Following the emergence of the Tampa Bay Rays in 2008, fans around baseball – and rightly so – began paying more attention to the value of defense. I’m sure that by now you’ve heard about the difficulties involved in measuring defensive skills ad nauseum. But just know that we are getting better. You know how we know? Because results are reflected in win-loss columns.

Take the Seattle Mariners for instance. The news around baseball on December 12th, 2008 was how the New York Mets upgraded their much-ridiculed bullpen by acquiring J.J. Putz from Seattle. Much less talked about was how good of a deal this was for the Mariners.

While Putz was certainly a very effective reliever, Seattle saw a chance to parlay his skill into something the team needed more – outfield defense. In the very same trade that brought Putz to Queens, the Mariners obtained Endy Chavez from the Mets and Franklin Gutierrez from Cleveland, two of the finest defensive outfielders in the game. Chavez would play left, Guttierez center, and Ichiro would move back permanently to right where he would be more effective. None of these three players would offer you much in terms of power. But the Mariners were OK with that. And, so far, so good.

As of this writing, the Seattle pitching corps has an MLB-leading 3.33 ERA. And I think a good chunk of that early success can be attributed to the OF who have not disappointed, leading MLB in OF Revized Zone Rating (a stellar .968) AND plays made out of their fielding zones (49), which is certainly no easy feat.

Predictably, their team offense does leave a bit to be desired with an AL-worst .308 OBP and a .370 slugging percentage (13th in AL). But this has surprisingly been offset very well by how many runs they’re not allowing to opposing lineups. Consequently, they lead the AL West with a 13-8 record, which is really amazing if you think about the lack of offense.

Now obviously it’s way too early to know for sure that their defense can keep this many runs off the board for much longer. However, I’m inclined to believe that the Mariners are for real. Sure, Jarrod Washburn is going to have more nights like he did on Sunday. But neither Carlos Silva nor Chris Jakubauskas (or whomever will take his spot in the rotation) is going to be this bad either. Plus, we know enough about Adrian Beltre to trust that he’s better than his current OPS+ of 16 suggests, which should offset the eventual decline of Russell Branyan’s performance.

However, even a believer like myself didn’t exactly predict this (alright, fine, I didn’t at all). I had little idea of just how much of an impact this defense would have. But like I said, we’re getting better at evaluating this stuff, and baseball’s going to be more fun as a result.

Tonight I watched Joe Blanton give up bomb after bomb to the Nationals, and I came to an unavoidable conclusion: Blanton is not very good.

But that’s OK. He doesn’t have to be very good. In fact, none of the Phillies pitchers have to be very good. They just have to be better than they’ve been.

So far this season the Phillies are 10-8 despite a woeful team ERA of 5.68.

The pitching is the bad news.

The good news is, well, just about everything else.

The Phillies have a solid offense, more powerful than last season with Jayson Werth playing fulltime in right field.  And they have outstanding defense — especially now that Ryan Howard has gotten in touch with his inner Doug Mankiewicz. (Seriously, Howard has been a remarkably improved defender in 2009. He was never quite as bad as his reputation suggested, but he was never very good either. He might not win the Gold Glove this season, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he got a few votes.)

I’m not too worried about the team’s bullpen. Ryan Madson is rounding into form, Clay Condrey has been great, and J.C. Romero will be back before you know it. Sure, I’d feel better if Brad Lidge wasn’t complaining about knee pain just one year after major knee surgery. And I’d love to know why he’s throwing so many more sliders. But the bullpen, like all bullpens, is a work in progress. It’ll get there.

The starting staff is what worries me. So far this season, all but one of the team’s 10 wins has been a come-from-behind victory. If not for the offense’s flair for the dramatic (47 runs in innings 7-9 compared to 26 runs in innings 1-3), the Phils would be buried in last.

It’s become clear that the Phillies bats will find a way to win, if only the pitchers can keep them in the game. But so far they haven’t done a very good job.

Come on Brett Myers, it’s a contract year! Come on Joe Blanton, it’s a contract year for you, too! Come on Jamie Moyer…well, OK, you’ve got a pretty good excuse. You’re really old. Plus, you were pretty solid in your last start against the Marlins.

But the rest of you, let’s see some improvement. We’re not asking for much. You don’t have to be good. Just better.

Monday is hot baseball wives day here on UmpBump, and this weeks honoree is Emiko Taguchi, née Kagawa, the wife Japanese outfielder So Taguchi.

So Taguchi is an outfielder who has gone to the World Series three times – with the Cardinals in 2004 and 2006, and with the Phillies last season.

So and Emiko met when Emiko was a sports announcer for Japanese TV station TBS and he was an outfielder for the Orix Blue Wave. The couple was married in 2000, and they have one son, Kan Taguchi, born in 2003.

In addition to her former career as a TV announcer, Emiko is the author of three books in Japanese, including one on baseball in America. She is fluent in English, and has been helping So to learn the language since they moved to the US. She also converted So to Christianity in 2002, with the help of one of So’s teammates on the AAA Memphis Redbirds.

So and Emiko make a pretty cute couple, because neither of them ever seems to stop smiling, and we have yet to find a picture of them where they aren’t.

(more pictures after the jump)

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As of this writing, Dodgers reliever Will Ohman has not pitched in 8 days.

I can’t find any news of an injury or anything, or any mention of him in the news at all for that matter, and if I didn’t know Joe Torre was the Dodgers manager, I might think he fell into a black hole or something.

But apparently Joe Torre’s legendarily bad bullpen management is only getting more nonsensically rigid as he ages.  Apparently Torre’s conception of Ohman’s role in the pen is so specific that a situation only comes up every two weeks or so.

Torre clearly has no understanding of the need to keep relievers fresh by getting them some work every now and again, even if it is not the exact, perfect, totally conventional situation to use them in.

Meanwhile, he is currently pitching reliever Ramon Troncoso into his 4th inning of work at Coors field.  Sheesh.

The Pirates have gotten off to a good start this year, largely thanks to the entire starting rotation hitting the ground running right out of the gate (starters’ ERA: 3.12).

The offense however, still needs some work.  Hard-hitting catcher Ryan Doumit is going to be out for a while following wrist surgery, and several other hitters, notably 3B Andy LaRoche and SS Jack Wilson, are battling through early season struggles at the plate.

But if the Pirates want to take advantage of a surprising young pitching staff, they are going to need to find a way to sneak some better bats into the lineup.  It’s probably too early to give up on Wilson and LaRoche, but there is one glaring hole with an obvious in-house solution: rightfielder Brandon Moss (.597 OPS)

It amazes me that the Pirates still think Brandon Moss can hit in the major leagues.  Nothing about his minor league record even remotely suggests that he will put up anywhere near the numbers expected of a corner outfielder in the big leagues.

Which means it’s time to dump Moss and bring up Andrew McCutchen, who is posting a .985 OPS at triple-A Indianapolis.

McCutchen, long touted as a top prospect, has seen his star fall a bit of late due to scouts’ disappointment with his failure to develop the power they expected of him.  But McCutchen is still only 22 (compared to Moss’s 25), and still has time to develop some power.

Meanwhile, he has already shown some other useful tools, such as a good batting eye, gap power, 30+ stolen base speed, and plus defense in the outfield.

Granted the Pirates could really use another power hitter in their outfield rather than another speedy gap hitter (another team that should have signed Adam Dunn), but in the meantime there is no excuse to keep running a Brandon Moss out there when they have a major-league ready, vastly superior option like McCutchen languishing in AAA.

Fifteen games into the season, I’m already tired of dealing with all the articles/blog posts about what the Mets need to fix. To illustrate my point, here’s just a sampling of what people have written just over the past few days regarding what’s wrong with the New York Mets:

• The team is incable of hitting with runners in scoring position (4/20)
• The team has no “gangstas” (4/22)
• The team lacks a “killer instinct” to “finish strong” (4/24)
• Offense is “out of sync” (4/23)
• Team brass wanting to wipe Doc Gooden’s autograph from the stadium wall (4/20)
• Pitchers not pitching deep into games (4/22)
• Lack of a 38-year old pitcher who had a 5.61 ERA in 2008 (4/24)
• Gary Sheffield is “causing confusion on the roster“(4/24)
• Pitchers need to be demoted (4/24)
• Not enough stolen bases (4/21)
• Tickets are way too expensive (4/21)
• Everything (4/23)
• They’re in “passive mode” (4/24)
• The outfield wall of Citi Field should be blue (4/21)

Yep, that’s right. This Japanese soft drink blatantly rips off the New York Mets’ name, even using the same font!

The “Kirin Mets” line of soft drinks was innaugurated in 1979 when the Kirin Brewing Company decided that it needed to have a line of drinks to appeal to the younger generation of Japanese. They decided to name their drink after the “Tokyo Mets” – a fictional baseball team that was the focus of a manga series which was popular amoung the youth at that time.

And so the Mets line of drinks has continued up to the present day.  The drink is basically a Japanese version of Fanta. Besides the flagship grapefruit flavor, it also comes in grape (purple can) and guarana (red can) flavors.  All flavors contain 0% fruit juice, or if you prefer, 100% chemical goodness!

No sign so far of any lawsuit from the New York Mets or MLB, which is perhaps surprising given their normal draconian approach to protecting their trademarks throughout Asia.

Perhaps the best thing about Mets is this bizarre 1985 commercial starring 80s singer Sandy Stewart, who was never all that popular in America but was somewhat of a star in Japan at the time:

Because they sure as hell don’t have any offense.

The Reds’ pitching staff, especially Johnny Cueto, Aaron Harang, and the front end of the bullpen, has somehow kept Cincinnati in the thick of it, just 1.5 games off the pace in the NL Central, despite the fact that pretty much the entire team is hitting .200 or below.

Sucking it - Phillips is batting .174

Indeed, an incredible five starters are below the Mendoza Line – C Ramon Hernandez (.175), 2B Brandon Phillips (.174), 3B Edwin Encarnacion (.159), SS Alex Gonzalez (.111), and LF Jerry Hairston Jr. (.179).  Hairston’s platoon partner Chris Dickerson is barely any better, at .214, and even team star Jay Bruce had to go 2-4 last night to raise his average to .238.

Outside of Joey Votto this team is pretty much praying for errors or hit-by-pitches when they are at bat, because their team OBP is a lowly .317.  It’s not even like they can get some runs back with the long-ball, having hit only 9 dingers so far.

It’s still early, but the Reds’ offense is looking pretty toothless, at 28th in the majors in runs scored. And even though some of these guys are bound to improve, its not as if any of these guys are really all that good to begin with, and this is basically the same team that was 23rd in runs last year.  So just waiting for these guys to revert to career norms is not going to cut it.

With their pitching the Reds have a legitimate chance to stay in contention this year, but they have to find some way to get some more big bats in there, and soon.  This is a team that could have really benefitted from signing a guy like Adam Dunn to a short-term deal.  If only he actually liked to play baseball, am I right?