Mariners at the Halfway Point

At the halfway point of the 2010 season, the Mariners currently stand at 34-47, 14 games behind Texas in the AL West and have been outscored 343-281, for a run differential of minus 62 runs.. Last year, the Mariners finished the season 85-77, 12 games behind Los Angels even though they were outscored 692-640, for a differential of minus 52 runs. Certainly not what we expected, or is it?

There are numerous contributing factors to the record the Mariners have posted this year, most of which should not be a surprise. They are, in no particular order, the general weakness of the farm system going into the season, the ridiculous level of expectations with no regard to analysis and statistics, failure to asses that they were lucky last year, and the lack of even one major league power hitter in the lineup. I will maintain that they are exactly where I expected them to be but since I can offer no credence to that assertation other than a few conversations that were had with my friends here in Seattle, you will just have to take my word for it. Both that I have friends and that the conversations actually took place!

Failure to assess the “Luck Factor”

In addition to the expectations that seemed to follow this team going into the season from the moves made in the offseason was the notion that they would repeat the statistical anomaly that was last season. The Mariners finished 9-10 wins above their projected PECOTA rankings last season and had career years from Lopez and Branyan AND won an improbable number of one run games. To put it more succinctly, they were lucky. This year, they are about where they should be given the run differential that they have posted at the halfway point of the season.

High expectations are the hallmark of any professional team going into the season. It is one of the assets of any sport that makes the game passionate for the fans and players. That being said, baseball is one of the few sports where one can statistically predict the outcome of a baseball team before the season happens with relative accuracy. There are very few surprises in baseball.

Expectations and Jackie Z

I will forever be calling Jack Zduriencik Jackie Z in this post. Just easier to type and misspelling his name 100 times is frustrating.

Here are some predictions that I found on the web. The comments are not mine, but those of the writer of the column. I am shocked that Posnanski missed this given his long history of writing with Rob Neyer and coverage of the Royals. Only two are listed specifically here as I could not find the ESPN archived predictions but every site visited that was found had the Mariners either winning the division or coming in second.

MLB Tribune – 94 wins, second in the west. They have the best one-two punch in newly signed Cliff Lee and their big man King Felix Hernandez. They also signed Chone Figgins for some needed offense. This team has made some nice moves this winter and should be much improved and possible make a run for the division or worst case a Wild Card bid.

Joe Posnanski – 87 wins, division winner. Comment: The Mariners rather famously have gone after defense … and they should again be a spectacular defensive team. And with the acquisition of Figgins, Casey Kotchman and Milton Bradley they should score more runs. But while the Mariners are everyone’s favorite including my own going into the season, it is worth remembering that Seattle scored just 640 runs last year, dead last in the league by a longshot. That 640 runs was only better than TWO National League teams — and at last check they let the pitchers hit in that league.

Why, why, why? Why can’t I find one analyst who looked at the simple fact that this team was not going to score runs? They added Figgins and Bradley, neither of which are playing to their potential, but subtracted all of their power by letting Branyan walk and not resigning Beltre. The latter is not an issue as he was terrible last year (.265/.304/.379, 8 HRs) despite being nagged with various injuries, the most infamous being not wearing a cup. The Mariners shelled out $15 M or so for his services. One point on Bradley, he is never healthy and has never hit more than 22 HRs in a season. It is curious that with so much stress on pitching and defense that he was signed in the first place. To the casual observer, he has no business in LF and should be occupying the DH spot in the lineup with Sweeney. Posnanski hinted at the lack of runs in his column but apparently drank the Jackie Z kool aid like the rest of the media. In honor of Griffey, I have nothing to add other than that it was obvious at the end of last year that he should of hung it up.

I am all for pitching and defense as a methodology to win ballgames and building a team that fits the ballpark where the majority of your games are played however there are two things to remember. 81 games are still played in other team’s ballparks and reducing the margin of error by ignoring power to this degree puts a tremendous strain on the team and in particular, the pitching staff. Cliff Lee must have recurring nightmares about losing 1-0 games.

No Power

The local media discussions during the first half of the season here in Seattle centered around why the Mariners could not score runs and generally bordered on the incredulous. As if this was shocking news. Multiple solutions were offered up by the armchair GMs including batting Ichiro somewhere else in the lineup, blaming Jackie Z for failing to see this, blaming the stadium for being too pitcher friendly, blaming Don Wakamatsu for not bathing his dog on Wednesday day games, etc. The bottom line of all this nonsense is that if a team does not have the talent on its roster to score runs; it is not going to score runs. My a priori sense tells me that batting Ichiro third in the lineup may give Ichiro more RBIs, but he will also score less runs himself and this also assumes that there is someone in the order that can get on base in front of him for him to drive in. The Mariners currently rank LAST in the AL with .241/.309/.349 hitting which is, needless to say, abysmal. If they were league average, given that they are third in pitching with a 3.88 ERA, they would be plus 27 in run differential and most likely within 5 games of Texas for the lead in the division. To look deeper, here is their normal starting lineup with reserve players currently on the roster.

Starters
Ichiro .328/.383/.419
Figgins .239/.338/.280
Gutierrez .277/.350/.421
Bradley .212/297/.370 OR Sweeney.263/.327/.475
Branyan .267/.332/.503
Lopez .242/.272/.332
Josh Wilson .264/.316/.346
Johnson .200/.307/.307
Saunders .210/.271/.429

Reserves
Jack Wilson .250/.265/.333
Alfonso .220/.220/.317
Kotchman .206/.288/.325

The league average for slugging is .407. The Mariners average with this group of players that currently occupy roster space is .365 and that is with Branyan’s Cleveland stats included, who now comes to the team with the highest slugging percentage, and there isn’t a close second. Common sense tells me that it doesn’t matter where Ichiro bats in this lineup. If he bats lower, it is statistically likely that he will be left on base and score less runs, even though he may produce more RBIs. While I am sure that there is an analysis that can be churned out to prove this theory, I don’t know how to do it and don’t have the time to do it. I am currently looking for a site where scenario analysis statistics can be run. Probably on baseball prospectus. The long and short of this exercise is the talent does not currently exist on this roster to produce more runs and they will not score more runs until run producing talent is added. So where does this run producing talent come from?

The Farm System

Fixing what Bill Bavasi did to this team is going to take some time. I have every faith in the skill set that Jackie Z brings to the table as the GM of the Seattle Mariners as explained so well in this article by Rany Jazayerli here (http://www.ranyontheroyals.com/2010_05_16_archive.html)which is partially about the talent that was developed in Milwaukee under Jackie Z’s watch (Rany on the Royals) but it will take a few years to repair the disaster known as the Bill Bavasi experiment. His reign of terror in Seattle is well documented; the Baltimore fleecing a la Bedard, the head case that is now Brandon Morrow, why not draft UW prospect Tim Lincecum who openly wants to play at home, etc., so I don’t want to go into that because in general it prevents me from sleeping at night.

The bottom line is that the farm system is a mess. A review of the farm system deserves its own post so that is forthcoming.

My hope is that anyone reading this finds it informational and useful and had as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Future posts: prospects, trade deadline, the Seattle sports fan.