2023 ZiPS Projections: Seattle Mariners

For the 18th consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Seattle Mariners.

Batters

Under president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto, the Mariners have evolved into something a bit like the St. Louis Cardinals. The roster is very solidly built, with an eye toward sustainability in the short- and long-term, and with some of the team’s very best talent locked up for the foreseeable future. But like the Cardinals, the roster is missing something to really put them over the top in a top division, that element that makes them one of the first-tier World Series contenders. The AL West is getting a bit tougher, too; the Astros aren’t likely to fall far, the Rangers are acting aggressively to improve the team, and the Angels, despite their long-term issues, have at least patched things up for 2023.

What are the Mariners missing? A true thumper in the middle of the lineup, that above-average corner outfield type who racks up lofty home run and RBI totals and becomes overrated by many fans. They have notable strength up the middle, with solid offense from players at tougher defensive positions, none of whom really seem to be the volatile type. But they’re thin in the outfield corners and at designated hitter, and the options just aren’t very satisfying. Teoscar Hernández is a fine short-term fill-in, but it feels like a top team would have him as the weakest player in the lineup. It’s hard to envision Jarred Kelenic putting up corner outfield-type numbers, and AJ Pollock is a 35-year-old who was awful last season. Oh for a time machine to bring back the Nelson Cruz of five years ago! Mitch Haniger isn’t a star, but it really feels like a mistake to have not at least run up his price and forced the Giants to commit more than three years and $43.5 million for his services.

The good news is that Dipoto tends to be one of the most active executives in baseball, and while the lineup has issues, there aren’t really that many headaches to worry about. Kolten Wong and J.P. Crawford won’t make many All-Star games, but like much of the roster, they feel like one of those champagne-colored Toyota Camrys popular back in 1998, 99% of which seem to still be driving today. In other words, very Cardinals-ish.

The big exception, of course, is Julio Rodríguez, the one player the Mariners cannot afford to lose. But it feels like the M’s really need a second slugger, a player to be the McCovey to his Mays. That player doesn’t necessarily have to be as good as Willie McCovey, mind you, but I think adding another 120 OPS+, traditional power hitter-type would be as valuable to the M’s as anyone in baseball.

Pitchers

The pitching is a particular highlight of this team. With only a handful of teams remaining to run in ZiPS, Luis Castillo is fourth among pitchers in 2023 WAR and is in the top 20 of all pitchers in projected final career WAR, which includes veterans like Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, and Max Scherzer. Only a single player younger than Castillo, Alek Manoah, projects to finish with more career WAR! Getting Castillo extended to a five-year, $108 million contract a year from free agency was a coup for Dipoto and puts a nice feather in his executive cap.

The Mariners don’t really have a number-two pitcher in the sense that ZiPS thinks they have three of ’em: Robbie Ray, Logan Gilbert, and George Kirby. That leaves Marco Gonzales, Chris Flexen, and a surprisingly large number of OKish spares to comfortably cover the fifth spot in the rotation and fill in for whatever injuries pop up. ZiPS is more optimistic about Gonzales than most simply because of the way ZiPS is constructed — the longer a pitcher outperforms their peripherals and defense, the more ZiPS believes it. Gonzales is projected for a 4.39 ERA with a 4.91 FIP, and he’d have a much more bloated ERA projection if not for his history.

One pitcher ZiPS is really in on is Bryce Miller, who ZiPS prefers for the rotation over Flexen or Gonzales. A 2021 draftee, Miller had a really excellent first full season as a professional, especially his late season debut in the Texas League. His numbers are more impressive when you remember what a brutal environment the high minors have become from pitchers; the Texas League had an ERA over 5.00 in 2022. Just to put that into context, that’s 30-40% more run scoring than the league through the 2010s! A pitcher performing well in the high minors means a lot more than it did five years ago (conversely, a hitter with lofty numbers at Double- or Triple-A ball means a lot less). Miller’s a player to remember, though if he doesn’t work out, I totally wouldn’t mind if you forgot where you heard it from!

ZiPS projects the M’s bullpen bordering on being a top-five unit, about where Steamer has them in our current depth chart rankings. Unlike some teams with a healthy relief projection, it’s not just a couple of huge names with the lion’s share of the WAR; ZiPS basically likes all the principals with the exception of Justin Topa. It’s a deep unit, and like the rest of the team, it’s not reliant on one or two stars. That leaves the M’s less prone to injury-related disasters than most teams.

All told, the Mariners look like an 85-90 win team, with a tighter range of outcomes than most clubs. That’s fun and makes the M’s a serious contender, but I really want them to make the Astros a bit less comfortable. Of course, Dipoto being Dipoto, watch him somehow acquire Shohei Ohtani just after we publish this article!

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2023 due to injury, and players who were released in 2022. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Death Dixieland Bubblegum Ska-Funk band, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.22, above 2022’s level of offense but lower than other years. Pitchers who appear to have a fairly definite change in the majors from start-to-relief or vice-versa from these projections will receive reconfigured updates in the spring.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by flaws in the physical reality of the universe or by skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter.