I don't have anything encouraging to say so here's a song of merriment

Memories of last year's horrific collapse will not soon be forgotten, and right in the middle of everything was a bullpen that started to struggle at the worst possible time. Sean Green was no exception; between August 5th and September 18th, he allowed 17 runs and 43 baserunners in 18.2 innings, tarnishing a strong campaign and playing a significant part in 2007's emphatic demise.

The same phenomenon looks to be repeating itself once more in 2008. In the month of August, Green's put 22 people on base in 9.1 innings, striking out just four batters over the same span and yielding an OBP of .449. Where earlier in the year he was one of the lone stable assets on the staff, recently he's been nothing short of an unpleasant adventure.

Here's what's most interesting to me, though - where it seems pretty easy to pinpoint exhaustion as the root cause behind Green's struggles (he's tied for the AL lead in appearances with 63), if he's tired, it's not showing up in his actual stuff. Check it out:

Green's stuff has been pretty much of the same quality over this recent stretch as it has been all season. In fact, his breaking ball's actually been moving more.

The issue isn't with his stuff. It hasn't changed. And he's still been getting a bunch of groundballs, so it'd also be hard to argue that his results have been substantially different. No, the problem is this simple: since returning from his little break, Green hasn't been able to throw strikes. At all. His strike rate of 53% over the last few weeks is almost hilariously bad, well below his season rate of 61% (which is still pretty weak). Yeah, he's faced an inordinate number of lefties over that span, but he hasn't even been regularly finding the zone against righties.

Not throwing strikes is a great way to look like a bad pitcher. Well, no; not throwing strikes is a great way to be a bad pitcher. Which isn't to say that Sean Green is bad, but during August, he's been exactly that. What's curious to me is that his stuff has stayed about the same, which leads me to wonder about two things:

(1) Is he actually tired*, or is this just statistical noise?
(2) How does cumulative pitcher fatigue usually manifest itself - worse command, worse stuff, worse velocity, or some combination of the three?

#1 is something we'll just have to wait to find out. #2, meanwhile, seems like it'd be a fascinating area of research, although I imagine you'd run into a heck of a problem trying to come up with a data pool. How do you identify a pitcher who's worn down over the course of the season? Looking only at guys who're getting worse results is the nasty sort of selection bias, since it doesn't account for people who're pitching through fatigue effectively. I guess it's another one of those interesting ideas that's virtually impossible to investigate.

As far as Green's concerned, we can only hope that he's able to shake these struggles off, since he's a valuable component of the bullpen going forward. Personally, I'm not worried; he shook off similar struggles a year ago, and rosters expand in five days. But it'd be nice to see him get a couple strong outings under his belt before the end of the season. Just to be sure.

* as the life of the party he may simply be hungover all the time

So Ryan Feierabend has picked up his first Major League quality start in 14 tries. It's a bad stat, yes, but bad stats are generally your only option when you're trying to be nice to bad pitchers, since good stats tend to tell them how bad they are. Three runs and ten baserunners in seven innings against an AL contender. The Mariners have gotten worse starts.

However, the truth of the matter is that Feierabend really didn't pitch that well. Or maybe he did pitch well, and the Twins just hit the ball hard. I don't know, I couldn't watch. But either way, this was a quality start that, in all honesty, he didn't deserve.

Feierabend allowed nine line drives and seven outfield flies on 23 balls in play (excluding a bunt). That's...that's bad is what that is. The league average line drive rate is 19%, so to surrender nine on 23 hits against a Mauerless lineup requires some kind of aversion to throwing good pitches the likes of which I didn't think would allow a guy to make it to the Major Leagues. Given this sort of ball in play profile, most nights Feierabend would've struggled to make it through five. That he lasted through seven is nice and all, but his final line in no way reflects the true quality of his start.

That RRS did what he was able to do last night against a better version of the same team looks a little brighter now than it would've had Feierabend come out and set the Twins down. Maybe I'm not being fair to Feierabend. Maybe he shouldn't be used as a calibration standard. But I'm doing it anyway. For me, Feierabend serves as a baseline against which other back-of-the-rotation candidates should be judged. Or if you prefer, he's the cardboard cutout the other candidates have to be taller than if they want to ride the ride. Ryan Feierabend is not a Major League pitcher. At least, not right now. His only strong offering is his changeup, which makes him kind of the starting version of Cesar Jimenez, and I'm having enough trouble trying to like the relief version of Cesar Jimenez. So with that in mind, if you're an aspiring starter in the organization, and you're getting a chance to show your stuff, you better outperform Ryan Feierabend. Because if you don't, then you've still got a ways to go.

RRS outperformed Ryan Feierabend. He missed more bats, he flashed better offspeed stuff, and he generated way better balls in play. It's important for him to get that kind of separation, because I was having trouble taking him seriously after Feierabend duplicated his start against Oakland. Hopefully this'll serve as a launching-off point. Now that he's shown demonstrably better ability than the organization's Plan H, it'd be great to see him sustain his improvements. After all, there's no better time than the present for RRS to state his case for being a starter of the future. The door's wide open. He just needs to walk through it.

Thank you, Ryan Feierabend, for being sufficiently mediocre as to make me more certain of just how well RRS pitched. You may not be much good at pitching, but you're pretty good at assuaging my doubt.

Biggest Contribution: El Jefe, +12.9%
Biggest Suckfest: Sean Green, -42.7%
Most Important AB: Ibanez funk blast, +24.1%
Most Important Pitch: Kubel double, -23.4%
Total Contribution by Pitcher(s): -49.9%
Total Contribution by Lineup: -0.1%
Total Contribution by Opposition: 0.0%
(What is this chart?)

This is an introductory paragraph about an upcoming game between the Seattle Mariners and Minnesota Twins. The game will be played beginning at 1:40pm Pacific Time and will feature Ryan Feierabend and Glen Perkins as starting pitchers. The outcome will likely be determined by which one of them sucks less.

The scintillating life of Roy Corcoran

2001: signed as undrafted free agent, Rookie and A-ball
2002: A-ball
2003: A-ball through Majors; brief stint with Expos
2004: AAA and Majors; brief stint with Expos
2005: AAA
2006: AA through Majors; brief stint with Expos
2007: AAA
2008: AAA and Majors; extended, successful stint with Mariners

Roy Corcoran came to Seattle at the low low cost of a minor league contract and Spring Training invitation. Since then he's thrown 56.2 innings with the big club, posting a 2.95 tRA and generating an unbelievable 69% groundballs. That's the highest rate in baseball among pitchers with at least 40 innings. For good measure he's also kept opposing hitters to a pathetically emasculating 8% line drives. People just have not been able to get Corcoran squared up, and the result is that, despite below-average control and an only mediocre ability to miss bats, Corcoran's flourished.

Behold the awesome power of a good sinker. On the checklist of things a pitcher has to do in order to succeed, Corcoran does exactly one of them, and yet he's able to get by because he generates so many groundballs that walks and balls in play just don't hurt him the way they do most other arms in the league. Remember how we used to talk about Sean Green back before he dropped his arm angle and got even better? It's the exact same sort of thing. Corcoran's the exact same sort of pitcher as Green used to be, and as such, he's more than deserving of a Major League career. Even if he never figures out how to throw consistent strikes or miss consistent bats, he still belongs in the back of somebody's bullpen, because he does that one thing so well that it makes up for a lot of his other shortcomings.

A good bullpen is easy to build, and Corcoran's just the latest example of a success story who barely cost anything in terms of initial investment. This isn't a fluke. Corcoran isn't a one-time-only kind of outlier. He's the latest in a long line of pitchers grabbed off the scrap heap who went on to succeed because, despite a lack of veteran experience, they do their jobs well enough to survive against Major League competition. I don't get why some GMs still don't understand this, and I'm thankful that I'm a fan of a team that does, because it's a simple concept, and the payoff can be huge. When all else fails in the bullpen, go cheap. In fact, go cheap and go groundballer, if you have the chance. Off the top of my head I feel like groundball rates probably hold up a little better for minor league relievers making the jump than strikeouts and walks. But I can't really say for certain.

Talented, effective relievers really do grow on trees. The only requirement of a GM is that he doesn't mind occasionally getting his hands dirty when he picks them.

I guess he's not the worst thing to happen to this rotation after all. There, I said it.

Last week against Oakland was good, but tonight against Minnesota...that was extraordinary. Understand that when I say "extraordinary" I mean it a little differently for RRS than I would for Felix - the definition is pretty dynamic as your level of expectations changes with the pitcher. But for a guy with a known back-of-the-rotation skillset, what RRS did to a decent Minnesota lineup was impressive and by a fair margin the best start of his young and (hopefully) blossoming career.

As usual, his effectiveness is plainly evident in the numbers. (In fact, this is always the case; you just have to be sure you're looking at the right ones.) He threw 107 pitches and showed no signs of any lingering effects from last week's challenge. His fastball stayed up in the 88-91 range, touching 91 in his final inning and averaging 89.2. He registered 11 swinging strikes - ten against righties - and only threw 34 balls. He got more grounders than fly balls. He only allowed one line drive. And so on and so forth. Even the pitch that Randy Ruiz hit for an opposite field home run was actually a good 0-1 fastball an inch off the plate outside. If RRS made a mistake tonight, the Twins didn't make him pay for it. And we're talking about a lineup that only featured three lefties (albeit three pretty good ones).

All in all, that's a good start for a #1. For a pitcher just trying to crack the ass end of the rotation, it's terrific. I'm thrilled to see RRS stretching out and making progress to the point at which he actually looks like a legitimately good starting pitcher for innings at a time. Obviously it's important for us to temper our expectations since he does have a reasonably low ceiling, but the fact that he may very well cut it as a starter is big news. This is why it's so important for us to ditch Jarrod Washburn. This is why it's stupid to hand out free money to schlubs like Carlos Silva. Because there are always guys like RRS* just waiting for their chance, and when they succeed, you end up with a lot of productivity for a little money for a long time. And that's the sort of thing that affords you the flexibility to, I dunno, help turn a bad team into a good one overnight. Hypothetically.

(* note: there are no guys like RRS. There is but one RRS, and he is neat.)

I'm going to try out something new over the next little while, beginning tonight. Instead of putting everything into one post, I'm going to separate the content, throwing up the game chart first and then later adding subsequent posts about individual parts of the game that captured my interest. I feel like this'll be both easier for me to write and easier for you to read, so we'll see how it goes.

RRS is so awesome.

Biggest Contribution: Roy Corcoran, +27.8%
Biggest Suckfest: Yuniesky Betancourt, -10.1%
Most Important AB: Lopez double, +10.7%
Most Important Pitch: Ruiz homer, -17.0%
Total Contribution by Pitcher(s): +42.4%
Total Contribution by Lineup: +3.8%
Total Contribution by Opposition: +3.8%
(What is this chart?)

I want to hang out with Sean Green. He seems like fun.

Yes, the Mariners needed a little help with their first two runs. And yes, it was just their 49th win of the season. Bottom line? They’re all precious to a team trying hard not to lose 100 games.

Take Beltre.

His manager, Jim Riggleman, keeps talking about how many hard outs he’s made all season, and this wasn’t a bad example. Beltre lined out in the first and sixth innings, then doubled to set up Seattle’s run in the ninth.

Then he hit his 21st home run of the season through the Twins bullpen beyond left field in the 11th inning.

“It was a good feeling to see Beltre hit that ball,” Riggleman said. “He’s hit in bad luck all year, and hit two line drives tonight that were caught.

This is the most intelligent thing a Mariner manager has said in years. Jim Riggleman may not have the execution exactly right, but the man knows what to say.