Peabody: Life, Friends Baseball

Mike Carp has played first base since Justin Smoak was painfully removed off the stage of Safeco at the conclusion of his passion play. Could not, did not, would not produce in the sense of hitting for power, getting on base. Complained about the park, got in his own head and that of his team mates. Smoak was adorned with the notion of great prospect after the Mariners traded rent-a-player Cliff Lee to the Texas Rangers. The Mariners having traded a bunch of guys to the Phillies that never made it to the majors for Lee, those guys were drafted by Bill Bavasi who never would have had the job if his name was Smith.

As we’ve seen recently, good teams do not trade good hitting prospects for pitchers and here are Smoak’s stats from the last three seasons in the major leagues: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/s/smoakju01.shtml

Since his return to playing in Tacoma, Smoak after a rough start, has an OPS of .763 as opposed to the .573 OPS he put up in Seattle before his demotion. The component parts of that Tacoma OPS are an onbag of .388 and a slugging percentage of .375. To break down the slug a bit his Isolated Power is .175 based on three doubles and a snipered center fielder that allowed him to get a triple. The big thing he’s done is taken nine walks, he’s still really struggling with the bat.

Since Carp’s return with Seattle he has posted an OPS of .863 based on an onbag of .378 and a slug of .485. Had he not been hurt and playing first base the whole season as he earned the right last year, he probably would not have been hurt playing left field and the team performance might have been better. If his whole year performance is indicative of how he can play he’d be the sixth best first baseman in the American League.

Right now Jaso is playing well, Montero is too, Carp is too, Ackley is too, Seager and Saunders too, Thames and Robinson as well. Wells is scuffling a bit, but went deep last night against Sabbathia. Pitching tomorrow.

This team is not bad and starting to play better and better.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 4th, 2012 at 5:49 pm by terrybenish and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.