Mariners Have Chance to Near .500
| MARINERS (48-53) | ΔMs | TWINS (43-55) | EDGE | |
| HITTING (wOBA*) | 16.4 (11th) | -0.2 | -23.1 (23rd) | Mariners |
| FIELDING (RBBIP) | -23.2 (25th) | -1.1 | -20.7 (24th) | Twins |
| ROTATION (xRA) | 8.6 (12th) | -1.8 | -45.4 (29th) | Mariners |
| BULLPEN (xRA) | 0.2 (17th) | -1.6 | 5.3 (11th) | Twins |
| OVERALL (RAA) | 1.9 (12th) | -4.8 | -83.9 (29th) | MARINERS |
With a four-game set against the quite awful Twins, the Mariners could climb even further toward that break even .500 mark. Even though the playoffs are a miracle away, it’s still enjoyable to have the team winning more than losing and not feeling like every deficit is insurmountable, every opponent a potential powerhouse.
The Twins rotation is terrible. Their highest individual strikeout rate is 14%, which is in the Joe Saunders and Blake Beavan territory. Collectively, their 12% strikeout rate is the lowest in the majors by over three points.
That’s long been the stereotype for Twins pitchers, but before they’d make up for that somewhat by not walking hitters. Now, their walk rate is only middle of the pack, giving them baseball’s worst K to BB ratio among starting rotations.
The Mariners, by contrast, have baseball’s fourth best K to BB ratio among starters.
| Batter | PA | P/PA | Slash line | nBB | K (sw) | 1B/2B/3B/HR | Sw- | Ct+ | Qual+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B Miller* | 46 | 3.8 | .195/.283/.366 | 5 | 8 (6) | 5 / 1 / 0 / 2 | 102 | 105 | 95 |
| J Smoak^ | 43 | 3.9 | .270/.372/.459 | 6 | 13 (12) | 7 / 1 / 0 / 2 | 111 | 93 | 153 |
| K Morales^ | 43 | 4.2 | .282/.372/.462 | 4 | 8 (6) | 8 / 1 / 0 / 2 | 108 | 95 | 83 |
| M Saunders* | 41 | 4.0 | .243/.366/.405 | 4 | 9 (7) | 5 / 3 / 0 / 1 | 95 | 93 | 95 |
| K Seager* | 40 | 3.9 | .306/.415/.583 | 4 | 4 (3) | 7 / 1 / 0 / 3 | 101 | 114 | 74 |
| R Ibanez* | 38 | 5.0 | .333/.421/.667 | 5 | 9 (9) | 4 / 5 / 0 / 2 | 96 | 93 | 124 |
| N Franklin^ | 36 | 4.5 | .214/.361/.357 | 7 | 10 (9) | 4 / 1 / 0 / 1 | 85 | 98 | 113 |
| M Zunino | 32 | 4.7 | .333/.469/.542 | 7 | 8 (6) | 5 / 2 / 0 / 1 | 87 | 86 | 137 |
| D Ackley* | 31 | 4.1 | .250/.313/.286 | 2 | 3 (2) | 6 / 1 / 0 / 0 | 92 | 116 | 87 |
The Mariners’ batting line is looking more and more respectable, and their approach isn’t awful by any means. They’re not swing happy and they’re pretty good at working counts into their favor.
What they do have trouble with is making contact. For the season, the Mariners have the second-lowest contact rate in the AL. That isn’t an improving rate wither, as though it’s slightly higher in the previous month, they still rank 14th of 15.
| Batter | PA | P/PA | Slash line | nBB | SO (sw) | 1B/2B/3B/HR | Sw- | Ct+ | Qual+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B Dozier | 42 | 4.2 | .220/.286/.366 | 1 | 7 (6) | 3 / 6 / 0 / 0 | 93 | 108 | 65 |
| J Morneau* | 39 | 3.6 | .257/.359/.314 | 4 | 7 (4) | 7 / 2 / 0 / 0 | 108 | 95 | 53 |
| R Doumit^ | 38 | 4.2 | .200/.308/.343 | 3 | 8 (8) | 4 / 2 / 0 / 1 | 107 | 89 | 94 |
| A Hicks^ | 37 | 4.4 | .176/.243/.294 | 3 | 10 (8) | 4 / 1 / 0 / 1 | 91 | 87 | 106 |
| T Plouffe | 36 | 4.0 | .200/.250/.286 | 1 | 14 (11) | 6 / 0 / 0 / 1 | 95 | 88 | 130 |
| C Thomas* | 33 | 4.2 | .200/.294/.367 | 3 | 11 (8) | 3 / 2 / 0 / 1 | 91 | 80 | 138 |
| J Mauer* | 33 | 4.5 | .429/.559/.571 | 5 | 7 (5) | 8 / 4 / 0 / 0 | 69 | 97 | 140 |
| P Florimon^ | 31 | 4.3 | .286/.355/.571 | 3 | 10 (7) | 4 / 2 / 0 / 2 | 99 | 97 | 94 |
I’m not sure how many though Joe Mauer would last this long still playing catcher and still hitting quite well, but he has. In fact, hitting-wise, this looks to be Mauer’s second best season of his career behind only his never-again 2009 campaign when he hit .365/.444/.587 and was wroth 7.7 fWAR.
Remember 2009? That was also the year that Chone Figgins was worth 6.6 fWAR and then became a free agent and signed with the Mariners. Remember how he signed with the Mariners? And how he was coming off seasons of 4, 3 and 6+ WAR? Whoops!
| MARINERS | ΔMs | TWINS | EDGE | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| INFIELD | -5.6 (20th) | 2.1 | -1.7 (16th) | Twins |
| OUTFIELD | -17.6 (25th) | -3.2 | -19.1 (26th) | Mariners |
| RBBIP | 0.318 (26th) | -.001 | 0.316 (25th) | Twins |
| OVERALL | -23.3 (25th) | -1.2 | -20.7 (24th) | TWINS |
If the infield defense can creep back into positive territory by the end of the year I’ll consider that a success since that’ll mean they can survive without the heroics of Brendan Ryan and also because I won’t care about the outfield until Raul Ibanez isn’t a part of it.
25 JUL 19:10 – HISASHI IWAKUMA vs KEVIN CORREIA
Correia’s overall black bar for avoiding contact isn’t missing, it’s just sitting right on the -2z line. That’s bad. For the Twins.
26 JUL 19:10 – FELIX HERNANDEZ vs SCOTT DIAMOND*
27 JUL 13:10 – AARON HARANG vs SAMUEL DEDUNO
28 JUL 13:10 – ERASMO RAMIREZ vs KYLE GIBSON
| Reliever | BF | Str+ | nBB | Ct- | K(sw) | GB+ | HR | Qual- | LI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| T Wilhelmsen | 46 | 97 | 5 | 91 | 8 (6) | 102 | 0 | 114 | 1.7 |
| C Furbush* | 44 | 110 | 2 | 97 | 14 (9) | 80 | 1 | 126 | 1.6 |
| Y Medina | 42 | 102 | 2 | 93 | 9 (8) | 138 | 0 | 86 | 1.5 |
| O Perez* | 35 | 108 | 2 | 89 | 12 (9) | 71 | 2 | 110 | 1.0 |
| D Farquhar | 30 | 103 | 3 | 89 | 8 (6) | 107 | 0 | 99 | 0.8 |
| B Beavan | 27 | 109 | 2 | 99 | 6 (5) | 83 | 1 | 87 | 0.7 |
| L Luetge* | 21 | 100 | 1 | 98 | 3 (2) | 132 | 0 | 75 | 0.3 |
Medina’s ground ball rate is insane as a Mariner and he has the walks under control. Granted, he’s still bad at throwing strikes and gets himself in a lot of hitter’s counts (25% compared to 18% for the league), but so far he’s skirted the edge of command collapse that Wilhelmsen, despite throwing more strikes, has been unable to avoid falling into on occasion.
| Reliever | BF | Str+ | nBB | Ct- | K(sw) | GB+ | HR | Qual- | LI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Swarzak | 55 | 98 | 2 | 111 | 8 (7) | 95 | 3 | 89 | 0.8 |
| J Burton | 44 | 101 | 3 | 89 | 9 (8) | 87 | 1 | 123 | 1.1 |
| G Perkins* | 42 | 101 | 4 | 101 | 11 (8) | 78 | 0 | 113 | 2.6 |
| B Duensing* | 40 | 94 | 6 | 103 | 6 (5) | 128 | 0 | 114 | 0.9 |
| C Fien | 39 | 113 | 1 | 105 | 11 (9) | 92 | 0 | 106 | 1.4 |
| R Pressly | 38 | 102 | 3 | 117 | 5 (4) | 105 | 0 | 124 | 0.9 |
| J Roenicke | 31 | 99 | 4 | 103 | 6 (4) | 139 | 1 | 50 | 0.3 |
| C Thielbar* | 27 | 101 | 1 | 103 | 8 (6) | 50 | 2 | 123 | 0.9 |
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3 Responses to “Mariners Have Chance to Near .500”
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Looking at the Mariners’ 2-week stats… those OBP numbers make me very happy!
I don’t know if Wedge really believes that walks are valuable, but for whatever reason they’re not making outs nearly as often.
Love what Zunino is doing with the walks & 4.7P/PA. Also glad to see that although Franklin is struggling to get hits, he’s still sitting at a great OBP.
Actually, fuck it, everybody (minus Miller & Ackley) is doing an amazing job of getting on base.
Wow, I had forgot Brendan Ryan was on this team until you reminded me.