pink bubble gum, wrapped in colorfully printed waxed paper.  Simply irresistable.  Never had so much been provided for, I've forgotten, probably 25 cents.   Topps the best, Fleer so-so.

One of the first cards I collected pulled me into the game.  I became a dedicated fan of Theodore Bernard "Ted" Kluszewski, the mammoth homerun slugger of the 1957 Cincinnatti Redlegs.  I thInk every kid needs a hero, and Big Klu, as he was called, was mine.  And he earned his nickname, a former tight end at Indiana University, in the day when that position did more blocking than receiving, he was 6-2, 225 with biceps so large he needed to cut the sleeves off his uniform as not to hinder his swing.

https://youtu.be/8fhBsPTLX6w

I am taking you on this trip down memory lane to make a point and confess a bias.  This year's Mariners, now 10 and 2 after last night's 13 to 6 clobbering of KC, resemble greatly those Reds teams Kluszewski played on in the mid-1950s.  I became then and remain now an avowed lover of home-run hitting teams.  Often, a big mistake.

To this day I can recite by memory the line-up of the 1957 Reds, starting at catcher:  Smokey Burgess, Kluszewski, Johnny Temple, Don Hoak, Roy McMillen, Gus Bell, Frank Robinson (yes that Frank Robinson) and Wally Post.  Just to be sure, I went back and checked and I was right!  Although, sadly fot him and me, Klu injured his back and only played 69 games that season, pinch-hitting 50 times.  And, yes, I remember who replaced him at first: George Crowe.

That team had power.  They hit 187 homers in 154 games, which was a lot in those days.  Only one team, the Braves hit more that season.  By comparison, last year only 11 MLB teams hit more with a longer season.  I fell in love with the long ball and have always been partial to home-run hitting teams.

And that can get you into trouble.  Not once in the 1950's did those slugging Reds make it to the World Series.

But we all know, the game is complex and home runs can help generate wins, but hitting overall, pitching and defense are more important.  Just out of curiosity I looked at the correlation between last year's home run totals by wins for each team and the coefficient, the r, is impressive, .54... more homers means more wins.  The r-squared of .29 suggests about 30 per cent in the variance in wins is attributable to homers (leaving the other 70 per cent connected to other factors).  But I'd caution, having fallen in love with homers before, there is always a risk that reliance on home runs can hurt the rest of the offense, increasing strike outs, lowering the number of baserunners from balls put in play through hits and errors and, of course, walks.

But, boy is it fun.  And don't forget the Glavine and Maddux' 1999 Nike commercial: chicks dig the long ball.  https://youtu.be/UjkuJPvMrI8

Unintended consequences

Before launching into today's post, a comment is in order about yesterday's discussion of regression effects in baseball.  Vogie must have seen what I wrote and thought, "regession?  No way... aggression!"  Two homers, a bases clearing double, six ribbies.  The beat goes on as the Mariners club the White Sox 12 to 5.

...........

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of D-Day and, by contemporary standards, a great President, is claimed to have said, "all plans are good until the first bullet flies."  And my experience in almsot forty years of planning matches up with Ike's.

All this is to revist Jerry DiPoto's plan to reinvent the Mariners.  It just could be that some miscalculations early on have produced some very positive unintended consequences Jerry never imagined.  But, it's Monday, what the hell, let's give him credit for the team’s 9 and 2 start.

Here's what happened.  During his off-season trading frenzy, DiPoto acquired some veteran "extra" players he planned to use as bait for more trades to load up on young talent to be groomed for a championship run in 2020.  There was one problem in his strategy: as free agency movement slowed, all deals started to dry up mid-winter and his ability to move his extra pieces stalled.

He ended up coming out of spring training with four firstbasemen, any of them capable of starting.  Jerry's overall plan was to alternate Ryon Healy and Daniel Vogelbach at firstbase and DH.  Along the way he had picked up sluggers Edwin Encarnacion and Jay Bruce to be traded before the season started.  They were the bait, but the fish weren't biting.

Part of DiPoto's reasoning in keeping Healy and Vogie was that both were young and, as of yet, not performing at anticpated and necessary levels... Healy, powerful but inconsistent at the plate, Vogie untested.  Make no mistake EE and Bruce were not liabilities, but they just didn't fit.

The injury that put Kyle Seager on the Injured List for a couple of months, helped break the logjam... Healy can play a servicable thirdbase until Seager returns.  The big news has bern the explosion in the M's offense and the significant contribution the four firstbasemen are making.  In 11 games the four of them together have hit 14 home runs and driven in 34.  Except for Bruce they're all batting over .250.  Healy is consistent and, despite my continued skepticism, Vogie is showing what he can do day-to-day and it is jaw-dropping and eye-opening all at once.

Take those four out of the line-up and it's unlikely the M's win nine of their first eleven games.  But going forward, DiPoto is still going to have to unjam the logs, especially when Seager returns.  Already, manager Scott Servais has struggled getting all of them in the starting line-up at the same time... so yesterday, Bruce, who hit two homers the day before, sat out for Encarnacion.  EE didn't let him down, going 3 for 5, with a homer and 4 rbi's.  Just imagine what might have happened if Bruce had played?

On top of this, any of those four are still trade-bait.  What will DiPoto do if the M's are surprise contenders as the July 31 trade deadline approaches?

A little dose of reality

There is one sure thing you can count on in baseball, a statistical truth best heeded at moments like this, when the Ms have won eight of their first ten games... the regression effect.  It works like this:  whenever you observe an extreme result in events that are normally distributed, like games or weather or most naturally occuring phenomena, future outcomes will surely tend to the average. Future occurrences will "regress to the mean," be more average than extreme.

Teams average .500 baseball.  If a team is hot, as the Mariners have been, playing .800 baseball, you can be sure they will regress toward the mean of .500 fairly soon.  Not always, there will be anomalies, but in the long run, for sure.  As much as that thought may disturb M's fans, if you root for the Red Sox, who are playing .200 ball to start the season, you can take comfort that, over time, their winning will improve as they regress to that .500 average.

I point this out not to rain on the Mariner's exciting, winning parade, but to prepare ourselves for the inevitable.  When the regression sets in, and it will, being prepared means we can do two things: not lose heart and try to counter the effect by doing things that may offset the pull back to average.  The latter means to really understand the team's strengths and weaknesses.

Something is causing the M's to play .800 ball.  They haven't won 8 of 10 by accident.  I'd argue that their really hot bats coupled with good starting pitching and relatively weak opponents explain their winning ways.  It helps the M's opponents are 12-16 excluding their games against Seattle.

Even with a good start, defense and relief pitching have been exposed as weaknesses.

So, I put it to you.  If you are Scott Servais, what can you do to counteract the gravitational force pulling the team back to .500 (or worse) ball?  The right answer will make the difference between a winning oe losing season.

Ten down, 152 to go

I've found it useful to follow a team by breaking the season into ten game chunks.  I realize it's an arbitrary bench mark, but comparing a team's performance over every ten games can highlight trends, show up consistencies as well as isolate the inconsistencies.

I always look at wins first... any number greater than five reassures me the M's are on the right track.  Their 9-2 win over the White Sox gives them eight wins for this first set of ten.  They have a +22 run differential, the team is hitting .268 and averaging 7.3 runs a game.  Starting pitching has been strong, the two losses go to the bullpen.

Comparing things to last year, walks are up 5%, but the big difference is slugging percentage, up from .408 to .532.  That's big, that's those homers, but more significantly all those doubles.  The poster boy here is Ryon Healy, whose 2018 slugging percentage was .412 and who has started this season at .714.

So, first ten... they're winning and lots of people are contributing.  It's not just Haniger, although he's doing just fine also.  Among the regulars, everyone except Dee has a wRC+ over 100 and Beckham and Santana are well over 200.

Starters are averaging over 5 innings with 3.64 ERA, compared to 4.35 last year.

You don't have to look to see bullpen is shaky, but shows signs of stabilizing.  Defense is terrifying.  Less said the better.

*******

By the way, thanks to Jason Stark's research for the Athletic, I learned that three consecutive errors have been committed before, on May 10, 1981.  Another third baseman, New York Mets, Hubie Brooks.

The good, the bad and a little of everything in between

This Mariners put all their virtues and flaws on display in today's 10-8 loss to the White Sox in Chicago.

This is who they are:

• Tough... they will not and do not quit.  Down 6 to 2 after five, they rolled up their sleeves and pulled ahead 8 to 6.  Kikuchi wobbled early, righted himself.
• Patient...  they work the pitcher.  A couple of times they started down 0 and 2, only to get the count to 3 and 2 resulting in a hit or walk.
• Powerful...  Four more home runs in this game.
• Unreliable... the bullpen lost them this game, walks, hit batters, can't throw strikes.
• Careless... more errors.

There were three or four different headlines I could have written as the game progressed, the whole narrative thrown in a different direction in the next couple of innings.

This is what the season is going to be like.  Up, down and sideways.  Take a deep breath and hang on.

Inclement weather

Tonight's game in Chicago cancelled, team gets a day off.  I always hate to see off days in the middle of hot streaks... potential momentum killers.  But M's have been so hot it might be okay to take a day to catch a breath and to catch up.  That last game with the Angels showed, if anyone doubted it, that even the hottest bats can cool off against a pitcher like Cahill.  The close win Tuesday night was a good reminder to keep doing what's been working at the plate:  take pitches, work the count, wait for your pitch.  And Marco pitched just the way you want... move the ball all over, mix up your pitches, pitch to contact.  

Both in hitting and pitching this year’s M's team is about patience.

So maybe day to rest might be just the thing to keep the streak going.

Fingernails already gnawed off

After seven consecutive slugfests the inevitable pitchers' duel arrived and the Mariners showed they could win that kind of game, too, beating the Angels 2 to 1 in an authentic nail-biter: 8.1 excellent innings from Marco Gonzalez, an 8th inning blast from Vogie and, arriving just in time, Anthony Swarzak gets a nine pitch save in his debut for the M's.

Marco looked in midseason form, at one point retiring 17 Angels in a row.  The run he gave up was pretty cheap: a double, followed by two ground-outs that advanced the runner home.  Gonzalez threw mostly cutters and sliders with an occasional fastball or curve.  The off-speed stuff seemed to keep the Angels off-balance all night.

Cahill pitched well, too.  The redhot M's bats cooled off for the first time this season, except for Vogelbach who broke his hitless streak with a double before smashing his linedrive opposite field home run.

While nothing is nicer than taking a lead in the home-half of the eighth, anxieties surely set in.  To his credit Servais gave Marco a chance to get the CG, but he could only get one out before leaving the game with runners at first and third to face... ?  That was the question and Swarzak provided a definitive answer.

You almost hate to see them get a day off for travel today.  The Ms are on a roll and there's no reason to stop now.

Six and One? No way.

It's worth watching a clip of Tim Beckham's first inning run scoring double in the M's 6-4 victory over the Angels last night.

https://www.mlb.com/mariners/video/chris-stratton-in-play-run-s-to-tim-beckham?t=t136-default-vtp

That is the perfect image of a "sweet swing."  In the first seven games of the season he's been doing that over and over.  Enough so, he's notched a significant stat, a wRC+ of 319.  

What's that, so what?  I admit it's obscure but it is a measure worth learning about and considering.

A wRC+ means "weighted runs created plus."  It is an index, so the "average" player has a wRC+ of 100.  The higher the score, the better, meaning the player's contribution to his team's offense is greater than an average player. So far this season, in Beckham's case, he is over three times better.  

Now this is a guy whose lifetime wRC+ is 101, just about as average as you can get and so run-of-the-mill Tampa, who took him number one in the first round of the 2008 draft, dumped him in 2018.  Keep in mind, he was not just #1 for Tampa, he was first in the whole friggin' draft!  Beckham was a major disappointment for the Rays.  Their version of our Dustin Ackley, but far far worse.

An old story.  Tampa gave up on him, traded him to Baltimore for the 2018 season.  The O's were unimpressed with his .230 batting average and subpar 78 wRP+.  Yes that means the Orioles got three-quarters of an average player out of Beckham last year.  He was there for the Mariner's picking this off-season and, fingers crossed, maybe DiPoto got Beckham in the year where all that talent materializes.

Of course I'm not so deluded by that sweet swing to believe his wRC+ is going to stay at 318 all season.  Last year the best player in the league, Mookie Betts, posted a 185.  But even if he drifted down into the mid-100s (Haniger led the Ms last year with a 138) Beckham could do a lot of damage to opposing pitching.

******

Not to be lost from last night was Felix Hernandez' good start and first win since June 30 of last season.  Five-plus innings, two runs, only one earned, no walks and 4 Ks.  He performed well behind some very shakey defense.  His most impressive inning was a 1-2-3 fifth, when he got Trout, Bour and Simmons in order.  Before getting too excited, recall he had a similar line in his first start against Cleveland last year, 5.1, 0, 0, 2, 4.

Six and one... a nice start to the season indeed.

April Fools!

The Mariners are 5-1.  They've scored an average of 8 runs a game since the start of the season and hit 15 home runs.    Beckham is batting .435, Healy .370.  Santana has 3 home runs and 10 rbi's.  Marco has two wins and Kikuchi's era is 2.53.  Brennan hasn't given up a run in 5 innings of relief.

April Fools!

What?  No?  These are true stats for the 2019 Seattle Mariners?

Maybe the secret is to play in March.  Hold on, we'll see what April is like.