Game 2, Mariners 5, A's 2 (0-2)
by Jason Wojciechowski
Tuesday, April 5th, 2011, 8:40 pm

This writeup comes a few days late, but it also comes with an evolving version of what I want to do with game writeups, a blend of objective and subjective material. First will be the box score: PAs, times on base, wRAA11, and Win Probability Added10. Any notes will be placed as footnotes on the players' names in the box score The notes will in particular discuss things like whether a hit was particularly lucky or an out particularly unlucky. I'll also note defense in that column.

For pitching, I'll show batters faced, outs obtained, pitches, strikes, strikeouts, walks, homers, and, of course, a notes column.

The rest of the day's post will be a little more free-form, covering whatever notes I might have that weren't already covered in the box.

So for the A's second game, and second loss, here we go.

Player PA TOB wRAA WPA
Crisp (CF)1 4 2 .448 .143
Barton (1B)2 4 3 1.72 .263
DeJesus (RF) 4 0 -1.024 -.189
Willingham (LF)3 4 1 -.312 .100
Matsui (DH) 4 0 -1.024 -.113
Suzuki (C)4 4 1 -.312 -.061
Ellis (2B) 4 1 -.312 -.088
Kouzmanoff (3B)5 4 0 -1.024 -.113
Pennington (SS) 2 1 0.200 .027
Sweeney (PH) 1 0 -0.256 -.004
Jackson (PH) 1 0 -0.256 -.050

Andy LaRoche also played in the game, but only appeared on defense, at shortstop, and a ball did not come his way.

Pitcher Outs/Batters Strikes/Pitches K UBB HR
Anderson6 18/23 67/108 5 1 0
Breslow7 1/3 8/11 0 0 0
Balfour8 5/7 14/27 0 0 0
Fuentes9 3/6 17/29 0 0 0

This was a fine game until the ninth inning, when Brian Fuentes did what I think Brian Fuentes does a lot: not put pitches where he wants to put them. I'd love to be able to blame this loss on the absence of Andrew Bailey, but I wouldn't count on Bob Geren having used Bailey instead of Fuentes in the ninth (and it's not clear he should have, either -- he only had to get Jack Wilson and Miguel Olivo to put the top of the Mariner order in a two-out situation; it was high-leverage, but not high-difficulty).

Offensive player of the game: Daric Barton. Even though one of this doubles was cheap and would be attributed to a defensive miscue in any sensible scoring system, he earned his two other hits.

Offensive goat of the game: David DeJesus. As the number three hitter behind Crisp and Barton, he had to do more. It's not like he was robbed of hits, either.

Pitcher of the game: Brett Anderson. Changed eye levels and speeds effortlessly. Only flaw was not missing enough bats in strikeout situations, allowing the Mariners to run up his pitch count the same way they did against Trevor Cahill the night before.

  1. line drive snared by Ryan for an out; walk may have been on a ball; single was on a beautiful drag bunt; stole third ↩

  2. first double was on a defensive miscue by Ichiro and Saunders; other double was a shot, though Smoak almost speared it; Barton made a poor (though tough) throw home in the ninth that allowed the tie-breaking run to score ↩

  3. two swinging strikeouts; single probably would have been an out except that Jack Wilson was playing toward second for the double play ↩

  4. mainly just happy that he played this game after Olivo jacked up his ankle the night before; hit a ball hard in the fourth, but right at Bradley in left; made an athletic play on Barton's throw home in the ninth to keep the ball from getting to the backstop; his single was of the infield variety, but that's only because of Brendan Ryan's insane range ↩

  5. got eaten up by a Brendan Ryan grounder in the second for an error ↩

  6. moved the ball around well, particularly up and down, but the Mariners hit foul balls and took strikeout pitches that ran his pitch count up; got outrun to first by Ichiro in the third, but there's no shame in that -- who doesn't?; victimized by Jack Cust shockingly swinging at a 3-0 fastball ↩

  7. hung a slider to Brendan Ryan; missed the target badly to Jack Wilson, allowing him to hit the ball the other way, moving Ryan to third; victimized by Crisp's arm on a shallow fly to center for a sacrifice ↩

  8. he's very Aussie, and says a lot of cusses to himself to get amped up; made Adam Moore look silly; single by Bradley wasn't hit hard, but wasn't undeserved, either: Balfour hung his slider a little Cust hit a grounder right into the shift, up the middle -- that's a single by 99% of other hitters ↩

  9. left a fastball in the middle of the plate for Jack Wilson got two sliders past Olivo, then threw him another one that hung; then came the tough grounder to Barton, just unlucky on location, and the wild pitch, and it was all over. Fuentes made his bed with the two hangers to the first two batters, though  ↩

  10. I'm using the WPA from Fangraphs, so if there are any discrepancies between the numbers you see here and what you see on other sources, that's why. Consider this also my credit to Fangraphs, so you know I'm not calculating these myself. ↩

  11. I'm calculating these myself, since I can't seem to find a source that displays them for a given game. I'm using the 2010 weights calculated by Matt Klaassen at Beyond the Box Score this off-season. The weights are as follows:

    Event Value
    BB 0.7
    HBP 0.73
    1B 0.89
    2B 1.27
    3B 1.61
    HR 2.07
    SB 0.25
    CS -0.5

    So you take these weights, add them up, divide by PA, subtract 0.32, divide by 1.25, and then multiply again by PA, you get runs above average. (The 0.32 number may not be correct, as there's discussion in the comments, but it won't be far wrong, and in any given game, it's unlikely to make much difference in terms of grasping generally who had a good game and who didn't.) ↩

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