Heeeeeeeeeey remember those Mariner pitcher reports I did? Aw yeah.
Here’s the Mariners pitchers, with what happens, percentage-wise, with each batter they face:
Names bfp k% bb% hr%
Garcia 235 17% 6% 2%
Pineiro 233 15% 8% 4%
Franklin215 11% 7% 3%
Moyer 212 14% 8% 6%
Meche 153 17% 13% 3%
Villone 116 16% 12% 2%
Hasegawa 88 11% 14% 1%
Mateo 84 18% 6% 2%
Jarvis 64 11% 8% 6%
Guardado 63 24% 5% 2%
Putz 45 24% 11% 0%
Myers 43 12% 9% 0%
Soriano 22 14% 14% 0%
AL pitcher averages: 16% K, 9% BB, 3% HR
You can see that as a staff, the Mariners are average. They’re held back a little by the bad strikeout numbers put up by Franklin and Hasegawa (which are still better than I’d feared).
High K is Guardado, with 24% of batters faced (and he’s staff-best at not giving up the walk, too — seriously, if anyone in this bullpen has value right now, it’s Eddie). Mateo’s pitching well, Garcia’s bthe best of the starters.
What’s interesting about Meche is that you can see his problem stick out: he’s getting the strikeouts as long as he’s on the mound, but he’s been giving up twice as many walks as Freddy. Seriously, that’s all the difference between the two of them so far this year.
How does this compare to last year? That’s a great question. It’s the barely different.
The Mariners staff last year got 16% strikeouts instead of 15%, they gave free passes to 8% of the batters they saw, and the home run rate was steady. The largest difference (and this is significant) was hit rate: the Mariners let 21% of opposing hitters get a non-HR hit this year, and last year only 19% got hits (w/HRs the difference is the same, 22-24). That’s… what, a hit a little more than every other game? 122 hits a year, uhhh.. that’s a lot of wins over the course of a season, and that’s all defense: everything under the control of the pitchers is pretty much the same as last year.
Particularly victimized: Kevin Jarvis (31%) though let’s be honest, he wasn’t helping himself with that low K rate and super-high HR rate. Pineiro and Mateo (24%) Hasegawa (23%).. the super-lucky JJ Putz has enjoyed his early success in part because he’s gotten great defense: only 9% of batters got a hit off him. Guardado at 13% has also gotten lucky.
If the Mariners wanted to start to turn this team around without making any kind of large organizational changes, they’d call Ramon Santiago up from Tacoma and install him at short. ERAs would drop, the offense can’t get much worse anyway, and suddenly the team’s hanging on in more lower-scoring games.