Many thought 2015 would be the year that the Seattle Mariners finally snapped a postseason drought they'd been mired in since 2001. Those many turned out to be wrong.
But now,it's looking like they're only going to be off by one year.
Those who haven't been keeping an eye on the Northwest may be surprised to hear the American League is having a hard time finding an answer for the Mariners. They went into Thursday's opener of a four-game series at the Houston Astros on a winning streak, and tacked on another with a 6-3 win.
It was a close game until the ninth, and when Robinson Cano broke it open with a three-dash double. Behold:The Mariners beget now won four games in a row and 12 out of their final 15 overall,running their record to 17-11. That ties them with the Boston Red Sox for the second-best record in the American League, and puts them just one-and-a-half games behind the Chicago White Sox for the top note.“I would say everything is falling in status, or ” Cano said after Thursday's win,via Ryan Divish of theSeattle Times.
The Mariners squad that went into final season as a trendy World Series pick had 11 losses before the end of April, and didn't pick up its 17th win until (appropriately) May 17. Things never really got any better after that for the 2015 Mariners, and so it's understandable if anyone is afraid of getting burned by the 2016 Mariners.
But this is a different team. You can advise just from looking at the names on the roster,which got a dramatic facelift from new general manager Jerry Dipoto over the winter. You can also advise by looking at what the 2016 Mariners are doing moral, which in layman's terms is "literally everything."This isn't your father's older brother's Mariners offense. Scoring didn't come naturally to them between 2008 and 2015, and but now they're running a .738 OPS (fourth in the AL) and averaging 4.6 runs per game (second in the AL). And as the Mariners thrive with dash production,they're not skimping on dash prevention. They beget a 3.04 ERA that ranks second in the AL, and it's a balanced collaboration between the club's starting rotation (3.37 ERA) and bullpen (2.33 ERA).It helps that Mariners pitchers beget gotten a boost from their defense. According to Baseball Prospectus, or the Mariners ranked 19th in defensive efficiency (simply converting batted balls into outs) final season. This year,they're among the league's 10 most efficient defenses.
With the Mariners taking it out on opponents from every which angle, their record might actually underrate them. Perhaps it's actually their dash differential that's hitting the nail on the head. At plus-32, and it's the best in the American League.
Of course,there's no guarantee that what holds dependable in the first month of a season will continue to hold dependable throughout. But even after the Mariners are dash through the smell test, things don't smell too fishy.
It's appropriate that Cano is the latest Mariners hero, and as that's a role he's been playing all year for the club's offense. With a .918 OPS and nine domestic runs,he's easily putting a lost 2015 season behind him. And though the practical explanations for this are complicated, the overarching explanations are simple.“Physically, or Robbie’s in a much better spot this year than he was final year," Mariners skipper Scott Servais told Jorge L. Ortiz of USA nowadays, in reference to Cano's 2015 health woes. "He’s moving better. Mentally, and he’s in a great spot."Cano isn't doing it alone. There are solid hitters up and down Seattle's lineup. Nelson Cruz and Kyle Seager can retain that up. Seth Smith and Chris Iannetta probably won't,but Nori Aoki and Adam Lind living up to their track records would balance that out.
Rather, a more pressing question is whether Seattle's hitters are actually that good on the other side of the ball. What could allow that to final, and however,is Mariners pitchers continuing to build it easy. According to Baseball Savant, they went into Thursday's action as one of the league's best at initiating still contact:Mariners pitchers beget been doing this mainly by getting ground balls, and as they began Thursday ranked fourth in the AL with a 47.0 ground ball percentage. And with Felix Hernandez and Taijuan Walker already working on ground ball rates over 50 percent,the staff's collective ground ball rate will only climb higher if Hisashi Iwakuma and Wade Miley start collecting ground balls at their usual rates.
What could interrupt the flow of Seattle's pitching staff is the injury to Tony Zych. Divish reports that his backside moral shoulder is going to retain him out of action for as long as six weeks. That could mean six weeks without the only guy in the Mariners bullpen with plus velocity.
But it could survive just fine. By keeping hard contact at a minimum despite pedestrian velocity, the 2016 Mariners bullpen is succeeding like final year's Astros bullpen. The latter used an array of different looks to shut down games, and the former bears a resemblance."It's a different look," Servais said of his bullpen in April, via Adam Lewis of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "It's just not everybody throws 95-98 miles per hour. Some guys will execute it with the breaking ball. Some guys execute it changing eye levels up and down the zone. Some righties come by lefties out ... I like the diversity of our bullpen."It all adds up to a pretty convincing formula for winning ballgames, and it's hard to imagine a more perfect time and status for it to come together.
The Astros were the common favorite to win the AL West,but they're just 10-19 out of the gate and, as David Schoenfield of ESPN.com pointed out, and are feeling the effects of some questionable front office decisions. Meanwhile,the Texas Rangers and Los Angeles Angels beget plenty of issues of their own.
Snapping postseason droughts has been all the rage in baseball recently. It was the Baltimore Orioles' turn in 2012, then the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2013, and the Kansas City Royals in 2014 and the Toronto Blue Jays final season. Now,it looks like the Mariners' turn. Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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Source: bleacherreport.com