Today, we turn our attention to the second base Killers. While still focusing on teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), and that have gotten about 0.6 WAR or less out of a position thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — this year I have incorporated our Depth Charts’ rest-of-season WAR projections into the equation for an additional perspective. Sometimes that may suggest that the team will clear the bar by a significant margin, but even so, I’ve included them here because the team’s performance at that spot is worth a look.
As noted previously, some of these situations are more dire than others, particularly when taken in the context of the rest of a team’s roster. I don’t expect every team to go out and track down an upgrade before the August 1 deadline, and I’m less concerned with the solutions – many of which have more moving parts involved than a single trade — than the problems. Unless otherwise indicated, all statistics are through Sunday. Read the rest of this entry »
Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Seattle Mariners. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the third year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but I use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »
In 2021, the Mariners called up Logan Gilbert, their no. 3 prospect at the time; he has compiled a tidy 7.0 WAR across nearly 400 innings over the last three years. Last year, the Mariners called up George Kirby, their no. 3 prospect at the time; he was a key member of the rotation that helped break Seattle’s two-decade-long postseason drought. With Luis Castillo joining the rotation at the trade deadline last season and then signing a five-year extension in September, Robbie Ray heading into the second year of his five-year deal he signed prior to the 2022 season, and Marco Gonzales eating innings at the back of the rotation, Seattle entered this season with a starting five that appeared to be the biggest strength on the roster.
Things haven’t gone exactly according to plan. Ray injured his elbow in his first start of the season and underwent season-ending Tommy John surgery in early May; Gonzales has been out since late May with his own elbow issues. But despite losing two members of the Opening Day rotation, the Mariners have barely skipped a beat, thanks to the efforts of two more top prospects who have graduated to the majors this year: Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo. Seattle’s starters have the fourth best park- and league-adjusted FIP in the majors, and a park- and league-adjusted strikeout-to-walk ratio that ranks inside the top 20 among all 300 team seasons over the last decade. Only the Twins are outpacing them in those two categories in the American League.
After trying to fill Ray’s spot with a combination of Chris Flexen, Tommy Milone, and Easton McGee, the Mariners called up Miller on May 2 to make his debut against the light-hitting Athletics. He dazzled across six innings, allowing just two baserunners and one run and striking out ten. Across his first five starts in the majors, he allowed just 17 baserunners total, giving him the lowest WHIP (0.51) through a pitcher’s first five career starts in MLB history. A rough pair of outings against the Yankees and Rangers have been the lone blemish on Miller’s ledger; he’s bounced back with three excellent starts since then. Overall, he’s compiled a 3.88 ERA and a 3.36 FIP with a fantastic 4.45 strikeout-to-walk ratio.
As soon as Gonzales hit the IL with his injury, the Mariners quickly turned to another one of their youngsters. Woo made his debut on June 3, though his introduction to the big leagues did not go as well as Miller’s; given the assignment of slowing down the Rangers’ high-powered offense, he lasted just two innings, allowing six runs on seven hits and striking out four. He’s been much better over his last four starts, allowing just six runs total and posting a 5.60 strikeout-to-walk ratio. If you lower the bar far enough, Woo has the fourth-highest strikeout rate among all starters with at least 20 innings pitched this year. Read the rest of this entry »
Games are shorter this season due to the pitch clock, which means that starting pitchers are usually throwing an outing’s worth of offerings in less time than they typically did in previous years. Whereas a quality start of seven innings and 100 pitches might have taken two hours and 15 minutes in the past — this before a call to the bullpen — it can take as little as an hour and 45 minutes in 2023. Those times will obviously vary, with the effectiveness of the opposing pitcher playing a major role, but the fact remains that such an outing now regularly takes place within a more condensed time frame.
How different is this for starting pitchers? Moreover, is throwing that number of innings and pitches in a narrower time frame harder, or is it actually easier? I’ve asked those questions to several pitchers since the start of the season, with their answers sometimes extending to other aspects of the new pitch clock. Here is what they’ve had to say.
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Shane Bieber, Cleveland Guardians: “Good question. To give you a real response on the impact… we’ll probably see at the end of the year after a great big body of work. Right? The number of quality starts, or whatever you want to call them. But for me, personally, I’m not finding much of a difference. I work pretty quick, especially without runners on. Last year, I think I was the second fastest without runners on base. Maybe the first. Wade Miley works extremely fast, as well. Read the rest of this entry »
After breaking their long postseason drought last year, the Mariners entered 2023 with some lofty expectations led by Julio Rodríguez, the AL Rookie of the Year, and a cadre of young pitchers. Seattle got off to a slow start in April, limping to a 12–16 record during the first month of the season. Things got a little better in May, but the team really turned on the jets over the last week and half, cruising through a 7–3 homestand that pushed its record to 29–27.
The real story of the week was Rodríguez, who earned American League Player of the Week honors by collecting 14 hits, six extra-base hits, and seven RBIs. He added another four hits and a home run against the Yankees earlier this week, raising his wRC+ from 86 to 111 in the span of these ten games.
Even though the Mariners have one of the best pitching staffs in the majors and a top-tier defense, the ongoing struggles of their offense have held them back to start this season. They’ve scored 4.45 runs per game thus far with a team wRC+ of 97, a little below league average. The slow start from Rodríguez has been a key aspect of that lack of production, though there are other (non) contributors too. Still, it seems like as Julio goes, the Mariners go.
Rodríguez got off to a similar slow start during his rookie campaign last year: through April, he was batting just .205/.284/.260 with a 61 wRC+ and a gaudy 37.0% strikeout rate. He hit his first major league home run on May 1, though, and never looked back from there. This year, his struggles were a little more pronounced and prolonged: through May 21, he was slashing .204/.280/.376, good for an 86 wRC+ with a 28.5% strikeout rate. Read the rest of this entry »
Logan Gilbert discussed his new changeup in detail when he was featured here at FanGraphs 12 months ago. Not satisfied with the one he’d been throwing, the Seattle Mariners right-hander had gone to “more of a traditional circle,” a grip he felt would yield better command and consistency. His stated goals included upping the pitch’s usage from 8% (it had been 7.8% in 2021) to 10-15%.
A certain amount of success followed — opposing hitters batted .125 with a .122 wOBA against the pitch — but Gilbert’s goals went largely unmet. The 6-foot-6 hurler never felt completely comfortable with the revamped offering, and by season’s end, his changeup usage was still a meager 8%. Instead of becoming a reliable weapon, it remained little more than an infrequently used, hit-or-miss option in his arsenal.
As pitching nerds are wont to do — and Gilbert certainly qualifies as such — he went back to the drawing board. The righty traded in his circle change for a splitter over the offseason, and the results have been just what he was looking for. He has been comfortably throwing his new weapon 12.7% of the time, and it has yielded a paltry .111 batting-average-against and an equally impressive .111 wOBA.
Gilbert explained the successful transition from his changeup to his splitter when Seattle visited Boston last week. Read the rest of this entry »
Bryce Miller has come a long way in a short time. A fourth-round pick by the Seattle Mariners out of Texas A&M just two summers ago, the 24-year-old right-hander came into the current campaign ranked no. 83 on our Top 100 and made his major league debut earlier this month. Moreover, his three starts have been nothing less than stellar. Over 19 innings, Miller has fanned 18 batters while allowing just one run on seven hits and a single walk. His ERA is a minuscule 0.47.
Seattle’s pitching development acumen has played a big role in his success. Miller’s 96-mph four-seam fastball is in the 99th percentile for spin, but it wasn’t until he got to pro ball that he began utilizing it in an optimal manner. He has also advanced the quality of his secondaries and is attacking hitters with a more varied arsenal than he did as an Aggie.
“In college, we had Rapsodo and TrackMan, but I never really dove into that or really even knew what it meant numbers-wise,” explained Miller. “But with Seattle being pretty deep into analytics, that changed when I got here. They really opened my eyes on how my stuff plays and where I need to throw it.” Read the rest of this entry »
Robbie Ray did not replicate his 2021 AL Cy Young-winning form last year. In fact, he struggled down the stretch, but he did make a solid contribution as the Mariners ended their 21-year playoff drought. Alas, he won’t get to help them try to repeat that feat. On Wednesday, the Mariners announced that the 31-year-old lefty will undergo surgery to repair a torn flexor tendon and miss the remainder of the season.
After a promising spring training in which he restored some lost velocity to his four-seam fastball, Ray made just one start, and it wasn’t pretty. Facing the Guardians on March 31, he needed 26 pitches to complete the first inning, during which he issued back-to-back four-pitch walks to José Ramírez and Josh Bell before escaping by striking out Josh Naylor. His fastball velocity quickly diminished and he lasted just 3.1 innings, walking five and surrendering four hits and five runs (three earned).
In the immediate aftermath, Ray didn’t tell reporters that he had felt tightness in his forearm starting in the second inning, a problem that he attributed to the cold weather. After undergoing an MRI the next day due to lingering soreness, he was diagnosed with a Grade 1 flexor strain; only in discussing the injury with reporters did he reveal his discomfort. Read the rest of this entry »
What’s the most important thing for a pitcher to do? That’s right, don’t leave the ball up in the zone for Aaron Judge. The second-most important thing for a pitcher to do is throw strikes. Throw strikes to get ahead in the count, throw strikes to challenge hitters, throw strikes to force action early in the count and keep your pitch count down… pitchers talk about throwing strikes the way health nuts talk about kale. It’s good for you. How? Let me count the ways.
Except, nobody actually throws strikes. Last season, 347 pitchers threw at least 50 innings in the majors; nobody threw more than 58.5% of their pitches in the strike zone. Devin Williams, one of the best in the business, worked inside the zone just 42.4% of the time. “It’s good to throw strikes,” then, is something to be taken seriously but not literally.
The 2023 season is only a handful of days old, but already another Cy Young winner is on the shelf. After Justin Verlander was placed on the injured list last Friday, Robbie Ray joined him the following afternoon. The Mariners lefty was removed from his season debut against the Guardians in the middle of the fourth inning, having thrown 91 pitches and given up five walks and five runs. It wasn’t clear his exit was injury-related at the time, but Ray later revealed he’d been feeling pain since the second inning. He was ultimately diagnosed with a left flexor strain, which will keep him out for four to six weeks.
Even before Ray’s injury was diagnosed, the Mariners had cause for concern. For one thing, five walks in three-plus innings is certainly a worrisome sign. To make matters worse, two of those walks came in the first inning, before he began to feel sore. Ray has been notoriously wild in the past — he leads all active pitchers in five-walk games — but he had seemingly gotten his free passes under control the last two years:
In his second start of the 2021 season, Ray walked six batters in five innings of work. From that point onwards, he has posted a perfectly respectable 2.64 BB/9 (84 BB/9+). He needs to keep his walk rate in check to succeed going forward; hopefully his control will improve when his flexor strain heals. Read the rest of this entry »
