While the Mariners’ front office has been rather quiet in terms of acquiring new free agents this offseason, they did plenty of work locking up their existing personnel before free agency opened, extending star outfielder Julio Rodríguez and starting pitcher Luis Castillo with combined guarantees up to $578 million. Now, they’ve agreed to a three-year extension with utility man Dylan Moore worth $8.875 million. This contract buys out his final two years of arbitration as well as his first season of free agency, keeping him in Seattle through his age-33 season.

Moore was a late bloomer, first making the Mariners roster in 2019 at the age of 26, and he’s primarily served in a utility and platoon role ever since. While his career wRC+ sits at exactly 100, that mark jumps to 112 against left-handers. The Mariners have done well to maximize his effectiveness by deploying him on his strong side as much as possible, especially last season, when nearly half of his plate appearances came against left-handed pitching, fourth-most among right-handed hitters.

Platoon usage rate often says more about a team than an individual player — plenty of everyday starters arguably should be sitting more against same-handed pitchers — but the Mariners have the right pieces to put Moore in advantageous situations, including a wide variety of left-handed counterparts like Kolten Wong, Jarred Kelenic, and Tommy La Stella.

It’s difficult to thrive exclusively as a right-handed platoon bat, though, given that a significant majority of pitchers are also righties. Players like Moore and Slater only got to face lefty opponents about half the time; sometimes a reliever comes in, sometimes a starter needs the day off regardless of who the other team has on the mound. Luckily, Moore also handles right-handed pitching decently well. His career wRC+ against them sits at 92, and last season, he had a .344 OBP and 117 wRC+ against fellow righties, a good mark for any big league hitter. He definitely has a stronger side, making more contact and drawing more free passes against southpaws, but he’s certainly not helpless on the other side of the platoon either. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s nearly February and the free agent pool is thinning out. Most of the big names have already flown off the board. By our projections, only five unsigned players forecast to amass at least 1 WAR in the upcoming season, only three of whom are position players. Most teams have already filled out their Opening Day starting lineups; now their focus shifts to improving the fringes of their 26-man roster, searching for a couple of additional wins or insurance in case of injuries. The Mariners and the A’s, two AL West teams with very different outlooks for 2023, each recently made such an addition, inking a veteran to bolster infield depth. Let’s take a look.

Mariners sign Tommy La Stella to a league-minimum deal

Formerly a bench infielder and designated pinch hitter for the Cubs (his league-leading 91 pinch hit appearances in 2018 has not been matched since), La Stella was traded to the Angels with two years of team control remaining for a prospect who never threw a pitch in Chicago’s system. In 2019, he maintained the contact skills and excellent plate discipline that made him a league-average hitter, but he improved in another facet of his game that was emblematic of the juiced ball era. That year, his fly ball rate, which had previously sat around the 20% mark, climbed to 25%; that, combined with a small increase in his pull rate, led to a power break out. Despite lacking traditional power indicators like barrels and a high maximum exit velocity, La Stella made the most of his aerial contact (and the favorable dimensions of Angels Stadium) to post a career-high .486 slugging percentage and hit home runs at a rate of 30 per 600 PA, an excellent mark even during the heightened offensive environment. His absolute refusal to swing and miss played a big part in this as well; his minuscule 8.7% strikeout rate gave him plenty of balls in play, many of which left the yard:

Read the rest of this entry »

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.

On Saturday, the Mariners were active. Most notably, they inked outfielder AJ Pollock to a one-year, $7 million contract, their largest guarantee of the offseason. Additionally, they swung their second trade with the Brewers this winter, acquiring reliever Justin Topa for fellow right-hander Joseph Hernandez.

While the M’s have been busy all offseason, highlighted by three significant trades prior to this one, no one move stands out as the “splash” fans may have been hoping for in order to build on the team’s drought-ending 2022 playoff run. Still, the club has added an estimated $23 million in payroll from a variety of sources, seeking to retool an already solid roster across multiple areas. Lately, left field and the bullpen have stood out as the largest holes, and Saturday’s two transactions move the Mariners closer to filling them.

Let’s start with left field and AJ Pollock. Last year, Mariners’ outfielders put up a 111 wRC+, which tied for fifth-best. But their overall performance was dragged down by a middling five Outs Above Average (OAA) mark, which placed them 11th in the majors. This winter, the M’s parted with Jesse Winker, their incumbent left fielder whose -10 OAA mark stood out as the sixth worst among all major league outfielders. Dealing him to the Brewers for Kolten Wong, Seattle also managed to shore up a second base need in the process — collectively, the M’s put up the majors’ third-worst WAR mark at the keystone last year — and the money just about evened out with the Brew Crew’s help. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2018 election at SI.com, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

Content warning: This piece contains details about alleged domestic violence and sexual harassment. The content may be difficult to read and emotionally upsetting.

In the eyes of many, Omar Vizquel was the successor to Ozzie Smith when it came to dazzling defense. Thanks to the increased prevalence of highlight footage on the internet and on cable shows such as ESPN’s SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight, the diminutive Venezuelan shortstop’s barehanded grabs, diving stops, and daily acrobatics were seen by far more viewers than Smith’s ever were. Vizquel made up for having a less-than-prototypically-strong arm with incredibly soft hands and a knack for advantageous positioning. Such was the perception of his prowess at the position that he took home 11 Gold Gloves, more than any shortstop this side of Smith, who won 13.

Vizquel’s offense was at least superficially akin to Smith’s: He was a singles-slapping switch-hitter in lineups full of bigger bats and, at his best, a capable table-setter who got on base often enough to score 80, 90, or even 100 runs in some seasons. His ability to move the runner over with a sacrifice bunt or a productive out delighted purists, and he could steal a base, too. While he lacked power, he dealt in volume, piling up more hits (2,877) than all but four players who spent the majority of their careers at shortstop and are now in the Hall of Fame: Derek Jeter (3,465), Honus Wagner (3,420), Cal Ripken Jr. (3,184), and Robin Yount (3,142). Vizquel is second only to Jeter using the strict as-shortstop splits, which we don’t have for Wagner (though we do know the Flying Dutchman spent 31% of his defensive innings at other positions). During his 11-year run in Cleveland (1994–2004), Vizquel helped his team to six playoff appearances and two pennants.

To some, that has made Vizquel an easy call for the Hall of Fame, but by WAR and JAWS, his case isn’t nearly as strong as it is on the traditional merits. Even before he reached the ballot, his candidacy had become a point of friction between old-school and new-school thinkers, as though he were this generation’s Jack Morris. For the first three years of his candidacy, it appeared as though he was well on his way to Cooperstown nonetheless, with showings of 37.0% in 2018, 42.8% in ’19, and 52.6% in ’20. Read the rest of this entry »

The following article is part of Jay Jaffe’s ongoing look at the candidates on the BBWAA 2023 Hall of Fame ballot. Originally written for the 2022 election, it has been updated to reflect recent voting results as well as additional research. For a detailed introduction to this year’s ballot, and other candidates in the series, use the tool above; an introduction to JAWS can be found here. For a tentative schedule and a chance to fill out a Hall of Fame ballot for our crowdsourcing project, see here. All WAR figures refer to the Baseball-Reference version unless otherwise indicated.

More so than Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, or Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez is the poster child for the era of performance-enhancing drugs within baseball. Considered “an almost perfect prospect” given his combination of power, speed, defense, and work ethic, the 6-foot-3 shortstop was chosen by the Mariners with the first pick of the 1993 draft, and reached the majors before his 19th birthday. In short order, he went on to produce unprecedented power for the position via six straight seasons of at least 40 homers, two with at least 50, and three league leads. Along the way, he signed a 10-year, $252 million deal with the Texas Rangers in January 2001, at that point the largest guaranteed contract in professional sports history.

In a major league career that spanned from 1994 to 2016, Rodriguez made 14 All-Star teams, won three MVP awards and two Gold Gloves, and became just the fifth player to reach the twin plateaus of 3,000 hits and 500 home runs, after Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Eddie Murray, and Rafael Palmeiro. Along the way, he helped his teams to 12 postseason appearances, but only one championship. Though he sparkled at times in the postseason, he also went into some notorious slumps that only furthered the drama that surrounded him.

Always with the drama! Rodriguez’s combination of youthful charisma, success, and money magnified his every move, and his insecurities and inability to read the room guaranteed further tumult the more intense things got. Because of his proximity to Derek Jeter, first as a friendly rival within a trinity of great young shortstops that also included Nomar Garciaparra, and then as a teammate once the Yankees became the only club that could afford his contract, Rodriguez became an easy target for tabloid-style sensationalism long before he dated Madonna and Jennifer Lopez. His inability to get out of his own way only intensified once he got to New York, even before his PED-related misdeeds put him in the crosshairs. Read the rest of this entry »

Masataka Yoshida is MLB’s latest NPB import, having been inked to a five-year, $90M contract by the Boston Red Sox earlier this week. A 29-year-old, left-handed-hitting outfielder, Yoshida is coming off of a season where he slashed .335/.447/.561 with 21 home runs for the Orix Buffaloes… and it wasn’t a breakout season. He’s been one of the best hitters in Japan’s top league in each of the last five years.

Who is the best pitcher in NPB? I asked Yoshida that question on Thursday following his introductory press conference at Fenway Park.

“Probably Kodai Senga,” replied Yoshida, citing the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks right-hander who recently signed a 5-year, $75M deal with the New York Mets. “I think he was the best pitcher in Japan.”

Intrigued by that answer, I followed up by asking, via interpreter Keiichiro Wakabayashi, if he feels that Senga is actually better than his former Orix teammate, 24-year-old Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Read the rest of this entry »

Episode 1004

This week, we talk to the man in charge of an on-the-rise franchise before discussing the international market and a puzzling trade.

• At the top of the show, David Laurila welcomes Jerry Dipoto, president of baseball operations for the Seattle Mariners. We hear his thoughts on the wild spending going on around the league this offseason, as well some acquisitions Seattle has made recently, including Teoscar Hernández and old friend Dave Cameron. Dipoto also shares insights on Mariners players like Andrés Muñoz, Penn Murfee, Emerson Hancock, and Marco Gonzales, as well as his own pitching career (and his son’s). [4:14]
• In the second half, Ben Clemens catches up with Eric Longenhagen after missing each other at the Winter Meetings in San Diego. The duo talk a little bit about the World Cup and the World Baseball Classic before discussing the signings of Kodai Senga and Masataka Yoshida, and how they and other international prospects may adapt to the major leagues. Ben and Eric also chat about the puzzling Sean Murphy trade, how much higher the A’s must be on Esteury Ruiz than everyone else does, and what direction Oakland seems to be heading in (if any). [45:26]

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Gaylord Perry presented some kind of mathematical paradox to the mind of this young fan. If baseball had outlawed the spitball some 60 years earlier, how could this admittedly gray-haired guy in his early 40s have been grandfathered in? Yet there was Perry, throwing — or at least appearing to throw — wet or otherwise loaded baseballs with impunity, preceding each pitch with a detailed routine in which he’d rub his brow, both sides of the underbill of his cap, then the brim, then the side, then the brim again before delivering. Sometimes it was a decoy for the fact that he was hiding the foreign substance on his wrist, his neck, or somewhere on his uniform.

Master of the “spitball”. Made players angry, including Reggie Jackson was fuming. #RIPGaylordPerry pic.twitter.com/uH9PQAaqxx

— BaseballHistoryNut (@nut_history) December 1, 2022

The math didn’t work, but the wet ones, or at least the belief that he was throwing them, did. In my early years of watching baseball, the rubber-armed, rule-bending rogue brought vivid color (not just the Padres’ infamous brown-and-yellow) to the more black-and-white corners of the game’s history, planting the evocative names of bygone spitballers such as Burleigh Grimes and Urban Shocker in my mind while earning his own spot in the annals. In 1978, the year I began closely following the game, Perry became the first pitcher to win a Cy Young Award in both leagues and just the third pitcher to reach 3,000 strikeouts, after Walter Johnson and Bob Gibson. On May 6, 1982, while a member of the Seattle Mariners, he became the 15th pitcher to reach 300 wins, the first in 19 years and the first of six from his cohort to reach that milestone; that season also brought the only time he was ejected for throwing an illegal pitch. On August 13, 1983, about six weeks from the end of his 22-year major league career, he became the third pitcher of that group, after Tom Seaver and Steve Carlton, to surpass Johnson’s previously unassailable record of 3,508 strikeouts. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday afternoon is traditionally the time when organizations dump unpleasant news. The week before the Winter Meetings, it’s also the time when organizations finally get rid of players they’ve been trying to trade. To that end, the Seattle Mariners have acquired second baseman Kolten Wong, along with $1.75 million in cash, from the Milwaukee Brewers in exchange for infielder Abraham Toro and outfielder Jesse Winker.

Huh. Interesting. Read the rest of this entry »