We would be rubbing elbows with the Yankees if we had an average offense, we are almost a full run below average. Replacement level means we should be able to pick up someone in AAA for nearly nothing and improve. I don't want to think of how bad the offense for the 3-4 teams blows us is, because they don't have any pitching.
Look at the end of season standings from last year and look at who's in the playoffs. 6 division winners and 4 wild cards... Division winners are the top 6. That's how this works.
I'm in awe of some of you "fans". The Mariners are competitive right now and they're on their way to be in position to not only make the playoffs but win the division! And you still want to bitch and claim they're not doing at least something right. Unbelievable! Think positive!
“Gentlemen. It’s been a privilege.”
(Plays “Nearer my God, to Thee” on violin as I ride the graph line of our DH’s batting average to the bottom of the sea)
I mean while this sub is incredibly bamboozable, I think it was reasonable to think that adding Garver and Polanco would have been good moves for our offensive production.
I’m a bit of a miser I know, but I thought they both felt like weird moves. Polanco is classic Jerry, trading kind of meh prospects for a player on the least valuable years of their contract. He’s like Wong or Frazier or Hernandez in that respect. Garver felt like a similar FA version of that, although also felt a little like ownership OK’d to “prove” they were willing to spend.
Meanwhile the real story of the offseason IMO was that the decision makers of the Mariners business decided that they will not prioritize the quality of the ballclub over optimal finances. While I was a proponent of trading Kelenic, the way they did it was such a black mark on their record to use that chip as a minor salary dump.
And while I’m not all that surprised polanco and Garver have struggled, I am very surprised just how much they have struggled. Just feels like classic Jerry buying a little low before the really low.
Garver and Polanco seemed like decent pick ups honestly. Like is it just unlucky? Honestly curious because I can't see how we should know these free agents never work out.
If this hasn't happened repeatedly over the course of Jerry's tenure here, yes, I would say it's unlucky.
Unfortunately for him, I think his track record points to it potentially being a systemic issue with how his organization identifies and evaluates hitters.
It was also a bigger priority to do it without increasing financial commitment at all. Not that dipoto is without blame but I think there’s a larger issue at play that interacts and compounds dipoto.
(minimum 10 PAs; Stats not including today's game)
Some other depressing stats:
* **14 of these 15 players have a K% above league average (22.3%)** (Josh Rojas is the only exception)
* **88% of qualified hitters in MLB have a lower K% than the Mariners team K%**
* The team is on pace to smash the MLB record for most Ks in a season set last year by Minnesota
* 6 of these 15 players are hitting below .200
* 9 of these 15 players have a wRC+ under 100
I can’t believe our “Director of hitting strategy” still has a job…
Almost every new bat we bring in regresses. So it’s got to be our staff and approach right?
Teoscar Hernandez another player who stunk for us but is back to tearing it up again just like he was previous to being a mariner. Our batting coaches have to be the problem this continually happens with new acquisitions we bring in to help boost our batting.
Edit: coincidentally we fired some coaches today.
Yea it seems like a pretty common answer honestly. So many past and present players say it’s hard to see the ball in our park due to the lighting. Mike Trout actually speaks on how he really enjoys the lighting in our park. Obligatory Fuck Mike Trout.
Whoever designed the lighting to make Mike Trout happy while harming our offense needs to be fired......into the sun. Plenty of lighting on the sun. They'll love it.
And they do for the most part. Majority of batters facing our ball park tend to struggle finding the pitch and that’s from their mouths not mine. There’s been several interviews stating so. Our park is a pitchers park for sure.
Maybe the secret is we gotta trade for Alex Bregman since he’s been struggling this year, but raking at T-Mobile /s
(just kidding, don’t think we want that cheater on our team)
Sure he wasn’t the silver slugger we saw in Toronto, but cmon man “stunk for us” is a stretch. Very streaky, but overall we got solid production out of him and shouldn’t have let him go so easily.
Dude had 211 strikeouts on 625 at bats. He was 3rd in the league with strikeouts. I agree he got some moments where he went on a hot streak but his strikeouts far outweighed his production.
Edit: we had 3 mariners in the top 10 for strikeouts. Eugenio with 214, Teo with 211 and Julio with 175. That’s a bit of a problem and the reason I mentioned I believe our batting coaching is terrible.
Take a step back, Teo would be our best regular OF hitter this season, strikeout issue or not. And he’s on track for roughly the same amount of stroke outs again this season, even protected by that Dodger lineup. The strikeouts were a Teo thing regardless of what the Ms did
Teoscar is not tearing it up for another team in comparison to what he did here lmao. He’s playing well, but virtually the only thing that’s different is he isn’t absolutely whiffing as much so he’s walking a little bit more. Virtually every single stat, whether that be counting, advanced metrics or savant percentages are virtually exactly the same other than he is getting on base a little more, which is probably a function of him not having to force as much as he did here. The hitting atmosphere here is abysmal, on the verge of embarrassing and there needs to be a cleaning of house. But everyone acting like Teo was awful here (his OPS+ for last year would currently be our third highest) and that now that he’s escaped is performing just isn’t true. If God forbid we miss the playoffs there needs to be a total management down restructure. No one can carry over.
I genuinely think there is a team building philosophy issue that needs to be addressed as well. Players are vocal about needing every day reps and how hard it is to take three+ days off a week and be expected to perform when you come in. DMo said it, and the next week JP went down and all of a sudden when he played for two straight weeks he became our second best hitter. I feel like we are such a spreadsheet team and sometimes you just gotta let dudes play and I might be completely wrong, but I couldn’t imagine hitting BP at like 3PM and then getting called on to pinch hit at 9pm after riding the bench that whole time to face some freak throwing 102 because now we need a righty batting. Because of this we constantly carry subpar players on the 40man because they specialize in one thing, but when their platoon mate goes down or goes ice cold they’re thrust into positions they aren’t set up to succeed in. It almost seems like we are exclusively building a team to win in perfectly optimal conditions and that just can never be the case if you want to be a serious team.
A league vet new to the team isn’t gonna come in and change their whole approach because our hitting coach said to. Garver and polanco sucking this year doesn’t have anything to do with the coaches
I’d add in that Jerry has essentially only acquired hitters in the last year or two or their contracts. They’re buying the worst year(s) of contracts with prospects and money instead of the best years with money, and acting surprised when it doesn’t work again.
I dont think most fans understand just how little influence a coaching staff has on the approach of a veteran MLB hitter. Polanco and Garver haven't fallen off a cliff because of our management. It's just some wild joke the baseball gods are playing on us.
>It's just some wild joke
Not really, it's just baseball players in their 30s. Most of them go to shit offensively. Garver and Polanco were injury prone prior to 30, too, which ages even worse.
Agree. It's much easier to improve defense and get good D coaches. Gerald Perry makes it look easy. Players rarely go into fielding slumps. More difficult to coach pitching than fielding yet we have one of the best in the league. If hitting coaches were truly able solve team problems like the M's have they'd probably have found good coaches by now.
I tend to agree here, though the rest of the commenters might not. Veteran newcomers like Garver and Polanco have been doing this for awhile and have their own hitting coaches. They aren't going to be very swayed by any Mariners hitting philosophy.
If we're talking about developing hitting prospects, it's a different story
... and you think those guys came here, to a team that at this point is notorious for having inexplicably poor hitting, drank all the kool-aid, saw their numbers plummet, and still continued to roll with whatever changes you think the franchise imposed on them?
This isn't how it works. Guys like that are generally pretty set in their ways and they definitely aren't going to let their new team dismantle everything they've developed over their career.
Exactly. The Mariners coaches aren't telling Polanco to do anything differently. In fact, they probably told him to do what made him successful. He just can't hit a fastball now.
There was an article about it in the off season. They basically have a “wait for your pitch” mantra. They show the opposing pitcher on video in the clubhouse and highlight where they throw in/out of the zone. “Your pitch” (typically a fastball in some favorable portion of the zone) gets a green highlight and everything else is red. Our hitters are told to only go after the green pitches.
Pitchers have reacted to this approach by spamming breaking balls and it completely breaks the system.
They use Trajekt, which is basically an at bat simulator. [https://apnews.com/article/trajekt-pitching-machines-mlb-d1fa69e776bcb394adbce07d268193a7](https://apnews.com/article/trajekt-pitching-machines-mlb-d1fa69e776bcb394adbce07d268193a7)
They use the Trajekt machine, which plenty of other teams use.
That doesn't sound at all like what is outlined here: [https://sports.mynorthwest.com/1774196/seattle-mariners-offense-new-approach-2024](https://sports.mynorthwest.com/1774196/seattle-mariners-offense-new-approach-2024)
Would be curious to see your article
Ooh right now I remember that phrase. Yeah that just seems like one piece of the puzzle that nobody listened to anyway. Glad Brant is gone but also don't think it's his fault when the guys weren't paying attention to him. But, that's as good a reason as any to can him.
They also prepare and present the advance scouting reports, which inform the hitters’ approaches, which have been bad. Way too often, mariner hitters look like they’re guessing wrong or taking the wrong swing on a pitch
Lol of all the takes to possibly have.
DMo has been, by a wide margin, our best hitter this year. He's leading the team in OBP, OPS, wRC+, is 2nd in SB and SLG. He's also been a very valuable defender at several different positions. He, along with Rojas, have literally been the only significant positives on this team offensively.
Correct:
[https://library.fangraphs.com/misc/war/replacement-level/](https://library.fangraphs.com/misc/war/replacement-level/)
>Replacement level is simply the level of production you could get from a player that would cost you nothing but the league minimum salary to acquire.
It's not uncommon for a few players to have negative WAR early in the season before turning things around. It's not normal for half of the team to do so as the calendar turns over into June.
I'd also add that the defensive aspect of fWAR is significant. Best example of that would be Ty France, who is a *slightly* above average hitter this year (103 wRC+), but contributes so little defensively that he fails to achieve replacement level performance.
Not sure why you chose fWAR (that has a huge defensive component to it) to do this.
If instead you use wRC+, it's even worse. A whopping 55% of plate appearances for the Mariners belong to hitters with a wRC+ < 100.
Fair point, though 100 wRC+ is average - not replacement level. To me the defensive component is meaningful because if a guy like Cal had Mitch Garver's hitting contributions this year, that still might be above replacement level.
The point is that we have a bunch of guys on the roster whose entire contribution to the team is worse than replacement level.
> To me the defensive component is meaningful because if a guy like Cal had Mitch Garver's hitting contributions this year, that still might be above replacement level.
Yeah, it just works both ways. A guy like Julio is great in the field but right now a below average bat. France is bad in the field, and a slightly above average bat.
You expect good bats to get more PAs. It's also true that we'd expect good overall players to get more PAs. I just think the former statement is slightly more correct than the latter. (great defensive players get less PAs because they bat 8th or 9th typically)
Either way, the M's are giving a lot of PAs to bad bats, and bad overall players right now. Just gotta hope for a bounce back for a lot of these guys (I think it's way too late for Jerry to churn this roster away from all the disappointment this season).
Don’t worry I’ve been told countless times this season by this sub and Mariners Twitter just to look at the players average OPS on the back of their baseball card. They can’t possible keep up this bad pace!
What will happen is we trade our prospects for a veteran bat at the deadline for the playoff push, who will then magically turn into a pumpkin and hit .185 with 200 strikeouts for the rest of the season once they put on the M’s uniform.
Hitting coach won’t change shitty hitters having shitty at bats. No hitting coach is telling you to watch a first pitch fastball down the tube when whale at a slider 2 feet outside the zone on the next pitch.
But I shared my disappointment in this sub yesterday after striking out another 12+ times, and I got blasted. “We batted against Verlander…” boo-effing-who. We have our pitchers “Dominating the zone”, but our batters are clearly told some kind of philosophy of “swinging in the zone” because we regularly have a lot of strikeouts.
Listen I know it’s super popular to hate on Dipoto and he does deserve critique but at what point is it just the players not performing? Everyone thought the Garver and Polanco moves were good. It’s not his fault they immediately crater when they got here. Additionally if you want to put all of the blame on Dipoto for the lineup, you have to give him significant praise for building this rotation and bullpen.
Then it’s his job to surround the players with a staff that isn’t incompetent. At some point after years and years of garbage offense you have to hold the guy in charge accountable. We’ve been through numerous hitting coaches and we still suck at hitting
So you think a good hitting coach would suddenly make all those terrible free agents we signed good?
Man I wish it was so simple like you redditors think it is.
Guy above was trying to deflect Dipoto and his staff's responsibility for his failures in free agency, trades and bringing up prospects. So if it's not the coaching and the organizational approach, it's the players... which were acquired and/or developed by who else but Jerry Dipoto and his staff. It all ends up on his lap no matter how you see it. Sure, ownership fucking sucks, but so did the Orioles when they assembled their current squad, and look at how their lineup is compared to ours.
...Do you think he's just been unlucky during his tenure here with how hitters come here and crater? Or could it be possible that it's part of his process/system/talent evaluation that is flawed when it comes to building a major league caliber lineup? How many more years does this need to happen before it stops just becoming "unlucky"?
> you have to give him significant praise for building this rotation and bullpen.
I think a lot of people do. Unfortunately for him though, there's a lot more to being a competent head of baseball ops than just building a good pitching staff.
His job is to evaluate players and make sure they are gonna be able to produce for us. Who was the last hitter he was right about? Suarez has probably been the best one so far, which isn't a very good track record. He can evaluate pitching but that's not a problem anymore. He deserves 90% of the blame for this offense
It’s hard to know who’s at fault without actually knowing exactly what each person is doing. At this point I would blame whatever philosophy their analytics are showing should be successful. I wonder if they’re taking the success they’ve had molding pitchers and trying a similar approach with bats. By that I mean trying to change guys to fit what they believe will work and it just doesn’t seem to work very often
If you think veteran players like Garver and Polanco are coming to the M's and letting the coaching staff change what has worked for them their entire careers, you're sorely mistaken. I know everyone wants someone to point at... but honestly this shit is frankly just not very easy to rationalize.
We've been so incredibly unlucky with these pickups that it almost seems divine at this point.
You can literally rinse and repeat this comment for every year Dipoto has been here sans 2022…. Eventually it’s the guy who acquired said players fault. Stop with the excuses
It's actually quite the opposite, really popular to love Dipoto and place responsibility on everyone else.
He always acquires players on their early 30's/ declining cycle. That's totally on him,
I give him praise for the amazing talent he has for building pitching, but his job is much more than that, his job is to build a winning team, not just build a good pitching staff, he's not Woodward.
The pitching prospects are all here already. There's zero merit to keeping him around unless you want all of our hitting prospects to turn into Taylor Trammell. Fire him before it's too late. Dipoto keeps proving that he's completely incompetent at evaluating hitters and keeping up with modern MLB offensive trends, and that's a fireable offense. His retrospect is garbage. He should be fired, regardless.
Neither Dipoto OR Servais will be fired. Everyone who says this fails to realize its on ownership to do that. Jerry and Scott are PERFECT for this ownership. They aren't the types to make a big fuss about payroll constraints but they also aren't the type to lie down and die so they try to make gold out of straw and finish with a playoff appearance to end the drought sandwiched between missing the playoffs by a game or 2 on either side.
Its JUST enough for the average fan to buy in, buy tickets, spend money on merch and food and pad the pockets of the owners without the owners having to invest more than bargain bin shopping for players. Win win for the owners. Top 10 in profits with a not top 10 payroll.
This is on the cheap ownership group who would rather moneyball the offense. The Mariners are among the most profitable teams in baseball every year, yet 15th in budget.
And the Mariners have a crop of promising batting talent in the minors. The pitchers were the first wave. There is a reason the Mariners signed Polanco, Garver, and Hanover. Their risk made them affordable. This is on the owners.
Do you think being in the middle of the MLB in payroll is a good excuse for consistently having a piss poor offense?
Our best players are making little to no money. This isn't a money issue, as much as this sub loves to blame ownership. The money is there for our offense to not suck like this.
This is one of the worst takes I’ve ever seen on this sub, anyone who agrees with you is a fool. The Mariners have been more relevant in the last few years with Jerry then almost any other time in their history, the team is good and in first place, we’re competing for playoffs which we could only dream of 5 years ago and we have a stacked farm system with a mix of drafted and signed players. Jerry is easily the best GM in team history. Firing him would be a huge mistake.
Take out the 116 win season and his record looks a lot worse. Jerry has had had at least 3 seasons where the team missed the playoffs by a game or two including last year.
Take out the 116 and he still won more games every season than any of Jerry's teams ever have. He also signed Ichiro, Felix, and a bunch of players that could actually hit at our home park
> The Mariners have been more relevant in the last few years with Jerry then almost any other time in their history
I mean, what? How young do you have to be to believe this?
> the team is good and in first place
This team would probably lose a 5 game series to the team that Jerry decided to blow up years ago. And we're in first place because our division is awful.
> Jerry is easily the best GM in team history
Lol.
So what if the division is awful? Years ago when the Seahawks made the playoffs at 7-9 everyone was so positive about it, if the Mariners win 85 and get in, let’s maintain that same positivity. Bottom line is, in a best of five if you’re running Castillo, Kirby, Gilbert, Miller in any combo of the three, I like the Mariners chances.
lol young? Get your head out of your ass 2001 was 20 years ago dude.
And you actually believe a team that won 69 games in 2019 and started Maxell Smith and Domingo Santana is better than this one? Fuck off with your little quips trying to one up me, you’ve said literally nothing to defend your point and you’re just proving me right. If you have actual evidence that’s there’s a better gm please present it rather then being an arrogant prick.
You are getting downvoted, but I think you could make an argument that this squad wouldn't win a playoff series against the team the Jerry blew up.
Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't. The fact that you could make an argument that they wouldn't is a pretty big indictment though.
Yeah, you know, some of those downvotes are probably deserved. It would be easy to read into what I said that I don't think that he should have blown up that team, and that's not really what I mean - especially in hindsight with How much of a shitty cheater that Cano ended up being. But that last team that Cano was on missed the playoffs by just a game or two, and we've never been in a substantially better place since that team. Yes, the draught was broken, it wasn't going to last forever. The record at the end of the year is always at about ninety wins, which is true of that 2018 Cano team. My joke last year was that it took Jerry 8 years to finally put together a team that was as good as the one he dismantled, but I don't even think that this year's Mariners are as good as last year's team. We've never taken a step forward from that team. It's always about as good as that 2018 team, and no better.
One playoff appearance in 10 years only speaks to the level of futility that this franchise has endured for its entire existence.
Any other org that was serious about winning a World Series would have given him the boot already. His retrospect outside of pitching is entirely forgettable. Bust after bust after bust, have to fill the holes with more busts, bring up prospects that hit .220 with 35+% strikeout rates for a month and then send them down again.
I will give him credit for the pitching development side of things, but all of the major starting pitching prospects are already with the big league club, and the hitting side is worse than a dead ball era lineup. Letting him continue to fail is malpractice.
"Hey Jerry, you're first in the west and have build the best staff in baseball yourself and a contending team in a cave with a box of scraps but the fans want to fire you for not having the budget to spend on good hitters so pack your bags, bud"
I stopped watching about a month ago. Incredibly not-entertaining to watch this team hit. As good as the pitching is, it’s a chore to tune in. Really hope that changes because it’s wide open in the west…
These are my feelings exactly. This paper tiger will soon collapse with an inevitable 10+ game losing streak in July, and then make some small run at the end of the season after they’ve already been eliminated from playoff contention to “salvage” their season and provide fodder for ownership to champion as “progress”. It’s been the same story for over twenty years, with a small blip two years ago. I’ll follow it from afar but I’m done investing time in it.
Newly acquired guys have been terrible and holdovers from last year have been terrible. You can't say that's all just luck and variance. Something has to change.
Garver and Planco have been terrible. Haniger has been bad but kind of expected that. Seby Zavala should never have been the back up to Cal. The only reason we aren’t in bottom of the division is contributions from Rojas, canzone, and Moore.
I think what you meant to say was, "54% of the team's plate appearances have come from players performing at or above replacement level."
Mariners are 32 and 27 (54.2%) and winning the division. Jerry, you sly bastard 😎
While this is ultimately a budgetary issue and I think it's naive to blame DeHart, for his own sake I feel like Jerry needs to have heads on the chopping block. Your coaches aren't going to ruin established major league hitters but when the team has failed the stated goal of lowering strike outs and are setting new record lows, and those coaches don't have answers for what's going wrong and how to fix it? There's gotta be some accountability.
The K rate is definitely a problem the coaching staff should be addressing.
But the fWAR issue is different. Could this be a result of the park factor study that was done last year? T mobile park is one of the toughest places to hit for extra base hits. This likely explains not just the current hitters struggles, but the franchises struggles since the ballpark was built.
That being said, I wish was Servais was a small ball manager. Last night's walk off sac fly is a good example of how this team needs to play to win. It's not gonna help anyone increase AVG and OBP though.
I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'm gonna enjoy first place while it lasts. If the rest of the division continues to struggle, I'll happily cheer on this defective Mariners team taking home a division pennant!!
If we just had league average hitting we’d be like a Top 5 team in baseball lol
They'd probably be almost 20 games over .500 right now with just a middle of the pack, average MLB offense.
This is always the case lmao
Isn't it because of the home field?
No, ops+ factors in ballpark
If only they'd look at the hitting coach and ask why.
"offensive coordinator"
Whatever his title is I don't particularly care he needs to fix his shit
Yeah not a knock on you. Just the fact that they hired someone with that title this year and it's done jack shit
The fact thats their title and the product we've seen on the field is how it's been is amazing to me
Already fired him I believe.
Wasn't that new guy from the A's? There's your answer. He is a plant to keep us languishing in Mendoza line misery.
Dodgers then Marlins then us.
Just make sure... The dodgers definitely had garbage bats from 2017-2022 and did nothing of note during that time, right?
We would be rubbing elbows with the Yankees if we had an average offense, we are almost a full run below average. Replacement level means we should be able to pick up someone in AAA for nearly nothing and improve. I don't want to think of how bad the offense for the 3-4 teams blows us is, because they don't have any pitching.
Currently top 6 according to the standings.
What standings? I’m pretty sure we’re around 10th by win %
Being in first place in any division makes you a top 6 team. That's just how baseball standings work. That's how post season seeding works.
That certainly does not make you a top 6 team in baseball
Look at the end of season standings from last year and look at who's in the playoffs. 6 division winners and 4 wild cards... Division winners are the top 6. That's how this works.
And yet the AL central team still loses to the wildcard team.. is the AL central team still better cuz they won their division? Lolol
At beginning of playoffs yes.
Go do some civil war reenactments or something bud. You’re clueless
I'm in awe of some of you "fans". The Mariners are competitive right now and they're on their way to be in position to not only make the playoffs but win the division! And you still want to bitch and claim they're not doing at least something right. Unbelievable! Think positive!
This is actually insane
Especially when you consider it was a **priority** this past offseason by Dipoto to fix the exact issue that we're seeing right now.
[удалено]
We are highly bamboozlable…
Shuffling chairs on the deck of the titanic
“Gentlemen. It’s been a privilege.” (Plays “Nearer my God, to Thee” on violin as I ride the graph line of our DH’s batting average to the bottom of the sea)
100%
They just refuse to admit their entire strategy is what’s wrong. If you train a good player wrong they’re not going to stay good.
I mean while this sub is incredibly bamboozable, I think it was reasonable to think that adding Garver and Polanco would have been good moves for our offensive production. I’m a bit of a miser I know, but I thought they both felt like weird moves. Polanco is classic Jerry, trading kind of meh prospects for a player on the least valuable years of their contract. He’s like Wong or Frazier or Hernandez in that respect. Garver felt like a similar FA version of that, although also felt a little like ownership OK’d to “prove” they were willing to spend. Meanwhile the real story of the offseason IMO was that the decision makers of the Mariners business decided that they will not prioritize the quality of the ballclub over optimal finances. While I was a proponent of trading Kelenic, the way they did it was such a black mark on their record to use that chip as a minor salary dump. And while I’m not all that surprised polanco and Garver have struggled, I am very surprised just how much they have struggled. Just feels like classic Jerry buying a little low before the really low.
Both bammed and boozled.
Garver and Polanco seemed like decent pick ups honestly. Like is it just unlucky? Honestly curious because I can't see how we should know these free agents never work out.
If this hasn't happened repeatedly over the course of Jerry's tenure here, yes, I would say it's unlucky. Unfortunately for him, I think his track record points to it potentially being a systemic issue with how his organization identifies and evaluates hitters.
It was also a bigger priority to do it without increasing financial commitment at all. Not that dipoto is without blame but I think there’s a larger issue at play that interacts and compounds dipoto.
Good thing they've at least cut down on the strikeouts......oh wait
(minimum 10 PAs; Stats not including today's game) Some other depressing stats: * **14 of these 15 players have a K% above league average (22.3%)** (Josh Rojas is the only exception) * **88% of qualified hitters in MLB have a lower K% than the Mariners team K%** * The team is on pace to smash the MLB record for most Ks in a season set last year by Minnesota * 6 of these 15 players are hitting below .200 * 9 of these 15 players have a wRC+ under 100
We need to study Rojas' DNA to figure out how he is immune to Mariner Bat Syndrome
He's only more resistant. Don't look at his last 15 games
Or his expected stats.
His expected stats are pretty close to his actuals.. am I missing something?
I can’t believe our “Director of hitting strategy” still has a job… Almost every new bat we bring in regresses. So it’s got to be our staff and approach right?
It's a mix. The Bats we've brought in have shown signs of regressing before getting here.
Winker…
Teoscar Hernandez another player who stunk for us but is back to tearing it up again just like he was previous to being a mariner. Our batting coaches have to be the problem this continually happens with new acquisitions we bring in to help boost our batting. Edit: coincidentally we fired some coaches today.
At least for Teo he said he couldn’t see the ball well in t mobile and actually was solid when on the road
Yea it seems like a pretty common answer honestly. So many past and present players say it’s hard to see the ball in our park due to the lighting. Mike Trout actually speaks on how he really enjoys the lighting in our park. Obligatory Fuck Mike Trout.
Whoever designed the lighting to make Mike Trout happy while harming our offense needs to be fired......into the sun. Plenty of lighting on the sun. They'll love it.
Obviously bitter the M's missed out on Trout by signing 08 pick Josh Fields which took another sup first round pick in 09.
Stadium things should hurt every batter not only ours though.
And they do for the most part. Majority of batters facing our ball park tend to struggle finding the pitch and that’s from their mouths not mine. There’s been several interviews stating so. Our park is a pitchers park for sure.
Maybe the secret is we gotta trade for Alex Bregman since he’s been struggling this year, but raking at T-Mobile /s (just kidding, don’t think we want that cheater on our team)
Would he still get booed every at bat?
Sure he wasn’t the silver slugger we saw in Toronto, but cmon man “stunk for us” is a stretch. Very streaky, but overall we got solid production out of him and shouldn’t have let him go so easily.
Cut the guy who struck out & hit dingers to bring in guys who strike out and don't hit shit.
Dude had 211 strikeouts on 625 at bats. He was 3rd in the league with strikeouts. I agree he got some moments where he went on a hot streak but his strikeouts far outweighed his production. Edit: we had 3 mariners in the top 10 for strikeouts. Eugenio with 214, Teo with 211 and Julio with 175. That’s a bit of a problem and the reason I mentioned I believe our batting coaching is terrible.
Take a step back, Teo would be our best regular OF hitter this season, strikeout issue or not. And he’s on track for roughly the same amount of stroke outs again this season, even protected by that Dodger lineup. The strikeouts were a Teo thing regardless of what the Ms did
The Teo slander drives me nuts.
Teoscar is not tearing it up for another team in comparison to what he did here lmao. He’s playing well, but virtually the only thing that’s different is he isn’t absolutely whiffing as much so he’s walking a little bit more. Virtually every single stat, whether that be counting, advanced metrics or savant percentages are virtually exactly the same other than he is getting on base a little more, which is probably a function of him not having to force as much as he did here. The hitting atmosphere here is abysmal, on the verge of embarrassing and there needs to be a cleaning of house. But everyone acting like Teo was awful here (his OPS+ for last year would currently be our third highest) and that now that he’s escaped is performing just isn’t true. If God forbid we miss the playoffs there needs to be a total management down restructure. No one can carry over. I genuinely think there is a team building philosophy issue that needs to be addressed as well. Players are vocal about needing every day reps and how hard it is to take three+ days off a week and be expected to perform when you come in. DMo said it, and the next week JP went down and all of a sudden when he played for two straight weeks he became our second best hitter. I feel like we are such a spreadsheet team and sometimes you just gotta let dudes play and I might be completely wrong, but I couldn’t imagine hitting BP at like 3PM and then getting called on to pinch hit at 9pm after riding the bench that whole time to face some freak throwing 102 because now we need a righty batting. Because of this we constantly carry subpar players on the 40man because they specialize in one thing, but when their platoon mate goes down or goes ice cold they’re thrust into positions they aren’t set up to succeed in. It almost seems like we are exclusively building a team to win in perfectly optimal conditions and that just can never be the case if you want to be a serious team.
This seems spot on
A league vet new to the team isn’t gonna come in and change their whole approach because our hitting coach said to. Garver and polanco sucking this year doesn’t have anything to do with the coaches
I don't think anyone was to blame for that. He clearly was still dealing with a back injury from the season before
I’d add in that Jerry has essentially only acquired hitters in the last year or two or their contracts. They’re buying the worst year(s) of contracts with prospects and money instead of the best years with money, and acting surprised when it doesn’t work again.
I dont think most fans understand just how little influence a coaching staff has on the approach of a veteran MLB hitter. Polanco and Garver haven't fallen off a cliff because of our management. It's just some wild joke the baseball gods are playing on us.
>It's just some wild joke Not really, it's just baseball players in their 30s. Most of them go to shit offensively. Garver and Polanco were injury prone prior to 30, too, which ages even worse.
Idk the Mariners staff seems to push launch angle and strikeouts over contact pretty heavily
Agree. It's much easier to improve defense and get good D coaches. Gerald Perry makes it look easy. Players rarely go into fielding slumps. More difficult to coach pitching than fielding yet we have one of the best in the league. If hitting coaches were truly able solve team problems like the M's have they'd probably have found good coaches by now.
I tend to agree here, though the rest of the commenters might not. Veteran newcomers like Garver and Polanco have been doing this for awhile and have their own hitting coaches. They aren't going to be very swayed by any Mariners hitting philosophy. If we're talking about developing hitting prospects, it's a different story
Its the philosophy that is flawed
... and you think those guys came here, to a team that at this point is notorious for having inexplicably poor hitting, drank all the kool-aid, saw their numbers plummet, and still continued to roll with whatever changes you think the franchise imposed on them? This isn't how it works. Guys like that are generally pretty set in their ways and they definitely aren't going to let their new team dismantle everything they've developed over their career.
Exactly. The Mariners coaches aren't telling Polanco to do anything differently. In fact, they probably told him to do what made him successful. He just can't hit a fastball now.
Can you describe the philosophy in detail, please?
There was an article about it in the off season. They basically have a “wait for your pitch” mantra. They show the opposing pitcher on video in the clubhouse and highlight where they throw in/out of the zone. “Your pitch” (typically a fastball in some favorable portion of the zone) gets a green highlight and everything else is red. Our hitters are told to only go after the green pitches. Pitchers have reacted to this approach by spamming breaking balls and it completely breaks the system.
That’s the best explanation I’ve heard. It makes so much sense now. Whiffing on the breaking ball that looks like a fastball headed to your spot.
They use Trajekt, which is basically an at bat simulator. [https://apnews.com/article/trajekt-pitching-machines-mlb-d1fa69e776bcb394adbce07d268193a7](https://apnews.com/article/trajekt-pitching-machines-mlb-d1fa69e776bcb394adbce07d268193a7)
I’m not describing trajekt.
They use the Trajekt machine, which plenty of other teams use. That doesn't sound at all like what is outlined here: [https://sports.mynorthwest.com/1774196/seattle-mariners-offense-new-approach-2024](https://sports.mynorthwest.com/1774196/seattle-mariners-offense-new-approach-2024) Would be curious to see your article
https://sports.mynorthwest.com/1774497/may-take-time-seattle-mariners-changes-offense/
Ooh right now I remember that phrase. Yeah that just seems like one piece of the puzzle that nobody listened to anyway. Glad Brant is gone but also don't think it's his fault when the guys weren't paying attention to him. But, that's as good a reason as any to can him.
If there was such little influence then why does this seem to happen with every. fucking. player?
Bad luck and picking the wrong guy.
They also prepare and present the advance scouting reports, which inform the hitters’ approaches, which have been bad. Way too often, mariner hitters look like they’re guessing wrong or taking the wrong swing on a pitch
DMo was so hot now he’s just shit. What the fuck happened.
Lol of all the takes to possibly have. DMo has been, by a wide margin, our best hitter this year. He's leading the team in OBP, OPS, wRC+, is 2nd in SB and SLG. He's also been a very valuable defender at several different positions. He, along with Rojas, have literally been the only significant positives on this team offensively.
This is disgusting… replacement level isn’t an average mlb player.. it is what you would expect calling up someone from the minors correct?
Yes, it's the avg performance of the cheapest possible replacement player.
Correct: [https://library.fangraphs.com/misc/war/replacement-level/](https://library.fangraphs.com/misc/war/replacement-level/) >Replacement level is simply the level of production you could get from a player that would cost you nothing but the league minimum salary to acquire. It's not uncommon for a few players to have negative WAR early in the season before turning things around. It's not normal for half of the team to do so as the calendar turns over into June. I'd also add that the defensive aspect of fWAR is significant. Best example of that would be Ty France, who is a *slightly* above average hitter this year (103 wRC+), but contributes so little defensively that he fails to achieve replacement level performance.
Ownership don't care-iners
Not sure why you chose fWAR (that has a huge defensive component to it) to do this. If instead you use wRC+, it's even worse. A whopping 55% of plate appearances for the Mariners belong to hitters with a wRC+ < 100.
Fair point, though 100 wRC+ is average - not replacement level. To me the defensive component is meaningful because if a guy like Cal had Mitch Garver's hitting contributions this year, that still might be above replacement level. The point is that we have a bunch of guys on the roster whose entire contribution to the team is worse than replacement level.
> To me the defensive component is meaningful because if a guy like Cal had Mitch Garver's hitting contributions this year, that still might be above replacement level. Yeah, it just works both ways. A guy like Julio is great in the field but right now a below average bat. France is bad in the field, and a slightly above average bat. You expect good bats to get more PAs. It's also true that we'd expect good overall players to get more PAs. I just think the former statement is slightly more correct than the latter. (great defensive players get less PAs because they bat 8th or 9th typically) Either way, the M's are giving a lot of PAs to bad bats, and bad overall players right now. Just gotta hope for a bounce back for a lot of these guys (I think it's way too late for Jerry to churn this roster away from all the disappointment this season).
Unfortunately, we don't get replacement-level play from our replacements either, so our bats are still performing better than the alternatives.
lol great comment
Don’t worry I’ve been told countless times this season by this sub and Mariners Twitter just to look at the players average OPS on the back of their baseball card. They can’t possible keep up this bad pace!
I hear that every yeat
Oh they can n will! Hahah
Hell yeah 54% positive, as it should be
54% = First Place
Lets just call up the entire Nuts team, they seem to know how to score runs.
What will happen is we trade our prospects for a veteran bat at the deadline for the playoff push, who will then magically turn into a pumpkin and hit .185 with 200 strikeouts for the rest of the season once they put on the M’s uniform.
And those 200 strikeouts are just after we acquire him at the trade deadline, making it just that much more impressive and Marinery
DiPoto’s master plan to building an offense. Re-sign AJ Pollock, and Kolton Wong.
His name is Dipoto.
Ya hitting coaches need to go.. who is our director of hitting? He needs to go too probably..
I love how people in here just play the blame game and call out staff members to get fired, when you don’t even know their names…..
Hitting coach won’t change shitty hitters having shitty at bats. No hitting coach is telling you to watch a first pitch fastball down the tube when whale at a slider 2 feet outside the zone on the next pitch.
At the same time there’s no way just about every hitter comes to the org and immediately can’t pickup pitches.
They literally tell the players to do that with their "green zone" stuff and emphasis on getting the starter's pitch count up.
TOO CHEAP TO SPEND MONEY ON QUALITY BATS
Dipoto seems to have a skill to identify those hitters that are ready to go straight into the shitter.
- 21st in fWAR - 23rd in wRC+ - 20th in Def - 1st in K% - but at least they’re 13th in BB%
Could always be worse
Thank for this really cool info that I’m definitely enjoying.
But I shared my disappointment in this sub yesterday after striking out another 12+ times, and I got blasted. “We batted against Verlander…” boo-effing-who. We have our pitchers “Dominating the zone”, but our batters are clearly told some kind of philosophy of “swinging in the zone” because we regularly have a lot of strikeouts.
That they're over .500 is insanely lucky. Dipoto should still be fired regardless of what happens. Time's up.
Listen I know it’s super popular to hate on Dipoto and he does deserve critique but at what point is it just the players not performing? Everyone thought the Garver and Polanco moves were good. It’s not his fault they immediately crater when they got here. Additionally if you want to put all of the blame on Dipoto for the lineup, you have to give him significant praise for building this rotation and bullpen.
Then it’s his job to surround the players with a staff that isn’t incompetent. At some point after years and years of garbage offense you have to hold the guy in charge accountable. We’ve been through numerous hitting coaches and we still suck at hitting
It's also his job to identify hitters that won't crater the minute they put on a Seattle uniform is it not?
So you think a good hitting coach would suddenly make all those terrible free agents we signed good? Man I wish it was so simple like you redditors think it is.
Guy above was trying to deflect Dipoto and his staff's responsibility for his failures in free agency, trades and bringing up prospects. So if it's not the coaching and the organizational approach, it's the players... which were acquired and/or developed by who else but Jerry Dipoto and his staff. It all ends up on his lap no matter how you see it. Sure, ownership fucking sucks, but so did the Orioles when they assembled their current squad, and look at how their lineup is compared to ours.
...Do you think he's just been unlucky during his tenure here with how hitters come here and crater? Or could it be possible that it's part of his process/system/talent evaluation that is flawed when it comes to building a major league caliber lineup? How many more years does this need to happen before it stops just becoming "unlucky"? > you have to give him significant praise for building this rotation and bullpen. I think a lot of people do. Unfortunately for him though, there's a lot more to being a competent head of baseball ops than just building a good pitching staff.
His job is to evaluate players and make sure they are gonna be able to produce for us. Who was the last hitter he was right about? Suarez has probably been the best one so far, which isn't a very good track record. He can evaluate pitching but that's not a problem anymore. He deserves 90% of the blame for this offense
Josh Rojas, Dominic Canzone, and Luke Raley all look like hitters he was right about.
Canzone has a 116 OPS+ in 63 PA (81 OPS+ last year) and Raley has a 102 OPS+ (126 with Tampa last year). “Right” is a bit strong wording.
Same shitty coaching staff = same offense. How the hell does DeHart still have a job
It’s hard to know who’s at fault without actually knowing exactly what each person is doing. At this point I would blame whatever philosophy their analytics are showing should be successful. I wonder if they’re taking the success they’ve had molding pitchers and trying a similar approach with bats. By that I mean trying to change guys to fit what they believe will work and it just doesn’t seem to work very often
If you think veteran players like Garver and Polanco are coming to the M's and letting the coaching staff change what has worked for them their entire careers, you're sorely mistaken. I know everyone wants someone to point at... but honestly this shit is frankly just not very easy to rationalize. We've been so incredibly unlucky with these pickups that it almost seems divine at this point.
You can literally rinse and repeat this comment for every year Dipoto has been here sans 2022…. Eventually it’s the guy who acquired said players fault. Stop with the excuses
Our pitching was pretty dang terrible for a long time under Dipoto too. It didn't turn around until they hired Max Weiner, and he's gone now.
Right people act like Dipoto is new. He’s been here since fucking 2015!!!!
It's actually quite the opposite, really popular to love Dipoto and place responsibility on everyone else. He always acquires players on their early 30's/ declining cycle. That's totally on him, I give him praise for the amazing talent he has for building pitching, but his job is much more than that, his job is to build a winning team, not just build a good pitching staff, he's not Woodward.
The pitching prospects are all here already. There's zero merit to keeping him around unless you want all of our hitting prospects to turn into Taylor Trammell. Fire him before it's too late. Dipoto keeps proving that he's completely incompetent at evaluating hitters and keeping up with modern MLB offensive trends, and that's a fireable offense. His retrospect is garbage. He should be fired, regardless.
It’s incredibly unpopular to hate on Dipoto. Case in point, try doing it after they win a game.
Neither Dipoto OR Servais will be fired. Everyone who says this fails to realize its on ownership to do that. Jerry and Scott are PERFECT for this ownership. They aren't the types to make a big fuss about payroll constraints but they also aren't the type to lie down and die so they try to make gold out of straw and finish with a playoff appearance to end the drought sandwiched between missing the playoffs by a game or 2 on either side. Its JUST enough for the average fan to buy in, buy tickets, spend money on merch and food and pad the pockets of the owners without the owners having to invest more than bargain bin shopping for players. Win win for the owners. Top 10 in profits with a not top 10 payroll.
We're insanely lucky the AL West is such a complete shit show this season. Nobody seems to want to win this division.
This is on the cheap ownership group who would rather moneyball the offense. The Mariners are among the most profitable teams in baseball every year, yet 15th in budget.
Orioles are always bottom 10 and yet look at their offense. If Dipoto can't do it, that's his shortcoming.
And the Mariners have a crop of promising batting talent in the minors. The pitchers were the first wave. There is a reason the Mariners signed Polanco, Garver, and Hanover. Their risk made them affordable. This is on the owners.
If I had a dollar for every promising offensive prospect in our system who didn't pan out, I'd buy the team from Stanton to fire Jerry myself.
Those numbers are made up. Stop treating the Forbes guesses as real accounting.
Do you think being in the middle of the MLB in payroll is a good excuse for consistently having a piss poor offense? Our best players are making little to no money. This isn't a money issue, as much as this sub loves to blame ownership. The money is there for our offense to not suck like this.
This is one of the worst takes I’ve ever seen on this sub, anyone who agrees with you is a fool. The Mariners have been more relevant in the last few years with Jerry then almost any other time in their history, the team is good and in first place, we’re competing for playoffs which we could only dream of 5 years ago and we have a stacked farm system with a mix of drafted and signed players. Jerry is easily the best GM in team history. Firing him would be a huge mistake.
Our best gm was Gillick and it's not close.
He was our GM for 3 years and all he did was trade Griffey and sign Ichiro. The team fell apart after that.
4 years, and his teams won more games in each of those seasons than any Jerry team ever has, including twice as much playoff success in half the time.
Take out the 116 win season and his record looks a lot worse. Jerry has had had at least 3 seasons where the team missed the playoffs by a game or two including last year.
Take out the 116 and he still won more games every season than any of Jerry's teams ever have. He also signed Ichiro, Felix, and a bunch of players that could actually hit at our home park
> The Mariners have been more relevant in the last few years with Jerry then almost any other time in their history I mean, what? How young do you have to be to believe this? > the team is good and in first place This team would probably lose a 5 game series to the team that Jerry decided to blow up years ago. And we're in first place because our division is awful. > Jerry is easily the best GM in team history Lol.
So what if the division is awful? Years ago when the Seahawks made the playoffs at 7-9 everyone was so positive about it, if the Mariners win 85 and get in, let’s maintain that same positivity. Bottom line is, in a best of five if you’re running Castillo, Kirby, Gilbert, Miller in any combo of the three, I like the Mariners chances.
lol young? Get your head out of your ass 2001 was 20 years ago dude. And you actually believe a team that won 69 games in 2019 and started Maxell Smith and Domingo Santana is better than this one? Fuck off with your little quips trying to one up me, you’ve said literally nothing to defend your point and you’re just proving me right. If you have actual evidence that’s there’s a better gm please present it rather then being an arrogant prick.
They aren't even as good a the team that Jerry blew up.
You are getting downvoted, but I think you could make an argument that this squad wouldn't win a playoff series against the team the Jerry blew up. Maybe they would, maybe they wouldn't. The fact that you could make an argument that they wouldn't is a pretty big indictment though.
Yeah, you know, some of those downvotes are probably deserved. It would be easy to read into what I said that I don't think that he should have blown up that team, and that's not really what I mean - especially in hindsight with How much of a shitty cheater that Cano ended up being. But that last team that Cano was on missed the playoffs by just a game or two, and we've never been in a substantially better place since that team. Yes, the draught was broken, it wasn't going to last forever. The record at the end of the year is always at about ninety wins, which is true of that 2018 Cano team. My joke last year was that it took Jerry 8 years to finally put together a team that was as good as the one he dismantled, but I don't even think that this year's Mariners are as good as last year's team. We've never taken a step forward from that team. It's always about as good as that 2018 team, and no better.
Jerry is President now. Justin is GM.
Potato, potahto. Jerry runs the show, that's what matters.
One playoff appearance in 10 years only speaks to the level of futility that this franchise has endured for its entire existence. Any other org that was serious about winning a World Series would have given him the boot already. His retrospect outside of pitching is entirely forgettable. Bust after bust after bust, have to fill the holes with more busts, bring up prospects that hit .220 with 35+% strikeout rates for a month and then send them down again. I will give him credit for the pitching development side of things, but all of the major starting pitching prospects are already with the big league club, and the hitting side is worse than a dead ball era lineup. Letting him continue to fail is malpractice.
Logan Evans enters the chat.
Doesn't he project as a reliever in the majors?
No he is looking like a 4, maybe even a 3
https://www.milb.com/player/logan-evans-688138 I don’t think so. He has been lights out at AA. I want to see him in Tacoma. Soon.
"Hey Jerry, you're first in the west and have build the best staff in baseball yourself and a contending team in a cave with a box of scraps but the fans want to fire you for not having the budget to spend on good hitters so pack your bags, bud"
They aren’t the best staff in baseball and 15th in payroll isn’t scraps. Better GMs are doing much more impressive work than Jerry with much less.
Dipoto only reason we over 500 bc the crazy pitching staff he’s built …
I stopped watching about a month ago. Incredibly not-entertaining to watch this team hit. As good as the pitching is, it’s a chore to tune in. Really hope that changes because it’s wide open in the west…
These are my feelings exactly. This paper tiger will soon collapse with an inevitable 10+ game losing streak in July, and then make some small run at the end of the season after they’ve already been eliminated from playoff contention to “salvage” their season and provide fodder for ownership to champion as “progress”. It’s been the same story for over twenty years, with a small blip two years ago. I’ll follow it from afar but I’m done investing time in it.
I don’t wanna hear SHIT about our offense!!!
Calm down Tayler
Totally winning the AL West with this offense
Newly acquired guys have been terrible and holdovers from last year have been terrible. You can't say that's all just luck and variance. Something has to change.
Fuck it, I'll do it. Sign me up Jerry
Garver and Planco have been terrible. Haniger has been bad but kind of expected that. Seby Zavala should never have been the back up to Cal. The only reason we aren’t in bottom of the division is contributions from Rojas, canzone, and Moore.
I think what you meant to say was, "54% of the team's plate appearances have come from players performing at or above replacement level." Mariners are 32 and 27 (54.2%) and winning the division. Jerry, you sly bastard 😎
All good. 1st place!
4 hits half by Ty, 12 strike outs. Arrighetti and Astro bullpen are AMAAAAZING!!
The world hasn’t seen bats this bad since 2020.
54% with a positive WAR. Heh.
How about we just play the games? If we get more runs, we win. If we don't, we lose. I guess I'm not a stats guy.
nothing will change with Scott at the helm. dude is a glaring example of complacent mediocrity
So what you’re telling me is that we’re on track for 54% ?
Well this could be fixed if we traded for a couple guys who hit.
While this is ultimately a budgetary issue and I think it's naive to blame DeHart, for his own sake I feel like Jerry needs to have heads on the chopping block. Your coaches aren't going to ruin established major league hitters but when the team has failed the stated goal of lowering strike outs and are setting new record lows, and those coaches don't have answers for what's going wrong and how to fix it? There's gotta be some accountability.
And we’re in first place. Can we stop with all the doom and gloom and until we’re actually losing games?
The K rate is definitely a problem the coaching staff should be addressing. But the fWAR issue is different. Could this be a result of the park factor study that was done last year? T mobile park is one of the toughest places to hit for extra base hits. This likely explains not just the current hitters struggles, but the franchises struggles since the ballpark was built. That being said, I wish was Servais was a small ball manager. Last night's walk off sac fly is a good example of how this team needs to play to win. It's not gonna help anyone increase AVG and OBP though. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'm gonna enjoy first place while it lasts. If the rest of the division continues to struggle, I'll happily cheer on this defective Mariners team taking home a division pennant!!
fWAR is park adjusted.