Seattle Mariners: June Offense and Pitching MVP Awards
After a poor start to June the Seattle Mariners found another gear and turned it around. These are the players who led their charge.
For the second time in three months, the Mariners finished a month with a winning record. The 2021 Seattle Mariners were 15-12 in April and repeated the feat in June. Seattle’s final record in June is a bit deceiving. The M’s have won 8-of-11 and 11-of-15 games after starting 3-8. Their big turnaround comes down to a resurgence offensively as the pitching has remained volatile and in many ways, June was worse than May.
Corrections Still Needed
The relief corps was especially terrible and while they were 8-5, they finished the month with a 5.33 ERA and only 4 saves. Most of that was on a terrible month from Rafael Montero (11.32 ERA in 11 games) and Will Vest (11.81 ERA in 11 games). However, it was the worst month for Mariner’s relievers combined, though it is misleading. Take away the 27 earned runs given up by Montero and Vest combined, the rest of the bullpen had a 3.64 ERA for the month of June. Starting pitching continued to improve behind the efforts of Yusei Kikuchi, Chris Flexen, and Logan Gilbert. June represented the best month for Mariners starters this season despite averaging 4.9 innings per start.
At the plate, Seattle still struck out at a 28 percent clip for the month of June, which was their worst month. Additionally, they walked less, 7.8 percent than they have in any other month. Despite the bad news, it was still their best hitting month and highest runs per game in a month this season (4.8). Most of this was brought on by a stronger than usual Batting Average Balls In Play (BABIP) at .309. There are reasons to believe that this is sustainable but a lot of that depends on whether the significant improvement with Crawford is real.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca3dkiAvBmk