August Grades Part 2: Pitching

Here is part 2 of the post with my pitching grades for this past month in August. Please feel free to let me know what you think.

Sean White – White has just looked amazingly sharp in August. Between his lack of walks and improved pitching he has looked better than previously this year. A

Shawn Kelley – Has looked improved, although he has had a few bad outings overall he had a good month, he had the second best K/BB (5.0) ratio on the pitching staff in August and while he wasn’t up to his May performance it was much better than July. B

Chris Jakubauskas – While he did a good job of throwing a lot of strikes he gave up A LOT of long fly balls and for home runs, which has been a bit knock against him this year. His 33% is extremely high and I tend to mark it up to his arm injury at the beginning of the month. His BABIP (.144) was really exceptionally good and I think it’s largely due to his massive 55% ground ball rate. C

Mark Lowe – has lowered his BB/9 in each of the past three months, and hits his lowest of the year with 1.13%. A

Ian Snell – Snell really struggled in his adjustment to the American League but as the month went on we saw adjustments and he did perform better. He still has along way to go and there are more adjustments to make. I’d like to see him put more innings into each performance but if all he did was give us 5 innings of no run ball each outing. I’m down with that. C-

Miguel Batista – E for effort … wait he put forth no effort …While the superficial stats give him a good rating, ERA 1.69, BAA .210 … but his K/BB ratio is 0.88% he gave up 0 home runs this month (which completely surprises me and stuns me) but left over 87% of all his runners on base along with a BABIP .257 tells me he got awful lucky this month in his 10 innings along with everyone of his pitches not even coming up average. It’s just distasteful to think this guy is still around. I’ll give him a D simply because of his luck, which continues to be running extremely high because he is luckily still with A team and if this luck holds out he should have a contract with another team that values his “veteran presence”.

David Aardsma – While he posted tons of strike outs his walks where also very high. You have to start to wonder how effective he will be come next year when everyone has scene all of his tricks. His iffy control, and lack of secondary stuff. But this isn’t about next year. This August he did pitch really well and picked up his 30^th save. He has been a valued member of the Seattle Mariners this season. B+

Garrett Olson – I didn’t even realize that Olson was still with the team in early August, he only pitched 6 innings total which isn’t a lot to judge a pitcher by. So I’ll be nice and give him a N/A

Felix Hernandez – FELIX! He hit a bit of regression this month but still pitched beyond awesome and better than 90% of the league. That’s saying something, that you had an “off-month” and you still out played 90% of your colleges … we have something special and we need to lock it down NOW!. A-

Jason Vargas – Vargas had just an inning more than Olson. He had the one rough outing at KC at the beginning of the month before they shipped him down to Tacoma for some work. One thing to really think about before passing judgment on him is the amount of innings he has pitched this year vs. last two years. He is obviously getting a little worn down and the Mariners need to be careful they don’t overwork him at the end of the season. N/A

Ryan Rowland-Smith – Rowland-Smith (aka Washburn the II) has pitched extremely well helped by a 40% FB rate and a 6.9 HR/FB ratio. He took care of runners what runners he had with a low LOB% of 65.4% and low BB/9 (2.89, 12BB/6GS!!) and a FIP of 3.89 which ironically was lower than his ERA of 4.34,  but bottom line the starting pitcher best K/BB (2.17) is what really kept the M’s in each game. B+

Doug Fister – He isn’t as good as he showed, yes his first 26 innings we wonderful. But don’t get too excited. His BB% was the lowest of the starting pitchers and his 6K’s per 9IP was welcomed as well. But, his stuff isn’t as good as what we saw, as Lookout Landing pointed out the other day, his out pitch is his change up. He doesn’t have a lot of weapons and they aren’t extremely good either. Regression is eventually going to happen and it could get ugly. Enjoy it while it lasts. B-

Randy Messenger – AAAA pitcher, I knew it. You knew it, we all knew it before he came up here. He’s just now justifying it to everyone else. D-

Luke French – needs to really throw more strikes. His eligibility with the starting rotation is quickly depending on it. Along with his HR/FB ratio of 12% sure that’s just above normal. But it he threw more strikes and placed his pitches better we would give up so many long bombs. C-