Seattle Mariners Are Better Than a Sub .500 team
Chip Clark
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After Wednesday night’s loss in Houston, the Seattle Mariners are 12-13 in 2022. They should be better than that.
Wednesday night, the Seattle Mariners lost 7-2 to Houston. The defeat completed a three-game series sweep in which the M’s were outscored, 14-2, by a “less-than previous year’s quality” Astros squad.
With the latest loss, Seattle has been on the wrong side in 7 of their last 8 games, dropping their season record to 12-13. The Seattle Mariners should be much better than a sub-.500 team.
Results vs. Expectations
This opinion isn’t based on unrealistic expectations. Seattle won 90 games last year and kept the core of their team together. Not only that, but the Mariners made some big upgrades to the roster.
In the offseason, Mariners’ General Manager Jerry Dipoto signed defending American League Cy Young Award winner Robbie Ray as a free agent. He also made trades that brought in a catalyst for the top of the order, Adam Frazier, as well as two All-Stars, Jesse Winker and Eugenio Suarez.
Then they brought up the second-ranked prospect in the game, Julio Rodriguez. All of the improvement spells improvement, not regression.
Problem Areas
There are two major problems with this team so far. The first is starting pitching. It’s been okay, but take out Logan Gilbert, who’s been the best pitcher in baseball, and the other four starters, Ray, Chris Flexen, Marco Gonzales, and Matt Bush, are a combined 5-12 over 20 starts and 99.1 innings. They have a 4.54 ERA, 1.43 WHIP, and 1.8 strikeout-to-walk ratio.
Some of it has been luck. Flexen has pitched better than his 1-3 record would indicate. But those things tend to even out over the long run. If his luck is bad, someone else should be getting the breaks. And they aren’t.
The Seattle Mariners’ other big issue is hitting, or lack thereof. Ty France and J.P. Crawford are the only two M’s that have hit consistently thus far. And Rodriguez looks like he’s starting to feel comfortable at the plate. But Seattle’s offense is still middle of the pack. Their .231 team batting average ranks 18th in the Majors, and their .691 OBP is 16th.
Seattle’s numbers get worse when they face adversity. The Mariners bat .203 with a .553 OBP when trailing in games by any amount of runs. In their last 8 contests, Seattle scored two or fewer runs six times. Combined with poor starting pitching, it’s a recipe for failure.
Wrap Up
The Major League season is a marathon and not a sprint. By the same token, a team can’t fall too far behind early on because they won’t be able to catch up. We are less than a month into the new season, and the Seattle Mariners are already 3.5 games behind LAA for the West Division lead.
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Do you think the Seattle Mariners should be off to a better start? Let us know in the comments section below.