The Mariners by the Numbers
The numbers and the club's win-loss record don't match up, but none of it is particularly good. Is there still hope?
Most pythag-style projection systems have the Seattle Mariners as a 33-36 team right now rather than the 30-39 record they own. It’s only a three-game difference, but those three games — three more wins, three fewer losses — could make the difference between the club competing in 2022 and one that fades away into the early-July night like a Richard Marx ballad in 1987. If you don’t remember 1987, you’ll just have to trust me on that.
The Mariners have been better statistically, pretty much up and down and across the board, then their record. Why that happens is a very long-winded discussion without real answers, and includes some margin for error, of course, in the projection systems themselves.
But it’s true, the Mariners have put up some promising numbers in some areas that haven’t meant what they typically do.
The Bats
The Mariners’ lineup has not been good, I won’t try to convince anyone of that. Results are results, especially in a growing sample that reached 70 games Wednesday night in Oakland. There are individual disappointments, highlighted by Jesse Winker and Adam Frazier. But from 30,000 feet, it doesn’t look bad at all.
107 wRC+
Seattle is 7% better than the league average offensively. This including batting and baserunning, using wOBA (weighted on-base average), a metric attempting to assign credit to a batter based on actual outcomes (single, double, homer), rather than valuing all results the same, as batting average and on-base percentage do.
The 107 wRC+ ranks No. 10 in all of baseball, yet the club is averaging 3.94 runs per contest, 5th-worst in baseball. Now, that average is mere fractions from being mid-tier, but a 107wRC+ suggests they should be above average, which is 4.38. On June 8, the Mariners ranked 16th at 4.23 runs per night, so you can see how quickly it can change, particularly this early in the season.
.255
One oft-referred to statistic on many platforms, including broadcasts, is a team’s average with runners in scoring position. Friends (Rick Rizzs’ voice), this stat is about as valuable as shattered glass in the middle of a busy road.
The Mariners’ .255 mark with runners in scoring position is 14th in baseball and 6th in the American League and they’re 26th in runs per game. Makes no sense, right? The Reds are No. 3 in the league in average w/RISP and 18th in runs per game. The Yankees, No 1 in baseball in runs per game, rank No. 22 in batting average with runners in scoring position. It’s almost as if this stat is useless.
Because it is. Please, for the love of all that is good and holy in the game of baseball, stop using this, stop valuing it, and stop assuming it’s meaningful because broadcasters use it.
.326
Seattle, however, does have a .326 wOBA (fully results based) as a team with runners in scoring position, 11th in MLB and No. 3 in the American League. Remember, wOBA is designed to credit hitters appropriately for the times they reach base and how frequently they do it. Walks are still walks, but hits aren’t just hits. Doubles mean more than singles, home runs are more valuable than doubles. Still, Seattle hasn’t scored runs consistently and are bottom-5 in baseball right now in that category.
wOBA, for the record, carries slugging into its equation.
.337
The Mariners’ wOBA with runners on base (simply, not necessarily in scoring positions) is .337, 6th in all of baseball, 4th in the American League.
.342
This is Seattle’s raw on-base percentage with runners on base. It ranks 4th in baseball and No. 1 in the American League. What gives? The club ranks so high in all of these meaningful categories with runners on base, and runners in scoring position, why aren’t they scoring more runs? Are they just not creating enough opportunities?
1123
This is how many plate appearances the Mariners have had with runners on base this season. It’s the 8th-most in baseball and 5th-most in the AL.
649
This is how many PAs Seattle has with runners in scoring position in 2022, 13th-most in MLB, 4th-most in the American League.
Give up? Yeah, it makes no sense. Let’s dig deeper.
Well, the Mariners problems aren’t with runners in scoring position or with runners on base. They struggle with the bases empty, and not just in the part where they get on base (.299 OBP with the bases empty). They also are slugging just .344 with the bases empty and own the 6th-worst wOBA with the bases empty. This suggests the club’s chances with runners on base are mostly runners on first, and mostly with one or two outs, limiting their opportunities to score, despite the chances with runners on the bases. This also suggests the club has an inordinate amount of chances with runners in scoring position but two out, meaning in that inning that’s their one chance if they don’t extend it.
Diving deeper…
With runners in scoring position, Seattle walks 11% of the time. That doesn’t drive in runs, unless the bases are loaded, of course. It merely keeps the line moving, often to a lesser capable batter.
Seattle has 300 PAs with runners in scoring position and two outs and are batting .226/.317/.355 in those situations. That .226 average is 18th in MLB, the .317 OBP is 22nd, the .355 SLG is 20th.
In 258 official at-bats, Seattle has 18 extra-base hits with runners in scoring position and two outs, the 5th-lowest rate in baseball. With runners on base and two outs, Seattle ranks 23rd in extra-base hits, 18th in homers, 29th in doubles, and is batting .219, 29th in the league.
Seems Seattle has found a way to make the numbers look good, but fail to actually perform when it matters most, despite the relatively-arbitrary runners-on and scoring-position stats telling us they’re fine.
Yes, this is weird. And in general over large samples, this very likely corrects itself to some significant degree.
I spoke to an NL club’s analyst about this topic over the weekend and he said this also can happen when there are too many holes in the lineup and the four of five spots are doing so much of the damage. Opponents will pitch around the better hitters, be OK with the walk or the expanded zone from the better bats, preferring to pitch to the weaker hitters even if it means doing so with more runners on base and in scoring position. While there’s nothing new to this approach — pitch around the better hitters, force the weaker ones to beat you — teams, he said, are doing this more in bulk these days because of the huge growth in strikeout rates, and this season the ball helps the pitcher.
“When in doubt, we default to a recommendation of allowing the extra base runner if the number of outs remaining to get out of the inning, plus one, is less than the next matchup disadvantage, with the caveat the next batter meets our minimum threshold as a big matchup advantage for us.”
With Seattle, for example, once the club gets beyond Eugenio Suarez, there are a lot of possible matchup advantages for the opponent. Make Suarez expand the zone or be OK walking him, even if that means pushing a runner into scoring position, then get the last out facing a struggling Frazier, Luis Torrens, Dylan Moore, or Abraham Toro.
Clubs would rather face that group with two runners on, including one in scoring position, than the top 4-5 in the order with one runner on.
”If a lineup is scoring well in the first five or six, but struggling disproportionately after that, I’d wager this is the issue exactly, because the pitching team will play matchup more late in close games, using their bullpen as the prevailing weapon.”
Nailed it.
Not that the Mariners are great earlier in games, but … they rank No. 13 in MLB in runs scored through five innings. They’re 26th in runs scored in the sixth inning, and 24th in the seventh or later, including extras.
The fix for this isn’t difficult to figure out — add better depth to the lineup with more proven hitters with impact, and get healthy — but it’s a little more complicated to achieve during the season. Not impossible, but complicated.
One last thing from the analyst:
”If we’re putting up strong results in areas like you’ve been talking about, we’d be happy, and perplexed a bit how it hasn’t turned into runs.”
So, still weird things have gone the way they have.
Zone Stuff
Mariners hitters have remained fairly disciplined this season. The club ranks 6th best in chase rate at 30.4%, and they have the 7th-highest rate of contact on pitches in the zone.
Among batters with at least 150 PAs, Winker’s 24.5% chase rate ranks No. 30 in MLB, J.P. Crawford’s 24.6% rate is 32nd, and Suarez’s 26.9% mark is No. 51. The league average is 32.2%.
Pitching
Seattle’s performance on the mound has been a mixed bag. There’s been disappointment (Robbie Ray), struggles & inconsistencies (Matt Brash, Marco Gonzales, Chris Flexen, Diego Castillo, Drew Steckenrider, Paul Sewald, Sergio Romo), and a few nice surprises (Erik Swanson, George Kirby, Penn Murfee, Andrés Muñoz).
As a team, it’s been below average, but there is good news. We’ll get to that later.
The club’s woes on the mound are very different from those at the plate. Proven arms have struggled. While we know that happens in the bullpen, it’s happened a little too sharply and a tad too often, suggesting an infusion of new throwers is in order. Enter Ken Giles, who looked solid in his debut after numerous not-so-promising rehab outing in the minors.
And maybe Ray’s recent two outings (14K, 2 BB, ER, 14 IP) is a sign he’s found this year’s formula. But the keys here aren’t about the numbers the club has already posted, it’s about the numbers they haven’t, and should.
Gonzales
On a recent episode of Baseball Things I discussed how Marco Gonzales’ season, up to that point, was not indicative of a pitcher that could sustain any semblance of success in the majors. His strikeout rate was under 15%, his ground ball rate was well under 50%, and there have been four qualified starting pitchers over the last 12 years with similar marks in those two categories that have posted league average runs allowed rates.
Gonzales, in four starts since then, has done significantly better in the ground ball department, pushing his rate to 51%. Gonzales always has been a pitcher that outpitches his FIP and xFIP, but he’s had sustainable paths to get outs — 18-20% strikeouts, 45-50% ground balls — His K rate remains dangerously low at 13.1%.
I’m not buying his ground ball rate, now up to 46% for the season, will climb enough to achieve and sustain consistent better-than-a-5 results. I believe he will have to miss more bats.
Flexen
It’s my strong belief the Seattle Mariners will not make a postseason with Gonzales (current version, anyway) and Flexen in their rotation. Both are solid back-end starters, usually, and over the course of a full season they give you value, up to about 3 wins in the best-case scenarios, but down around replacement level otherwise. Right now, Gonzales’ -0.2 fWAR and Flexen’s 0.5 are two of the eight worst in Major League Baseball among qualified starters. Gonzales’ is dead last among 59 starting pitchers.
Flexen is a little different than Gonzales because his pitch quality has a wider range of potential results, and there is a wider range of potential development results. He’s 27, a big, strong right-hander with some pitchability. His fastball has touched 95 mph, and his curveball has favorable spin rates.
But Flexen’s command and control have gone south this season — walk rates are up 2.6% from a year ago — and his stuff isn’t playing as well. His ground ball rate is down 9%, his hard-hit rate is up 4%, and he’s not missing more bats to compensate. As a result, Flexen has been nothing more than a No. 5 starter.
This is a problem because, well, Gonzales also has been nothing more than a No. 5.
Flexen’s fastball velocity is down a tick and a half (92.8 mph to 91.3), and his curveball usage is down 10%. That curveball, high spin rate and all, has been battered in 2022 (PAs that have ended on the pitch: .636 AVG, 1.364 SLG, 2 HR), so the the pitch that probably should be his best secondary is 100% useless to him. This means the only thing that isn’t straight is his cutter, which has been better in 2022 than last season, and is the reason his overall strikeout rate hasn’t dropped, but it appears we’re looking at the ceiling for Flexen, at least right now.
Flexen nor Gonzales would crack the Houston Astros rotation. One can argue, neither would be Top 6 for them. Neither pitcher would be in the rotation for the Yankees, Rays, Twins, White Sox or Blue Jays, either.
If Seattle wants to make up some ground, they have two choices with the rotation. Change these two, or replace at least one of them.
Bullpen
I’m not as down on the bullpen as the numbers suggest. Giles’ presence could be big, Swanson is back and healthy, and this should allow Scott Servais to run that group the way they originally planned, which is four high-leverage arms (Giles, Sewald, Castillo, Munoz, in that order) with quality, reliable middle guys (Swanson, Murfee), and only a few wild card types (Borucki for lefties mostly, Matt Festa, and eventually Matt Brash).
Giles is key, however, and it’s been just one outing, so we’ll see how this develops. And at the end of the day, the hole they have dug themselves may result in this being an audition period for the club’s trade bait over the next 5-6 weeks, but if they get right the rest of the roster is better equipped to support them than they were a year ago.
Homers
It’s really about the long ball. The Mariners’ relief corps have allowed 36 homers in 942 batters faced, the highest rate in baseball, and the rotation has yielded 54, the second-most in MLB, though it’s merely the 11th highest rate since the Mariners’ rotation has faced more batters and pitched as many or more innings than all but one other club this season (Padres).
Perhaps the ‘Control the Zone’ mantra is being taken a little too far, I don’t know, but command is as important as stuff, and in some ways more so, because otherwise you’re looking at the early-season Nuke LaLoosh.
Remember, command is not the basic ability to throw strikes, it’s the ability to locate in schemed parts of the zone based on strategic scouting reports.
Rotation Upside
‘Upside’ isn’t even necessary here. The top three arms in the Mariners’ rotation is very good (provided Ray has turned it back around). Logan Gilbert, Ray, and Kirby all miss bats consistently, the two kids throw a lot of strikes and have combined for a 2.71 ERA and 3.54 XFIP.
Pitch Value
Through 69 games, the Mariners had some representation in the pitch value department.
Gilbert has the 14th most valuable fastball among starters, the 10th most valuable curveball, and the 27th best changeup.
Kirby’s fastball is in the top 40, his curveball ranks 23rd.
Among relievers, Murfee is getting a lot out of his fastball (25th) and his slider ranks 10th. Castillo has the 16th best slider thus far, Munoz’s slider ranks No. 8. Sewald’s fastball is top 30 and his slider ranks right behind Murfee’s at No. 11.
FTR
Seattle remains just two games back of the Angels, three back of the Rangers, and are eight games out of the final Wild Card spot. As terrible as it looks, it’s not quite time to call it a year. Make up a half game a week on the Twins or Red Sox for the next 12 weeks and they’ll be two games out with two weeks to go. Likely? Of course not. Possible? Yes.