What we are witnessing is a constant waste of a dominant team. The Seattle Mariners lead in ERA, but are near the bottom in runs per game. Since June 18, they have turned a 10-game lead in the AL West into a five-game deficit. A fourth straight season is in jeopardy, with their record now at 64-63.
All is not lost, not with 35 games left. But after a 10-5 run that featured recent additions of left fielder Randy Arozarena, first baseman/DH Justin Turner and relievers Yimi Garcia and JT Chargois scoring, the Mariners were once again sloppy offensively. They blew a 3-0 lead in Tuesday’s 6-3 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers and have lost seven of their last eight.
Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto weighs in.
“Coming into the season, we all thought this was the most talented group we had,” said Dipoto, who became the Mariners’ chief baseball officer in September 2015. “We’re looking at everything. There’s no stone unturned. We’ve talked about going back to our roots with what our hitting philosophy is and what it’s all about, the way we send it to our players. Or do we do it with the information? Are our suggestions and strategies that we use making it too difficult?”
“I can say this: Me, the coaches, our staff, none of us are innocent. We’ve really struggled to play offense this year. And it’s not just our players who haven’t. That would be a cop-out.”
Asked if he felt a responsibility, Dipoto said: “A lot. In the end, the dirt roads put the roster back together, and that’s me. I don’t want to minimize the contributions of (general manager) Justin (Holland), our scouts. But in the end, it’s my responsibility.”
Will the team benefit from a new voice replacing Scott Servais, who has been the Mariners’ manager since 2016?
“It is definitely up to us to look at it and discuss it all. It is just the reality,” Dipoto said.
“I will say this, but up until a week ago we were in first place, or that’s how we’ve been playing for the last 120 days. I don’t know if the season could have gone much better, considering how inconsistent our offense has been. I don’t want the behavior. It was an absolute disaster, but we didn’t live up to our expectations based on our talent.”
Scott Servais (left) has been the Mariners’ manager since 2016, while president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto has been with the team since 2015. (Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports)
The Mariners entered Tuesday with a rotation-best 3.26 ERA — 0.20 runs per nine innings, better than the Philadelphia Phillies’ closer. According to STATS Perform, that gap, if maintained, would be the sixth-largest between first and second place since 2000.
Oh, but that’s not even the half of it. The last team to miss the postseason after leading the majors in overall ERA was the 2012 Tampa Bay Rays. The Mariners’ current .504 winning percentage would be the fourth-lowest of all time according to the team ERA leader.
While the Mariners can’t use that as an excuse, Seattle’s T-Mobile Park plays almost like Coors Field in reverse, benefiting the team’s pitchers as they pressure their hitters.
According to Statcast, the park is the most difficult in the game. three year car rental factorwhich compares home speed statistics to speed on the road. It is the toughest for both total hits and doubles, the fourth toughest for triples, and the 11th toughest for home runs. The strikeout rate is the highest in the league.
However, the Mariners under Dipoto often put up average or even above-average numbers in the park. Sometimes, but not always, these numbers translated into above-average production. Last season, they ranked sixth in OPS-plus and 12th in runs scored. In 2016, Dipoto’s first season, they were third in OPS-plus and sixth in runs scored.
This season, they rank 20th in OPS-plus and 27th in runs per game. Unfortunately, the Chicago White Sox are the only team with a lower percentage. And the Mariners’ strikeout rate is the highest in the league, even after removing Eugenio Suarez and Teoscar Hernandez, who finished second and third in the league in strikeouts last season.
As Dipoto said, none of that seemed very likely on June 18, when the Mariners were 44-31 and leading the second-place Houston Astros by 10 games. Since then, the Mariners are 20-32 and the Astros 35-17. In fact, the Mariners hit 10 or more five times during that span. But most of the time their guilt was empty.
Why do so many forwards struggle after arriving in Seattle? Hernandez’s OPS-plus last season was the lowest in a full season; he’s another All-Star with the Dodgers. Jesse Winker, Adam Frazier, Colten Wong and now Mitch Garver are examples of players who had good years and then stumbled when they joined the Mariners.
This season, catcher Cal Raleigh is again producing at a high level. Two other key players, center fielder Julio Rodriguez and shortstop JP Crawford, are back, though both are injured. Victor Robles hit enough after being released by the Nationals to warrant a two-year, $9.75 million extension. But his sample size remains small.
On May 31, the Mariners fired offensive coordinator and bench coach Brant Brown, who was in his first season with the club. T-Mobile is especially tough for hitters early in the season. The Mariners’ offense was better than a half-run per game after the move, with director of hitting strategy Jarrett Dehart and assistant hitting coach Tommy Joseph taking on expanded roles. Only four teams entered Tuesday, though, and fewer of them with runners in scoring position.
Ownership is no innocent bystander. The Mariners ended a 21-year playoff drought in 2022, the longest in professional sports at the time. Instead of building on that momentum, they opened 2023 with a lower payroll than any they had fielded from 2016-19, finishing 18th in the majors. After the team fell one game short of the playoffs, Raleigh criticized ownership for its lack of spending.
Last season was more like this. Despite the team being in tenth place, the owner’s concern about future local television revenues has only led to a decline. moderate wage increase. Dipoto, after a series of cost-cutting moves, made several additions, including Garver, second baseman Jorge Polanco and first baseman/outfielder Luke Reilly, as well as several relievers. He was then active in the prescribed period and was praised for it. Atlético Jim Bowden and others.
While the team’s playoff chances have fallen below 15 percent, Dipoto doesn’t blame a lack of resources.
“I don’t think it’s been an issue for us. I really don’t think it’s been an issue for us,” Dipoto said. “Someone will have the highest salary. Someone will have the lowest. Our overall position on this continuum was consistent with our revenue streams. We operate in our market.”
But the operation is failing. The Mariners aren’t even winning 54 percent of their games, a 10-year goal that Dipoto laid out in offhand comments late last season. You He later apologized for his words.He said: “So we’re really doing the fans a favor by asking for their patience to win the World Series while we continue to build a solid, good roster.”
In 2024, it will be more like the middle of the roster. The Mariners have the rarest commodity in the game: elite starting pitchers. Their offense, despite some early injuries, was generally pretty good. But their offense is so bad that their season is doomed.
