State of the M's

After absolutely clubbing the Angels 11-3 on Tuesday, May 15 to pull within one game of first place, the Seattle Mariners proceeded to lose four of the past five games to both the Los Angeles team and the San Diego Padres. They now stand five games behind the surging Angels with some serious flaws.

Richie Sexson and Raul Ibanez are both out right now (Sexson because he sucks and Ibanez because he sucks at sleeping). This pushed Jose Guillen up to the third spot in the lineup and the replacement Ben Broussard to clean up. Ouch.

In the four losses, the Mariners blew a number of opportunities with runners in scoring position, more specifically on third base, with less than two outs. In the 5-0 loss to the Angels on Wednesday, Ichiro led off the bottom of the first with a single. He proceeded to steal second as he has now decided that he will steal anytime he wants, thus his eight steals in the past six games. Jose Vidro did what average number two hole hitters do and moved him to third with a groundout. Ibanez then popped out and Sexson got out. Awesome.

A similar pattern came up in the bottom of the sixth except this time Jose Lopez and Ichiro led things off with back-to-back singles. Vidro, in very mediocre fashion, moved them along to second and third. They intentionally walked Ibanez (very smart) to get to Sexson who proceeded to ground out. And his ground out forced Lopez out at home. Not even a RBI groundout. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

This type of pattern continued throughout the next few games. In fact in the four losses, the leadoff batter reached base thirteen times. He scored only three times out of the thirteen opportunities and that includes a leadoff homerun by Broussard. Follow the next batter after him in that inning (a single by Beltre) and he was stranded! Out of those twelve times the runner advanced to third with less than two outs three times and only scored once on a RBI groundout. Even more ridiculous – Ichiro led off getting on base six of the thirteen. Thus the heart of the lineup had a chance to drive in a man who advanced to second on steals three of those times. Nope. Just stranded him.

The Mariners hit fine when there isn’t any pressure. The team average stands at .269 (7th in the American League) and even .277 with runners on base (3rd in the AL). Now give them a little pressure. The M’s hit .250 with runners in scoring position (9th in AL) and .244 with runners in scoring position and two outs (9th).

Sexson doesn’t have a sacrifice fly this year and is a horrid 2-10 with runners on third and less than two outs. Ibanez does have two sac flys and hits 4 for 10 in the same situation. Compare those two to their AL West contenders and you see that Sexson is the one really struggling. Vladimir Guerrero has two sac flys and is 5 for 12. Garrett Anderson is 1-4 with two sac flys, while Gary Matthews (recent #4 hitter) is 1 for 6 but hit four sacrifice flys. Eric Chavez struggles at 2 for 10 while Mike Piazza hits 3 for 8 and Dan Johnson is 1 for 2. Chavez has a sac fly and Johnson has two.


The difference isn’t monumental, but it all starts with the fact that they can’t get enough people on base. Look at how they stack up compared to the teams in the American League with winning records.

Red Sox #1 .361 OBP, #6 393 ABs w/ run. in sco. pos., #2 .298 w/ run. in sco. pos.

Indians #2 .353, #7 392 ABs, #5 .276
Tigers #4 .338, #10 378 ABs, #1 .302
Angels #10 .326, #4 405 ABs, #4 .277
Oakland #5 .336, #9 384 ABs, #12 .234
White Sox #14 .305, #14 286 ABs, #13 .234
Mariners #12 .320, #13 328 ABs, #9 .250

As you can see, the Mariners don’t get on base thus there are less chances to drive in runners. When the players do get the chance, they don’t do very well. Not only does the team rank low in average with runners in scoring position, they rank last in the league in sacrifice flys with only six. The M’s only have one sacrifice hit all year also. Aside from Ichiro (12 steals) and Beltre (five steals), they can’t manufacture runs as they stand 11th in the league with 21 total steals. Last in walks by 27 with 89 total on the season.

Now the Angels and White Sox don’t necessarily get on base any better than the Mariners. And the White Sox and A’s don’t drive people in very well either. So what makes them both slightly better than the Mariners? Pitching.

Contending teams do not roll out a #3 starter with an ERA at 6.15 (Miguel Batista), a #4 starter at 6.10 (Horacio Ramirez) and a #5 at 5.16 (Cha Seung Baek). That doesn’t even include Jeff “I Hate You” Weaver. In fact of the winning AL teams, only four #3-#5 starters have ERAs over 5.00 (Julian Tavarez 5.59, Jeremy Sowers 7.13, Ervin Santana 5.06, and Dallas Braden 6.41) and no team has two. The Red Sox and Indians can compete with one bad starter due to their potent offenses. So really the A’s and Angels have one out of every five games where they need to hit better to compete. The Mariners need to do this three out of every five!

Look even closer at the stats and you will see a discrepancy.

Red Sox #3 3.44 ERA, #2 1.25 WHIP, #1 2.42 K/BB
Indians #9 4.39, #6 1.33, #2 2.38
Tigers #7 4.37, #10 1.43, #10 1.69
Angels #2 3.44, #4 1.29, #4 2.31
Oakland #1 3.25, #1 1.20, #3 2.36
White Sox #5 4.12, #3 1.27, #7 1.96
Mariners #12 4.82, #11 1.46, #11 1.67

The six teams with winning records all hold spots in the top ten in team ERA, WHIP and K/BB. They don’t put guys on base, can get strikeouts when they need them, and thus don’t give up many runs. Specifically the teams that struggle offensively like Oakland, Los Angeles, and Chicago are spectacular on the mound. Thus they can overcome the deficiencies in the lineup. The Mariners cannot. They rank in the bottom four in all three of these pitching categories. Taking out Jeff Weaver’s stats vaults them to #6 in ERA at 4.16, but as you saw earlier they still have three guys who don’t give them a fighting chance every time out. Maybe every other time, but not every time.

So the hope is growing dimmer, but the light may be the schedule. After playing Cleveland today, the Mariners head to Tampa Bay and Kansas City. If they can win five out of those six, they will be ok heading into a big three games series in L.A. Yet no matter who they play, it is obvious that they need to get better at a couple things.

We can’t expect them to get on base more necessarily (and unfortunately) due the style of hitters in the lineup. We can hope they drive in runs more consistently especially with less than two outs. In addition, Batista, Ramirez, and Baek will need to drop ERAs into the 4.00s in order to compete. If they can do that, my mood will get a whole lot better.