I mean it could be worse
Get that monkey paw away from me.
I choose not to be overly upset about the opening homestand of 2024. I could be, I wonder if I should be—but I am not. These games all matter, obviously. Objectively. They will, in September, wish they won five here instead of three, sure. But how meaningful are these seven games?
I don’t know.
Part of this is rational thinking, oddly. It’s seven games against two opponents.
If you came into this season with a core set of beliefs about the 2024 Mariners, nothing that happened should dissuade on any of those—unless you, I don’t know, thought third base would be produce 5.5 wins between them. As long as you came into this season rational about how it would play out, there’s no evidence we’ve seen that should change that.
The other side of this is: you’re going to see what you want.
You ever find yourself thinking about saying “I saw this thing…” about something you found helpful or profound and in your heart of hearts know you should be honest and say “I saw this TikTok…”?
Yeah I saw this TikTok. Theo Von and Tony Robbins. Real profound, high-brow stuff here.
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If you look for good stuff, you’re gonna see good stuff. If you look for bad (or super bad) stuff, you’re gonna see that, too.
We saw a lot of bad from the Mariners regardless.
I’m not going to write about one thing or the other, but just be mindful that our brains want us to see the things we’re already looking for.
Thus, no unifying thesis, just a series of observations as we head into the off day. Some of these things—most of these things?—are things I already thought anyway.
The offense has been atrocious and they’re 3-4
As a team, they have a 68 wRC+, 25th in baseball at time of this writing. Their slash line is .196/.261/.289. The cool .550 OPS they’re rocking is the worst in baseball.
Their 30.2 percent strikeout rate is also the worst in baseball.
We can talk about the reasons why and Jerry Dipoto did a bit to Adam Jude but the important thing is that they will not be this bad all year. It would take multiple catastrophes across the roster and serious injuries to dudes who are currently playing.
It’s hard to envision them having a good offense, let alone a great one, but if you thought they should be an average-ish offense with a chance to be a little bit better or a little bit worse, them looking like a Metro League JV team against the Guardians and Red Sox shouldn’t change that.
There’s also this:
They’re also, as an offense that’s going to depend quite a bit on home runs, 28th in dongs. Rough, and bound to change.
And they’re 3-4!
The pitching has been meh and they’re 3-4
The Mariners will go as far as their starting rotation takes them. It is the bedrock of the organization. They need their offense to not be garbage water, but they need their starting pitching to be good and it should be.
Through a turn and two-fifths, it has not been.
As readers of this blog likely know, ERA isn’t the best stat in the world. It doesn’t always tell the most accurate story of what happened and it’s even worse at being predictive.
That said, entering Friday, 120 starting pitchers have thrown at least five innings in the young season. Luís Castillo is 100th in ERA and George Kirby is 101st. Bryce Miller is 107th. Emerson Hancock is better but still below replacement level by fWAR.
This will not hold. Like, for sure. Probably. Almost certainly.
And they’re still 3-4.
Fans may be quick to say “Well they only scored one run in one of their wins…and it took a miracle in extras for another,” and that’s true. The record could be worse.
But Scott Servais Mariners teams will always have silly wins like those. That’s just how the operation works.
Mitch Haniger and Ty France look like the good versions of themselves
Heading into Opening Day, I had half a post done on some Spring Training observations—just, beyond all the meaningless noise, the stuff that I thought mattered.
I didn’t get to this section in there but one just like it one would’ve been in the piece
Let’s start with Ty.
Just the way he looks was the biggest development for a position player down in Peoria. He’s positively svelte.
There are scant results to really make any judgements, whether they’re here in the regular season or going back to the spring, but Ty does have the hardest-hit ball by a Mariner in the young season—this 110.9mph grounder, but still. His 105.9 mph double to right-center off Shane Bieber was one of the best swings we’ve seen from him in a long time.
Speaking of good swings, we have Mitchell Evan Haniger.
I’m a big Haniger guy. That should be clear at this point.
When he’s healthy, he can play. And he is healthy.
I know folks don’t really want to hear it but a sizable portions of the injuries he’s sustained in his career have been random nonsense. He got hit in the face, got hit in the arm, he got hit in the junk. He had an abdominal injury from recovering from getting hit in the junk.
There are some oblique strains and a twisted ankle, sure, but there’s a lot of weird stuff and, as I mentioned in that other piece, if there’s a 30-something player I trust to do everything they can to take care of their body, it’s Haniger.
And so far, so good.
Again, results don’t matter much, but .261/.346/.478 for a 147 wRC+ is nice to see. It’s like he never left.
I don’t intend to paint Hanny’s strong start in a negative light but, for what it’s worth, something like this should be gravy. If he’s some semblance of what we saw in 2018 or 2021, it should be the type of thing that pushes the Mariners towards an 80th percentile outcome.
Right now, it looks like they need Mitch to be good. It’s good he looks good. But it’s a little disconcerting he’s already climbed into the cleanup spot and is a dude they’re depending on.
Which brings us to…
Naked cheapness is going to cost them
This team misses Eugenio Suárez. It is going to continue to miss Eugenio Suárez.
He makes $11.3 million this year. Not some enormous sum.
And in one of the first moves of the offseason, he was dumped to clear salary.
I know, I know, with what Urías makes and what they ended up paying Ryne Stanek, they theoretically could’ve kept him. But they didn’t know how the market would play out and, early in the offseason, this was a place to clear a big chunk of change.
It was a place to clear a big chunk of change…so they could still run a below average payroll in the heart of a contention window.
And it sucks. It will cost them in the field, there’s no question there. I’m not going to post defensive metrics from a week’s worth of games but someone who’s just learning the game of baseball could watch Geno play third and watch Urías/Rojas play third and tell you which one was better.
It’s not just Suárez either.
They could’ve had Matt Chapman on a very reasonable deal, and I think a lot of folks would be feeling worlds better about the Mariners’ entire situation with him at the hot corner.
Hell, imagine the rotation with Blake Snell on what’ll likely be a one-year deal.
Everyone tends to look at these types of moves in a very binary zero-sum way with questions like “Okay but he’s only X better than Y” and “Where would the other starter go?” but the name of the game is amassing talent.
If you amass as much talent as possible, your margin for error is greater.
You add another starter like Snell and the occasional Luís Castillo clunker matters less. You have Chapman or Geno at third, you’re probably getting good defense, at least a 110 wRC+ and three-plus fWAR—you’re not left hoping for it.
And the only reason they don’t have a greater sum of talent and a greater margin for error is that they don’t want to pay for it.
The team’s goal, as stated by John Stanton, is to play competitive baseball into September and hopefully make the playoffs.
The roster reflects that standard.
They cannot afford a good player randomly cratering
Many years ago, now-Mariners Senior Director of Player Procurement Dave Cameron wrote a post for the long-dead Just A Bit Outside titled “Everyone is a Prospect.”
Because of the death of JABO and link rot, I can only link to a piece linking to the piece, but here’s the thesis: while many folks often overrate prospects by underestimating their bust rate, people need to be mindful of how common it is for proven players to suddenly tank.
In his words, everyone is a prospect in that way.
There’s no reason to panic about anyone in particular, though I’m sure a few names jump into your head as they do mine—but it can happen.
In a development that hurt the most recent era of Mariners baseball as much as any, Jesse Winker went from one of the best hitters in baseball to replacement level and below almost overnight before turning 30. (And is back?)
Our beloved Félix Hernández signed what was at the time the richest contract for a starting pitcher in history and proceeded to amass 4.3 fWAR total on the five-year extension.
It can happen to anyone.
And whew, the Mariners cannot afford to have that happen because, again, their margin for error is so small.
This ended up having more negative points than I would’ve liked so I’ll close it out the way I started—it’s too early to make any conclusions about the 2024 Mariners.
All the games matter and the losses will cost them, but they’re also fortunate to not have more of them.
We have not yet seen who the 2024 Mariners end up being.
I have confidence this will end up being one of the better teams of the Jerry Dipoto era—but to get where we want them to go, they need to be the best yet.
We’ll see if we start to get a glimpse of more of it tonight in Milwaukee.
I know a gut full of Rocky Rococo’s and Culver’s doesn’t do the body good—but they’re great for the soul. Hope the gents get some of both.
Go M’s.