Sweep the Mets

B eat the Mets, beat the Mets, step right up and sweep the Mets...

The 2024 Seattle Mariners continue to confound, having just completed a three-game sweep of the New York Mets in which they outscored the visiting Gothamites 22-1. Coming into the series, the Mets were, by record, a superior team and holding a playoff position in the National League. Now they are not.

In the previous series, the Mariners were bested two-games-to-one by the well-under-.500 Detroit Tigers and were saved from a three-game sweep the bad way by the inexperience of a Detroit rookie right fielder, who let the game-winning runs score after misplaying a base hit into a walkoff double. Detroit outscored Seattle 13-8 in that series, including the three two-out runs that flipped that final game in Seattle's favor. 

There just is no consistency with this team. At least, not in terms of wins and losses; they had one good hot streak when they won eight of nine in June, but they followed that up with a slump that saw them drop 10 of 13. Hey, maybe they're finally on a roll! Ugh, now they're back to stinking up the place.

It's frustrating, because they could be truly great. They have a pitching staff that's the envy of the baseball world, but as has been the case for years, those pitchers have to make do with minimal support from the lineup. Prior to the late-July trades, there was no one in the Seattle offense that could be relied upon for much of anything except a whiff when putting the ball in play is what mattered.

As discussed yesterday, this is a self-inflicted would on the Mariners' part. The front office at some point decided to go all in on the idea of home runs as the only goal of batting. They hired coaches to perpetuate that thinking, and since 2020 those coaches include one Jarret DeHart. For the mini-season of 2020 and for 2021, DeHart was the number-two guy under Tim Laker, who at least was a former big-league catcher with experience to shape his methods even if he proved to be a rather poor batting coach. Since then, DeHart has been the top dog in the offensive coaching department despite never playing professional ball and going into coaching straight out of college—when the joined the M's in ’20, he was younger than rookies Sam Haggerty, Braden Bishop, and Jake Fraley; the same age as second-year big-leaguer Ty France and third-year player J.P. Crawford; and barely older than rookies Kyle Lewis and Evan White.

Now, experience does not equal effectiveness. The M's have had plenty of coaches and managers that prove that. But it helps. It's not only something to inform one's own thinking, it's something that players will rely on when taking instruction. Only with DeHart, almost every guy on the squad has more experience hitting a baseball than he does. Even young Julio Rodríguez was in pro ball while DeHart was still a student at Tulane. None of DeHart's experience involves life as a pro player, not even the low minor leagues, and once someone gets to the Majors the issues coaches face with players are as much psychological as mechanical (if not more so). I can't imagine a player in a slump going up to DeHart and asking for tips on how to work out of it and getting anything back that is relatable.

We've got several years' worth of history now with DeHart in the dugout, so I decided to look at the numbers. Here's a sampling (bold = MLB worst):

We can probably discount 2020 since it wasn't a real season with only 60 games. Still, the only thing better then was scoring runners from third, otherwise the whole DeHart era holds up as being terrible. The fact that the Mariners won as many games as they have in this span is shocking and shows how good they are on the pitching side of things. It's a real Jeckyll/Hyde coaching staff—hitting is the terrifying monster, pitching and defense (under Pete Woodward and Perry Hill, respectively) are the genius doctor.

The biggest item in that table to me is the productive out rate. Being able to advance runners is a necessary skill for any batter, but the M's just don't care about it. The scoring runners from 3rd with 0 or 1 out is in part a subset of the productive out rate, it just happens to be the most important one and the strikeout rates tell us that there is no adjustment being made for situational hitting: an easy RBI opportunity when a run can be batted in without needing a hit is treated no differently than any other trip to the plate.

But let's get a basis for comparison here. In contrast to the DeHart years, here's the same number set from the years Edgar Martínez was batting coach:

Edgar wasn't the greatest coach, it turns out being the best at doing something doesn't necessarily translate into being the best at teaching it. But his experience surely counted for something: Though the runs per game and the on-base rate aren't much different, the productive out numbers are at least around league average and the strikeouts are significantly better. And for all of DeHart's emphasis on power hitting, the slug rates are generally worse under his reign.

I was happy to see the sweep of the Mets. It kept Seattle tied for the top spot in the American League West. But if that productive out rate was even average—just average!—this team, with this staff of starting pitchers, would be running away with the division and already plotting postseason strategies.

Clearly, I had too much time on my hands today.