Jerry Dipoto has a plan. Importantly, he also has the autonomy to implement it. Free from the shackles of Anaheim, he’s now able to do his own thing, with his own people, in Seattle. That’s good news for Mariners’ fans.

Dipoto is doing more than simply replacing Jack Zduriencik as Seattle’s general manager. He’s enacting philosophical change. The erstwhile Angels GM is a former player with a scouting background, but he’s also one of the most analytically inclined front office executives in the game. The Mariners will be many things under Dipoto’s leadership; backwards isn’t one of them.

Dipoto shared his vision for the team during this week’s GM meetings in Boca Raton.

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DiPoto on the organization’s change of philosophy: “The philosophy I’m bringing over here is pretty different. I respect Jack Zduriencik – he’s had a wonderful baseball career and I’m sure he’ll continue to have one – but we’ll do things differently than he did. We see things through a different lens. I’m not going to tell you exactly how, because then it’s no longer an advantage, but it is significantly different. Regarding [the Angels], it would be fair to say that this is a different environment for me.”

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To say Edgar Martinez knows hitting would be to state the obvious. The Seattle Mariners legend slashed .312/.418/.515 between 1987 and 2004, and he won a pair of batting titles along the way. He ranks 21st all-time in OBP and is 44th all-time in adjusted OPS.

Martinez is now entrusted with getting the most out of Mariners hitters. The should-be Hall-of-Famer took over as the team’s hitting coach in late June after beginning the season as a roving instructor. It’s a challenging job. Seattle ranks 11th in the American League in runs scored, and several players are falling short of expectations.

Martinez talked about the art of hitting — and how he evolved during his career — earlier this summer. Read the rest of this entry »

Nelson Cruz leads both leagues in home runs, and he ranks second behind Bryce Harper in SLG. Neither is a surprise. The Seattle slugger left the yard 40 times with Baltimore last season, and moving to Safeco Field wasn’t going to squelch his production. Per ESPN Home Run Tracker, 22 of the 34 bombs he’s hit this year have traveled more than 400 feet. Nine of them have gone at least 440 feet.

One thing has come as a surprise: Going into last night, the career .274 hitter had a .324 batting average, and he was tied with Prince Fielder for the most base hits (140) in either league. Once one-dimensional, the former Texas Ranger has morphed into more than just a basher.

It’s been a long process. In many respects, Cruz has been a late bloomer. Read the rest of this entry »

Zach Putnam has thrown 61.4% splitters and 24.7% cutters so far this season. If you think that’s unique, you’re right. No other MLB pitcher approximates that ratio.

The White Sox reliever is one of only five pitchers (minimum 30 innings) who utilize each of the two offerings at least 10% of the time. Alfredo Simon – 35% splitters and 14.6% cutters – comes closest to Putnam’s particular mix. Masahiro Tanaka throws 25.7% splitters and 10.7% cutters. Kendall Graveman is 25.7% cutters and 11.1% splitters. Jeff Samardzija is 24.8% cutters and 11.1% splitters. (numbers through Friday.)

Putnam’s 61.4% splitter usage is currently the highest in either league. Koji Uehara is next at 60.2% (and throws a cutter once in a blue moon).

The 28-year-old right-hander has thrown a splitter since his days at the University of Michigan. He turned to the cutter more recently. Read the rest of this entry »

My first piece for FanGraphs was an interview with Felix Hernandez. That was in May 2011, when Hernandez was 25 years old and coming off a Cy Young season. Four-plus years later, I’m still here and King Felix is better than ever.

Earlier this summer, I asked the Seattle Mariners ace to compare then to now.

“I’m a little different,” Hernandez told me. “I don’t throw as hard anymore. I was 95-96 (mph) back in 2011, and I’m 91-93 now. But I’m a little smarter. I try to throw on the corners and down in the strike zone, and I mix with my breaking balls.”

I reminded Hernandez that he called himself smart in our earlier interview. In retrospect, was that accurate? Read the rest of this entry »

The Mariners have not gotten the production they were expecting from Robinson Cano so far. I know, bold statement. Surely the Mariners prepared themselves for paying Cano handsomely well into his decline years, giving him $240 million over ten years starting with his age-31 season. Still, nobody could have anticipated the steep drop in total offensive production he has endured the first year and a half of the deal. It would not be the first time an elite hitter fell off quickly on the elder side of 30, but is his decline simply due to mean, old Father Time? The overall numbers, as well as some of his results on a more granular level, certainly support that narrative.

If you have read this far, you know enough about Cano’s difficulties not to need his basic stat line spelled out for the hundredth time. Obviously he hasn’t hit as well, especially for power, as he did in New York. As you would expect, his ability to hit long fly balls has dwindled in the same manner:

This data comes courtesy of Baseball Heat Maps, and though it only covers the 2007 season onward, the change is obvious enough. His average distance on fly balls is noticeably shorter than both his career and his last few years in New York, which would make sense for a hitter losing the strength and athleticism of his younger self.

If he’s not hitting the ball as far because of age, you would expect his batted-ball rates to be suffering as well. Much ink has been written on how many more ground balls he has hit in the last year and a half; we’ll get to that. Here are his hard, medium and soft contact rates, found on FanGraphs’ player page for Cano:

His Mariners years fall below the most recent peak years he had in New York, but this year his hard-hit rate is back above his career average, as well as his 2011 season rate in which he put up tremendous numbers.

So we have a declining hitter who is hitting fly balls for a shorter distance, but is still hitting the ball hard enough on average to approximate his former performance levels. He’s also putting more balls in play on the ground, though nothing I have learned about aging leads to hitting the top of a baseball more often than the bottom of it. Christopher Rinaldi pointed out in the Community Blog a few weeks ago that Cano hasn’t gone to the opposite field as much this season, but if you include last season as well, there’s not as appreciable a change in pull versus opposite field rates from his Yankee career. Here is a look at the types of batted balls he’s hit to each for more clarity.

Remember that the hard/medium/soft delineations come from a BIS algorithm that does not include exit speed. I suspect that the decline in hard-hit rate may be due in part to the decreased number of fly balls and line drives, rather than simply a decreased ability to create force. Also, since his overall hard-hit rate isn’t that far off from his career numbers, this has the signs of a case of altered swing mechanics creating more ground balls, especially to the pull side. Canvassing video over the past few years for clues in his swing, this starts to make even more sense as the true culprit.The Yankees timeframe covers Cano’s last three seasons in the Big Apple for comparison. Everything you would associate with a negative change shows up here: fewer line drives and fly balls everywhere except for more liners to the opposite field, and despite an unchanged hard-hit rate to center, a lower figure to left and right fields. His batted balls are coming out on a lower trajectory, and to the sides of the field without as much force behind them.

Here is a swing from Cano’s 2012 season:

And here is one from June of last year:

Both of these swings are on similarly placed pitches, both fastballs up in the zone. The 2014 pitch is a few inches higher, but they are close enough to show some important differences.

The first is the way the hands take the bat to the ball. Notice how in the 2013 version, there is more of a loop to his hand path; the first move is down before they start moving forward. In the 2014 look, Cano’s hands start pushing directly toward contact. This makes his swing much more level, which is not as conducive to hitting high line drives and deep fly balls. You can really see how this works over three frames in the swings:

The other noticeable inconsistency is where the barrel travels in relation to the hands. It’s a little subtler, but in the 2013 swing you can see how the barrel drops slightly more under the hands as it comes into contact. In the second look, the barrel stays closer to the same level as the hands, coming around them more so than underneath them. When the barrel works around the ball on a flatter plane, you have a sure-fire recipe for more pull-side ground balls.

These aren’t just two cherry-picked swings either. Here’s another swing from this year on a low and outside pitch, followed by a low pitch in the Yankee era.

Former Cano digs the ball out and lifts it into the outfield, whereas latter Cano looks like he’s forcing his hands down all the way through the swing. Both balls end up in the air, but the Yankee swing obviously looks much more beneficial for a guy who should be looking to drive the ball out of the park on occasion.

From the pitcher’s view, this difference is still apparent. This time we will see a 2013 swing and a 2015 swing, cut off one frame after the left arm gets fully extended.

The finish of the swing is easier to compare from this angle, which is pretty clearly different despite similar pitch locations. Yankee Cano again shows more lift in his swing, resulting in a higher finish. Mariner Cano’s hands do come up through contact a bit more than the previous swings we looked at, but not nearly to the same degree as the Yankee version. The flatter finish in the 2015 swing is the product of the barrel coming around the hands, as well as the more downward plane his hands take toward the ball. Again, all signs point toward lower-trajectory hits, with the flatter barrel making an early swing more likely to yank the ball to the pull side. The bat staying more vertical used to allow Cano to lift the ball, as well as giving him a better chance of driving it toward the middle of the field.

What we cannot know is why this change has happened. I don’t know if this has been a conscious change or just falling into bad habits. The fact that this struggle has gone on for a year and a half with a fairly big change occurring simultaneously certainly raises a lot of questions. One interesting side note makes me even more intrigued to follow Cano’s season is Edgar Martinez’s recent hiring as hitting coach. I know absolutely nothing about Howard Johnson as a hitting coach, so this is not to say that he didn’t do a good job. But it’s hard not to be excited about a guy I have heard has an excellent perception of the swing, particularly regarding hand path, get a crack at helping Cano get back on track. He definitely has proof of concept:

Of course, it remains to be seen how well he can work with players as a coach. Doing a thing and understanding a thing do not automatically qualify you to teach a thing. Color me intrigued though. Maybe it’s just noise or coincidence, or maybe he’s already made an impression. The hiring was announced on June 20, and here are swings from each of June 21 and June 22:

There’s a little more of that old lift to his swing, and the barrel is a little more vertical. The second is a bit flatter with the bat, but it’s a product of the pitch location more than a swing issue; he doesn’t look like he hooks the ball nearly as much. To be clear, Cano has still shown a number of swings in the past week that look like everything he’s done in the past year and a half. On top of that, it’s extremely hard for even the best hitters to make mechanical changes in the middle of a season. For Cano’s sake, and for the Mariners offense’s sake, hopefully he (and Martinez?) can figure out a way to set himself back up for some better production at the plate.

To the main point of this piece, yes, Cano is getting to an age where a down month raises concerns and a down season sounds the panic alarm. Based on what I see, there’s still enough of a reason to believe he has the ability to be the mythical power and contact guy the Mariners need in their lineup. A mechanical issue can be fixed, and it’s just too hard to believe Cano’s strength and ability could have eroded so quickly. The problem is that fixing it is not always as easy as it sounds.

I was at Progressive Field earlier this week to see the Indians host the Mariners. A stone’s throw away, the Cavaliers were playing Golden State in the NBA finals. The latter series has the city captivated and on the precipice of euphoria. When the basketball game got out on Tuesday night, hordes of fans below my hotel window chanted “Let’s go Cavs!” and blew air horns to celebrate a win. A brass band played somewhere down on the street. It sounded like Mardi Gras, and it was only Game 3.

“They’re going to blow the roof off this place if they win,” Indians outfielder Nick Swisher told me. “People love their sports around here, and it’s been a long, long time since there’s been a championship.”

Fifty-one years, to be exact. The Browns won the NFL title in 1964, and since that time it’s been a multi-sport combination of heartbreak and non-contenders. According to Swisher, who grew up in Ohio, “That’s why you see so many people coming out to support the Cavs.”

Meanwhile, with no basketball game as competition, the official attendance at Progressive Field on Wednesday night was 12,305. The number of fans who actually showed up was probably closer to seven or eight thousand. On the season, the Indians have drawn an average of 16,836, with only the cloudy-future Rays spinning fewer turnstiles. Cleveland was also second from the bottom last year, and in 2013 they ranked just one spot higher despite 92 wins and a Wild Card berth. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Sunday’s column included several perspectives on the strike zone. Arizona Diamondbacks’ senior vice president of baseball operations De Jon Watson wasn’t one of the people quoted, but I did address the subject with him at the winter meetings.

Watson told me his club is paying attention, and is thus aware the 2014 zone was lower than it’s been in the past. He said teams need to be cognizant of everything going on in the industry, including how umpires are calling games. As for how a lower strike zone relates to player acquisition, Watson – like others in the industry – wasn’t very forthcoming.

“With each player, we assess and evaluate what they handle best and what balls they’re putting in play on a consistent basis,” said Watson. “We do our homework to make sure we’re procuring guys who fit our ballpark, our need, and really, where the game is going. We’re always studying trends.”

What Watson said about the strike zone as it pertains to player development was far more intriguing. Read the rest of this entry »

Two things stood out when I talked to Miami Marlins president Michael Hill in Phoenix this week. One was the importance of character when building a roster. The other was seemingly contradictory and had to do with the team’s home ballpark.

Hill brought up character after first citing track records, scouts evaluations, and statistical data.

“We look at if a player is a fit for what we are trying to do, and that’s a holistic statement,” Hill told me. “There’s more that goes into it than just the pitching, fielding and hitting. We’re bringing a personality into our clubhouse and put value in how a particular player may fit the context of our club.”

I wasn’t particularly surprised to hear Hill say that. When I visited the Marlins’ clubhouse this summer – technically, the visiting clubhouse in Atlanta – the vibe was positive. I spoke to several players and all were personable. But I did find it notable that Hill brought up character, so I asked just how much of a factor it is. Read the rest of this entry »

Jackie Bradley, Jr. might win a Gold Glove tonight. He should. The Red Sox centerfielder is an American League finalist at his position along with Adam Eaton and Adam Jones. He easily outpaced both in Fielding Bible balloting, with only National Leaguer Juan Lagares ranking higher.

Then again, Bradley probably didn’t hit well enough to win a traditional Gold Glove. [Yes, the ghosts of Derek Jeter and Rafael Palmeiro continue to haunt.] The 24-year-old rookie put up a scary-bad .198/.265/.266 slash line in 423 plate appearances.

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