Archive for Mariners

The Mariners just wrapped up their most difficult homestand over the last two months of the season, going 4–4 against the White Sox, Braves, and Padres. They entered this stretch with a 99.4% probability of making the postseason, boosted by a three-game sweep of Cleveland during the first weekend of September; if there were going to be an epic collapse, it would have started here. Instead, they pulled off a split against three playoff caliber teams and now have 20 games remaining against teams with records below .500. Their odds of breaking their infamous playoff drought are now marginally better at 99.8%, but they’ve weathered the toughest storm and have clear skies ahead of them as they push toward a Wild Card berth.

The standout performer during this eight-game stretch was Eugenio Suárez. He blasted six homers during the homestand, including two multi-home run efforts, and a massive walk-off shot. The barrage started with a pair of dingers against the White Sox on September 7, the second of which tied the game at six in the bottom of the seventh inning. A couple of days later, Suárez blasted a solo shot off Max Fried to give the Mariners a 2–0 lead over Atlanta.

The next day, he hit another pair of homers, with the second being the most dramatic of the bunch. After the Braves had stormed back and scored five runs in the top of the ninth inning to take a 7–6 lead, Julio Rodríguez launched a 117-mph solo homer to tie the game in the bottom half. With two outs in the inning, Suárez stepped in and finished off Kenley Jansen and the Braves with a game-winning home run to left center.

He wasn’t finished either; on Wednesday, he hit his sixth home run of the homestand, part of the opening salvo of an eventual 6–1 victory over the Padres.

Suárez’s offensive onslaught isn’t limited to the last eight games either. Since the beginning of August, he’s hit 15 homers and slashed .250/.352/.625 (178 wRC+) in 39 games. In that same period, only Aaron Judge has been able to match his home run output.

Since 2018, Suárez leads the major leagues in homers — one ahead of Judge — with 160. This recent hot streak has helped him match a career high in WAR with 4.3, and he broke the 30 home run threshold for the fourth time in five years (with the shortened 2020 season as the lone exception). Suárez has always been prone to hot and cold stretches, and this latest peak is coming at the right time for the Mariners. Read the rest of this entry »

It’ll still be a few months before we see whether Julio Rodríguez wins the American League Rookie of the Year award, but today we got a glimpse of baseball 15 years into the future. As reported by MLB.com’s Jesse Sanchez and ESPN’s Jeff Passan, the Seattle Mariners and Rodríguez have come to terms on a huge long-term contract extension, one that would run to the late 2030s.

Passan ran down the details of the deal, and it’s a complicated one.

THREAD: There’s a lot to digest on Julio Rodríguez’s extension with Seattle, per ESPN sources. The deal could be for 8, 13, 16 or 18 years. It guarantees Rodriguez $210 million. If it maxes out, it will be the largest ever: $470 million. The details are important. Here they are.

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) August 26, 2022

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It’s the day after the trade deadline, which always means one thing: baseball writers begrudgingly cleaning up their gross, sparkling-water-can-filled workspaces. Oh, wait, actually it means two things: that, and a flood of “who won the trading deadline” articles.

This year, I’m going to do something slightly different. I won’t claim that I’ve re-invented the wheel, but I’ve always thought that those winner/loser columns are too deterministic and don’t leave enough room for nuance. I thought about listing each team that made a trade as a winner, with a “maybe” appended to indicate that we don’t know what will happen in the future; if you really want to know who won and who lost, check back in October… or maybe in October of 2025. I thought about making each team a “loser (maybe)” for the same reason. In the end, I settled on some broad archetypes. I’ll throw a subjective grade on how much I like the move, and also endeavor to explain the risks around each team’s deadline. You can find all of our deadline coverage here. Let’s get started. Read the rest of this entry »

Another trade deadline has come and gone, and I must say, this one was more exciting than I expected. I didn’t see the Yankees, Astros, or Dodgers making huge splashes, given that all three are in a daunting position both for first place in their divisions and a first-round playoff bye. There were also relatively few short-term rental options available; Juan Soto, Frankie Montas, and Luis Castillo, among others, could always be traded, but with none of them free agents after this season, teams could also pull them back if they didn’t like the offers. Meanwhile, players like Willson Contreras, Ian Happ and Carlos Rodón stayed put, also to my surprise. By and large, though, we had a whirlwind of a 48-hour period leading up to the deadline.

So, who won and who lost? That’s a bit of a loaded question, because the definition of winning and losing varies depending on each franchise’s goals. A contending team improving, a rebuilding team getting worse but acquiring a stable of prospects, or an indolent team only re-signing its 37-year-old closer are all things that can be considered a win in one way or the other. But we’re here to do some hardcore ranking, so let’s look only at who improved themselves the most in 2022.

To keep this all science-y rather than a somewhat arbitrary exercise, I first projected the entire league’s rest of season in ZiPS and then repeated the exercise with all trades since July 19 unwound. Since some teams primarily got overall playoff boosts and some teams saw improvement mainly in terms of World Series gains, I took each team’s rank in both categories and then ranked everyone by the harmonic mean of those two ranks. Read the rest of this entry »

After getting ahead of the trade deadline frenzy by acquiring Luis Castillo on Friday, the Mariners spent Tuesday adding some depth around the roster, picking up Curt Casali and Matthew Boyd from the Giants in exchange for a couple of minor leaguers, right-handed reliever Michael Stryffeler and catcher Andy Thomas. In a separate deal, they also grabbed Jake Lamb from the Dodgers for a player to be named later or cash considerations.

Last week, Justin Choi broke down the adjustments that have led to a breakout season from Seattle’s full-time catcher Cal Raleigh. His excellence this year has helped the Mariners to a cumulative 1.6 WAR from their backstops, the 12th-highest mark in the majors. Unfortunately, nearly all of that production and then some has come from Raleigh alone. Luis Torrens has been the primary backup and one of the worst players in the majors this season, accumulating -0.7 WAR across 42 games. A year after hitting 15 home runs and putting up a 101 wRC+, he has sunk to a pitiful .208/.262/.225 slash line (46 wRC+) without a single home run, which is awful even by the lower standards for catchers.

With Tom Murphy sidelined for the year with a shoulder injury and no other options in the organization, Torrens’ struggles have forced the Mariners to ride Raleigh pretty hard. Since being recalled from Triple-A on May 7 following Murphy’s injury, he has played in 65 of Seattle’s 76 games, starting 55 of them, and has gotten exactly one full day off since June 24, when he sat out the second game of a double-header on July 13.

Casali is currently on the IL after suffering a strained oblique in early July but is in the middle of a rehab assignment and should be activated soon. When healthy, he has been a perfectly serviceable backup backstop for the Rays, Reds, and Giants, accumulating positive WAR in every season of his career except for his rookie campaign back in 2014. Over the last two seasons in San Francisco, he’s put up a .218/.317/.357 slash line (89 wRC+) and 0.8 WAR. He strikes out a little too often but has some power and can take a walk, and he’s a capable defender behind the plate, earning positive framing marks over the last three seasons, though that skill has fallen off a bit this year, down to -2.9 runs in just over 300 innings behind the plate. His familiarity with Castillo from his time in Cincinnati was also a big factor in acquiring him. Read the rest of this entry »

While still focusing upon teams that meet the loose definition of contenders (a .500 record or Playoff Odds of at least 10%), 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.

At the other positions in this series, I have used about 0.6 WAR or less thus far — which prorates to 1.0 WAR over a full season — as my cutoff, making exceptions here and there, but for the designated hitters, I’ve lowered that to 0.3, both to keep the list length manageable and to account for the general spread of value; in the first full season of the universal DH, exactly half the teams in the majors have actually gotten 0.1 WAR or less from their DHs thus far, and only 10 have gotten more than 0.6. DHs as a group have hit .239/.317/.404 for a 104 wRC+; that last figure matches what they did as a group both last year and in 2019, and it’s boosted by the best performance by NL DHs (103 wRC+) since 2009, when their 117 wRC+ accounted for a grand total of 525 PA, about 32 per NL team.

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Bryan Shaw will reach two milestones the next time he takes the mound. The 34-year-old Guardians reliever has made 499 regular-season appearances in a Cleveland uniform, and he’s thrown 999-and-two-thirds professional innings. Neither should come as a surprise. Shaw has never been a star, but he’s always been a workhorse. Moreover, he’s a Terry Francona favorite.

“He’s like a lineman,” the Guardians manager said of Shaw. “When they allow a sack, everybody notices. When [Shaw] gives up runs, people want to bury him. But he saves our ass, time and time again. He pitches when other guys can’t… He’s been a trouper for a long time.”

Now in his 12th big-league season, and in his second stint with Cleveland, Shaw has led the American League in appearances in four different seasons, each time with his current club. The right-hander has appeared in 733 games overall — he’s also pitched for the Diamondbacks, Rockies, and Mariners — which ranks fifth-most among active pitchers.

He knows where he stands among his peers. Read the rest of this entry »

Late Friday night, the Mariners and the Reds consummated the first blockbuster trade of the deadline period, with changeup artist Luis Castillo on his way to the Pacific Northwest for a considerable haul of young players headlined by No. 11 overall prospect Noelvi Marte. In exchange for about a year and a half of Castillo, the Reds netted a combination of upside (Marte, 18-year-old Low-A shortstop Edwin Arroyo, and burgeoning reliever Andrew Moore) and stability (likely 2023 rotation contributor Levi Stoudt).

The 20-year-old Marte, a potential All-Star shortstop and a 60 FV prospect, is hitting .275/.363/.462 at High-A Everett and has actually performed better than that more recently, slashing .301/.379/.549 since the beginning of June; he hit 15 homers and 19 doubles in 85 games prior to the trade. Marte has his doubters, or at least people in the industry who would take the under on my personal evaluation of him. There are scouts and clubs who were discouraged by his early-season conditioning; others are skeptical of his hit tool. Most commonly, though, there are scouts who think he won’t stay at shortstop. This is in part due to the way his physique looked early this season (it wasn’t bad, but was close to maxed-out), and also because Marte has had issues with errors, mostly of the throwing variety; he has accumulated 24 total errors already in 2022. Read the rest of this entry »

After a small amuse-bouche in the form of an Andrew Benintendi trade to get our deadline appetites drooling in anticipation, the Mariners have served up a mighty entrée in the form of landing Luis Castillo, arguably the best pitcher plausibly available this week, in a late Saturday trade. Heading the quartet of players heading to Cincinnati is shortstop Noelvi Marte, the No. 11 prospect both on the midseason update on The Board and in my preseason ZiPS Top 100 Prospects. Joining Marte is shortstop Edwin Arroyo, starting pitcher Levi Stoudt, and reliever Andrew Moore.

Castillo’s season got off to a rocky start thanks to lingering issues with a sore shoulder. Those are always concerning, but he was able to debut in early May after a thankfully eventless rehab stint. After some spotty command in his first game back, he’s been absolutely solid, making his second All-Star team this year; in 14 starts for the Reds, he has struck out 90 batters against 28 walks, putting up an ERA of 2.86, a FIP of 3.20, and 2.1 WAR. That’s enough for 16th in the NL despite Castillo not debuting until Cincinnati’s 29th game. While it wouldn’t impress Old Hoss Radbourn or Amos Rusie, Castillo is a workhorse by 2022’s standards, finishing the fifth inning in every start since his first one and boasting a streak of four consecutive games of at least seven innings, with three of the four opponents (Braves, Rays, Yankees) being quite dangerous.

Naturally, landing Castillo makes Seattle’s rotation a considerably more dangerous unit. ZiPS gives it an even bigger boost than our depth charts do, bumping it from 18th in the league in projected rest-of-season WAR to 10th. Overall, ZiPS thought the Mariners were a .527 team going into the season, and now my projections see them as a .545 team with an 84% chance of making the playoffs, up from 76%. This move is more about making the team as dangerous in the playoffs as possible; the Mariners could add Juan Soto, too, and the math of an 11-game deficit would still make winning the AL West a tough road.

As exciting as it is to see the Mariners do whatever they can to push themselves over the top this season, this move may even be a bigger deal for the 2023 season. Pencil in $15 million for Castillo’s salary, and the M’s have a committed luxury tax number of just around $115 million, with only Adam Frazier and Mitch Haniger as significant free agents. Having a solid rotation already put together gives Seattle nearly unlimited options this winter.

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Earlier today, Jake Mailhot broke down how two unheralded members of the Mariners’ relief corps have contributed to the team’s recent surge. Indeed, a lot has gone right for Seattle, but one area that has not been talked about as often is the catcher situation. In our preseason positional power rankings, the team ranked 16th at the position — not bad, but not great, either. So far, in real life, the Mariners are 14th. That’s not much of a difference, so you’d be inclined to think things have gone according to plan.

What Mariners fans would tell you is that Tom Murphy has been hurt, and Luis Torrens has been hurt and ineffective. Enter Cal Raleigh, who’s taken up the catching mantle all by himself, hitting .211/.288/.474 en route to a 117 wRC+ as of this writing. But it’s not a breakout many anticipated, nor did it come easy. In his first taste of the show last season, Raleigh hit for a mere 47 wRC+ in 148 plate appearances, then struggled to begin this season, ultimately getting sent down to Triple-A to recuperate. After rejoining the big league squad on May 7, however, Raleigh hasn’t looked back, providing big knocks for an aspiring squad ever since.

How did Raleigh pull it off? Like so many others before him, he simply started hitting the ball harder — shocking, I know. He has always possessed an uppercut swing, but mediocre exit velocities in his debut year meant his fly balls turned into outs, not extra-base hits. Now, he is supplementing those high launch angles with power. If we look at Barrels per plate appearances, which accounts for the fact that a per-batted ball basis tends to gloss over strikeout issues, Raleigh is one of the league’s most improved hitters. He’s highlighted below in yellow:

Among the 319 hitters in this plot, Raleigh ranks second in barrel per plate appearance gain, behind only Aaron Judge and tied with Rob Refsnyder and Christian Walker, represented by the points snuggled up to his right. Because barrel rates are reliable pretty quickly and stay consistent year-to-year, we can trust that major rises (and falls) aren’t just flukes. And evidently, Raleigh has made a couple tangible adjustments. During his seven-game stint in Tacoma, teammate Mitch Haniger told the young catcher he should hunt for the fastball, as that was the pitch he could handle. Given that only the best of the best can handle several ranges of velocity and movement, it seems like solid advice; not everyone can be Freddie Freeman. Read the rest of this entry »