Seattle Mariners ace James Paxton leaves game with pectoral strain
By Jason Burke
The Seattle Mariners placed Felix Hernandez on the disabled list last Saturday, and will be without him for three to four weeks. Now James Paxton could be joining him on the DL after exiting his start on Thursday against the Angels.
According to the Seattle Times, after throwing his 107th pitch of the game on Thursday, James Paxton grimaced, pointed to his chest, and was pulled from the game with one out in the seventh inning. After the game manager Scott Servais said that the hope is that Paxton will not miss much time and that his fingers are crossed.
The Seattle Mariners starting rotation has not been good this season, ranking 27th in fWAR (3.5), 22nd in ERA (4.81) and holding a 5.13 FIP which ranks 27th. And that’s with Paxton’s 12-3 record, 2.70 ERA and 2.31 FIP to help that average stay out of Reds territory. The loss of King Felix hurts from a depth standpoint, but his marks this season have held fairly steady with the team’s averages in both ERA and FIP. Any amount of time that the Mariners will be without Paxton will be too long and could add another year to the team’s league leading playoff drought.
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Of the pitchers with more than one start this season in a Mariners uniform, only James Paxton has an ERA under four. Of the pitchers with more than one start for the M’s, only James Paxton has a FIP under five.
In terms of WAR, Paxton ranks fifth in all of baseball among starting pitchers at 4.3, with the only pitchers ahead of him being Chris Sale, who has blown by the field with a 7.0 fWAR, Corey Kluber (4.9), Max Scherzer (4.7) and Luis Severino (4.3). One noticeable absence from that list is Clayton Kershaw, who is currently on the disabled list, and before you say that it’s because he’s missed starts, he still has two more starts this season than Paxton and has accrued 28 more innings. Paxton has done more in less time and has a better FIP by a margin of 2.92 to 2.31.
The M’s are currently locked in a tie for the second Wild Card spot with the Tampa Bay Rays with both teams sitting at 59-57. That’s the good news. On the flip side of that, there are four teams chasing both the Mariners and Rays that are all within a game and a half of that second spot. Those teams are the Minnesota Twins (0.5 GB), Los Angeles Angels and Kansas City Royals (1 GB) and Baltimore Orioles (1.5 GB).
This weekend the Angels and Mariners will complete the final three games of their four-game set in Seattle, and the M’s have already thrown out their best starter. On the bright side, the Angels aren’t exactly known for their pitching staff either, so this could be more of a matchup of two solid offenses.
The Mariners’ immediate schedule past this weekend includes three games against Baltimore at home followed by three in Tampa next weekend, then three in Atlanta, three on the road against the Yankees and another three against the O’s in Baltimore to close out the month. While the 51-61 Braves seem like a nice little break in the middle of facing playoff contenders day in and day out, Atlanta has snapped the Dodgers’ win streaks of eleven and nine games in recent weeks, going 3-4, or roughly .500 against a team with a .711 winning percentage this season.
Next: Frazier to DL, Hicks returns to Bronx
If the Mariners are hoping to earn their first postseason bid since 2001, they’re going to need James Paxton on the bump every fifth day. We should know more about his injury timeline in the coming days, and with that, where the Mariners stand moving forward.