Mariner musings

I attended the Mariner game last night with my friend Bill, a game that ended in a 6-0 victory for the hometown M's against the visiting New York Metropolitans. It was a crisply played game, one with timely hitting from the usually-moribund Seattle lineup to go with the great-as-usual starting pitching that was a welcome contrast to the previous series, when the M's dropped two of three—and really should have lost all three—to the rebuilding Detroit Tigers.

All season long—and really this goes back a few years at least—the Mariners' hitting prowess has been a joke. At this moment they are last in the Major Leagues in team batting average (.217), last in hits, and next-to-last in total bases. They are above only the hapless Chicago White Sox (who just snapped a 21-game losing streak), the nearly-as-hapless Miami Marlins, and those rebuilding Tigers in on-base percentage; and above only the White Sox and Marlins in runs scored per game. Yet, somehow they remain tied for first place in the American League West.

That's a testament to the outstanding pitching staff, but if either of the two other contenders in the division were having a typical season, the M's wouldn't be in shouting distance of first place with those kinds of offensive numbers.

Why are they so bad, though? I mean, the M's aren't lacking talented players. Most of the roster has shown real ability to hit.

My opinion? It's institutional. The Mariners themselves—the club entity, not the individual players—have employed a batting philosophy that does not work and coaching personnel that do not help, and rather than address that fundamental issue they have looked to scapegoating individual players as a method of "finding the problem."

After leading the universe in strikeouts last season, their attempt at a solution was to get rid of the players that had the most Ks and bring in less strikeout-prone replacements. Result? This season's Mariners once again lead all of baseball in strikeouts.

Over the course of this season, when things have been going poorly for some players, rather than try to address the struggles they either do nothing or drop them from the team. Mitch Garver is having the worst year of his career by a long shot, but no one is helping him try to right the ship. Having his own down year, Ty France was unceremoniously designated for assignment and eventually traded to the Reds for, I think, a used rosin bag and some sunflower seeds. This for a guy that was an All-Star as recently as 2022, a guy who looked like the second coming of Edgar Martinez until midway through last year's campaign (and a guy who I still believe will win a batting title or two at some point; now, though, it'll be for someone else). He's only had a few games with the Reds so far, but I will be surprised if he doesn't end the year batting at least .275 post-trade.

The Mariners have a batting coach named Jarret DeHart, a guy who has never played above college ball and is somehow in his fifth year as a big-league batting coach despite still being too young to run for President by several years. He's a child of the Statcast Age, someone who lives by the newfangled code of the "launch angle" and wants to see his hitters belt home runs as often as possible. And, since he's kept his job for these five years—there were rookies on the team older than him when he started!—I have to think the front office shares his priorities and hitting philosophies. Even though they haven't worked out. At all.

We've already mentioned the strikeouts. Those come part and parcel with swinging for the fences. Try to hit home runs all the time and you're going to strike out a lot, it's inevitable. So it only pays off if you make up for that in other ways, like drawing walks or hitting an exceptional number of extra-base hits. Even if you do that, a whole team doing that is not going to score much.

So, the M's lead the universe in striking out, but is that offset by slugging? Well, no. As a team they are currently slugging .369, again better than only the bottom-feeding White Sox and Marlins. They do draw a fair number of walks, but that doesn't mean much because once those batters are on base they don't usually come home: The M's leave 62% of baserunners aboard at the end of innings (league average is about 56%), thanks in large part to their inability to drive in runs from third base with 0 or 1 out. Predictably, the M's are last in the Majors in sac flies with just 16 on the year (MLB average is 31).

There are a few Mariners doing well and a few others who've improved, but that's telling as well. The guys doing well are mid-season acquisitions from other clubs: Victor Robles, the team's leading hitter at .310/.378/.460 since suiting up for Seattle, and Randy Arozarena, who in a dozen games as a Mariner has a line of .279/.414/.442. Meantime, Mitch Haniger,  Cal Raleigh, and Jorge Polanco have picked things up of late—Haniger has posted an on-base mark of .340 since the All-Star break (compared to .280 before); Raleigh likewise has an OBP of .340 since the last visit to Anaheim to play the Angels in early July (.294 before); and Polanco has posted a line of .282/.342/.535 over the past month (until aggravating a nagging injury the other night) after batting just .190/.280/.284 prior to that. The telling bit with those three is that each of them started hitting after consulting with outside help, getting coaching sessions with ex-big leaguers they know. Raleigh went to see Denny Hocking at Big League Swings in Anaheim for some private tutelage; Haniger has a history with an ex-player outside coach (I want to say Steve Lake, but I could easily be misremembering that) he reportedly revisited during the break; according to broadcaster Dave Sims, Polanco has a guy he went to for help while he was on the injured list.

This tells me that Jarret DeHart is so not-good at his job, that the Mariners as an organization are so bad when it comes to coaching batting and instruction on fundamentals, that any player needing an assist has to make time for and expend effort in finding it elsewhere; and if guys are going well after learning their craft somewhere else, they shouldn't listen to anything DeHart and his staff tells them.

Bill and I had a lot of fun at last night's game, with the good play on the field and the good conversation not only between the two of us but also with a pair of tourists from San Francisco in the row behind us who knew their baseball despite being far too young (they looked maybe 25) and shared my appreciation for ballpark aesthetics. On the drive home we were still kind of marveling at the score, and when I dropped Bill off he said to his neighbor, "the Mariners scored six whole runs! Can you believe it?"

Still tied for first. A postseason appearance is still as likely as not. But having no batting coach at all might be better than the negative impact the current one appears to inflict on the team.