Postgame Spread
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Thursday, July 26, 2007

Fun with numbers    

Raul Ibañez vs. LHP, 2006: .243/.301/.362, .663 OPS
Raul Ibañez vs. LHP, 2007: .238/.250/.286, .536 OPS
Raul Ibañez overall, July: .195/.239/.280, .519 OPS

Richie Sexson vs. RHP, 2007: .193/.296/.398, .694 OPS
Richie Sexson overall, July: .180/.324/.279, .603 OPS

Current Mariners losing streak: 6

Adam Jones (AAA), 2007: .314/.383/.587, .969 OPS
Adam Jones (AAA), July: .314/.375/.605, .980 OPS

Also, not numbers, but good to keep in mind:

Raul Ibañez, defensively: terrible
Adam Jones, defensively: excellent

This is getting so obvious that it hurts. We just lost 4 close games in a row to Texas that featured some very high-profile sucking by both Ibañez and Sexson (and Chris Reitsma in one game, who has no business being on any MLB roster at this point). Now, I don't think Jones himself can be considered a multiple-win upgrade at this point in the season, but at the same time I think with him as an everyday outfielder there's a very good chance we would have won two or three of those games. That would make us at most 1.5 back of the Angels instead of 3.5, for anyone paying attention.

In June, calling up Jones to take Ibañez spot in the outfield, moving him to DH and limiting him to facing mostly RH pitchers was obvious. But not doing it was still defensible. Through most of June, we did ok with our suboptimal roster. It finally bit us in the ass against Texas, in a big way, but we still have a shot at the playoffs thanks the Angels similar capacity to suck recently. This error can still be rectified.

I still have doubts as to whether or not this rotation can manage to sneak us into the playoffs, no matter how well the rest of the team is playing. But it's gotten us this far, Felix has plenty of room to improve, and it's possible we could add another mediocre starter (though not a good one). I'm hoping Sexson and Ibañez bounce back, but they've been bad enough that they should get no more unnecessary chances. We should be starting Ben Broussard (at 1B) and Adam Jones (in the OF, it doesn't really matter where) as much as possible. If Sexson starts to heat up, maybe you move Broussard back to more of a bench role. If Ibañez starts killing RH pitchers again, great, but he still shouldn't be anything more than the important half of a DH platoon.

This doesn't take fancy stats to see. These guys look terrible, and we shouldn't be giving them more opportunities to suck than we have to. Please, please, please fix this. And DFA Reitsma already, he's just terrible. On the one hand, we should feel very fortunate to have lost 6 in a row and still only be 3.5 back. But if we were putting our best product on the field these last six games, I think the chance we would now be in a virtual tie for the division is actually extremely high. This is a travesty.

1 Comments:

  • PS Sexson homered tonight, but Ibañez and Reitsma still suck ass.

    Tonight:

    Ibañez: 0/3, 1BB
    Reitsma: 0.0IP, 2ER, 2BB, 0K (obviously)

    Seriously. How long will you let this happen without fielding the best team we can?

    By Blogger Jesse, at 2:39 AM  

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