JABO: Where the Mariners Have Gone Wrong
The Mariners won on Thursday! That’s not uncommon. The Mariners have won a bunch of times, if you think about it. But they haven’t really strung them together. They haven’t won two games in a row since the start of the month. They haven’t won three games in a row since the last week of May. In the Mariners’ best month so far, they went 14-14. Right now they’re hanging around the bottom of the American League, and though the Mariners haven’t yet sold pieces off, the playoffs look like the longest of shots. Maybe a miracle is in the cards. Probably not. Miracles are never probable, or else they wouldn’t be miracles.
Speaking of things that aren’t uncommon, seeing the Mariners toward the bottom feels familiar. They haven’t made the playoffs since Ichiro was a rookie. But this year was supposed to be different. Last year wasn’t bad, and then the Mariners added Nelson Cruz. And Cruz, for the most part, has been terrific. Only a few months ago, the Mariners were the popular pick as division favorites. Now they have to be thankful for the struggles of the Red Sox, Indians and White Sox, as they aren’t the obvious biggest disappointment. This wasn’t supposed to be close to a last-place team.
I’ll admit, when you’re dealing with a last-place team, the last thing most people want to do is look back. And I think a lot of people have some understanding of how the Mariners have gone off track. It’s not a mystery, and of greater concern is where the team goes from here. But I did want to take this opportunity to run some math. To divide blame, if you will, for why the ship has sunk. I think this can be instructive.
We have all the current numbers we need. The Mariners are 44-52. They’re fourth from the bottom in the majors in Wins Above Replacement (WAR). We also have all the old numbers we need. At FanGraphs, before the season, we projected the Mariners to win almost 55% of their games. That winning percentage, over 96 games, would yield a record of about 53-43. So the Mariners are presently about nine wins off the expectation. Where were those wins supposed to come from? Where haven’t they come from? Helpfully, we have all the individual player preseason projections.
Read the rest at Just A Bit Outside.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
Gut wrenching is an over-used term but it seems appropriately descriptive of this season’s effect on a Mariners fan’s affection for this disfunctional organization.
Nice article! I did a similar analysis on my own two weeks ago, but I compared preseason ZiPS projections to updated ZiPS projections, and I grouped the players into different categories:
Good Development (i.e., overperformance by young players): Miller, Paxton, Walker, Elias, Montgomery, Carson Smith
Good Luck (i.e., overperformance by established players): Cruz, Seth Smith, Happ
Bad Development (i.e., underperformance by young players): Ackley and Zunino
Bad Luck(i.e., underperformance by established players): Jackson, Ruggiano, Felix, Farquhar, Rodney, Seager (he’s done pretty well the past two weeks!)
Injuries: Iwakuma, Taylor
In A Class To Himself: Cano
At the time, Good and Bad Development essentially canceled each other out, as did Good and Bad Luck, so all of the underperformance could be chalked up to two notable injuries and the epic collapse of Robinson Cano.
I find it hard to chalk Zunino up to “bad development” since he was hardly given any time to develop! The poor guy was rushed to the majors, even though he wasn’t doing particularly well in his very limited stint at AAA.
There’s also the recent odd history with regard to their handling of Brad Miller, who has been okay but apparently was seen by the org as a failure.
Basically, I think you need to add another negative category – “bone-headed GM”.
So I think that Jack Z is without question a disaster as GM. But I also wonder if there are issues related to Safeco (as sort of a reverse Coors Field) that may impede hitter development. They’ve had a ton of highly touted hitters over the years, and all of them have failed abysmally (Ackley, Miller, Montero, Smoak, Nick Franklin, etc.). Is this simply a talent evaluation failure, or a player development failure, or something else?
I imagine a more creative and aggressive GM would really explore this problem and shake things up, but that’s obviously not happening under this administration.
Hopefully Jack’s successor does this. Starting this offseason.
last or near last in Mlb in on base %, batting avg w/runnders in scoring position, too many guys with low OB %. I saw early in the year M’s had 55 homers, 46 were solos. M’s have failed to identify and get guys that can get on base. Oh yeah, it would help if the 240 million $ man lived up to that contract….only 8 more years to go!
I think a big part of the playoff predictions was simplistic analysis by national writers: start with an 87 win team, add Cruz and some decent role players = playoffs. The reality is that the Ms weren’t as good as their record last year, as they had relatively good luck with health and an unsustainable performance from the pen.
Plus there was the hand-waving about the bullpen, which was amazing and exceptionally lucky last year. Prognosticators usually said “while we can’t expect the bullpen to be as good as it was last year…”, followed by language basically expecting the bullpen to be almost as good as it was last year.
And I’ll (annoyingly) repeat something I’ve said about Zunino several times. People kept saying “he’ll almost certainly get better, players his age always do”. But most players his age who are in the majors are generally building on some facsimile of a sound approach at the plate… something Zunino most certainly does not have.
Speaking of selling: what do you think the ms could get for Cruz if they made him available? He’s on another tear right now, and has great numbers. Plus, he’s been plying RF a lot, so his market wouldn’t necessarily be limited to the AL. He could definitely help a good team like the Pirates. This seems like a great opportunity to move a big contract for future value. But I doubt Jack does so. Cruz is his prototype favorite player.
Technically events that are merely improbably aren’t miracles if they occur either. But I digress.
“merely improbably”? Technically, shouldn’t that be “merely improbable”?
Seattle’s first issue is that they failed to model their team around their own ballpark. The Giants are a perfect comparison who have a similar spacious park and consistently win because of pitching and timely hitting. I think there’s a lot of contrasts between the way the two teams were architected. The Giants were able to build a balanced lineup (Pagan, Freddy Sanchez, Panik etc..) with great pitching throughout. It always seems like the Mariners have Felix and question marks throughout their hitting. They also always seem to have one or two power hitters and question marks the rest of the way, especially a lineup loaded with strikeouts. Robinson Cano will have to stay but the M’s need to start developing balance around the entire team. They should consider dealing Ackley, Zunino and/or Walker and get some proven big league quality in return.
Organization is another issue. The Mariners have failed to develop a bunch of huge names over the years. While guys like Kyle Seager and Brad Miller are the exception, they need to overhaul their development strategy and perhaps ditch the “flashy talented” tool and focus on fundamentals with their prospects like the Twins, Braves and Angels. They’ve failed to hit on Jeff Clement, Danny Hultzen, Dustin Ackley, Mike Zunino and now Alex Jackson and DJ Peterson are trending downward (Jesus Montero’s career also plummeted!)Big name prospects just go to die here. What’s not working also lies in the front office. It seems like there’s been organizational friction since the late 2000’s and ownership would be smart to bring in a president & GM who could create a more positive atmosphere within the front office and on-field management.
Things just aren’t working in Seattle. An overhaul in philosophy and roster is needed here.