Seattle’s Offense

The Seattle Mariners hit 160 home runs last season, the fourth lowest team total in the American League, ahead of only Oakland, Kansas City, and Baltimore. Those three teams combine to average a little under 70 wins. Seattle won 85 behind brilliant defense and the long arm of Felix Hernandez. Naturally, Seattle looked to add some power this off-season, right? Well, not quite.

Russell Branyan, the lone Mariner over 30 homers in 2009, is elsewhere, replaced at first base by Casey Kotchman (career high amount of homers in one season: 14). Jose Lopez was the only other Mariner to hit more than 20, and he’s now at third base, replacing Adrian Beltre and making way for the Mariners’ big free agent acquisition in Chone Figgins (career high: 9). The M’s did add some guys with pop, like Milton Bradley (career high: 22), Ryan Garko (career high: 21), and Eric Byrnes (career high: 26), but clearly the Mariners are not going to win because of the long ball. That raises the question: Do you need home runs to win ball games?

The answer is no, even in the modern era.

From 1998, the last time expansion took place, through the 2008 season, 85 teams won at least 90 games. The average amount of homers hit by the 90+ win teams is 192, the average amount of homers hit per team across the league from 1998-2009 is 174. Nearly 30% of the 90+ win teams between 1998 and 2009 hit fewer than the team average during that time period. It makes sense that most playoff quality teams hit more homers than average because most playoff teams are better than the rest of the league; whether it’s at scoring runs or preventing them.

The correlation coefficient for team wins and team homers between 1998 and 2009 is a not insignificant .19. That’s stronger than the correlation coefficient associated with doubles and wins (.078), triples and wins (.015), but not stronger than the relationship between walks taken and wins (.22). Seattle was second to last in walks last season. They’ve added quite a few patient batters, like the aforementioned Figgins (the only player in the American League with more than 100 walks last season). Despite walks evidently having a stronger relationship to wins, we won’t hear about it. *

In the end, homers and walks are really just means to scoring runs, and scoring runs is just a means to winning ballgames.

*Inevitably, someone will point out the obvious by saying that one walk is worth far less than a homer. That’s absolutely true, but it’s not the argument. I’m not arguing that teams should focus on walks instead of homers or that walks are more valuable than homers, I’m simply showing that walks correlate better with winning games than homers do. There are ways to win without doing either. Just ask the 2007 Angels who didn’t do much walking or homering and still won 94 games.