Seattle Mariners: 2017 Season Review and Offseason Preview

The Seattle Mariners had another disappointing season that ended without a postseason berth for a 16^th year, but can they compete in 2018?

The Seattle Mariners have developed a pattern over the last five years. Starting with the 2013 season, they’ve won 71, 87, 76, 86, and 78 games. When they won 87 games in 2014, they finished just a single game behind the Oakland A’s for the second wild card spot. When they won 86 games last year, they were three games out of the second wild card spot.

So they’ve been close to the playoffs a couple times recently but, as every Mariner fan knows, they haven’t actually made the playoffs since 2001, which was Ichiro Suzuki’s rookie year. It’s the longest playoff drought in baseball. They’ve also never made the World Series. Only the Montreal Expos/Washington Nationals have a longer streak without making the Fall Classic.

Coming off their 86-win season in 2016, the Mariners were expected to be in the thick of the wild card race this year. Sports Illustrated picked them to win 88 games and the take second wild card spot. Baseball Prospectus had them winning 86 games and the first wild card spot. Fangraphs was less optimistic, predicting the Mariners would win 83 games, but that put them just a game out of the second wild spot. The potential was there.

Then, even before the season started, the Mariners lost Drew Smyly for the season with elbow surgery. Reliever Shea Simmons and utilityman Shawn O’Malley were placed on the 60-Day DL at the end of March. Right fielder Mitch Haniger, reliever Evan Scribner and the expected number one starter, Felix Hernandez, hit the DL in late April. Another starting pitcher, James Paxton, went down in early May.

This is how the season went for Seattle. They ended up using a major league record 40 pitchers. Their starting pitchers finished with 6.2 Wins Above Replacement (WAR, per Fangraphs), which was 25^th of the 30 teams in baseball. They didn’t have a single starting pitcher throw enough innings to qualify for the ERA title and only three pitched more than 100 innings.

Despite the pitching woes, after winning three straight against the Texas Rangers in mid-September, the Mariners were 74-73 and within 3.5 games of the second wild card spot. There was hope in the Emerald City. Then they lost six straight games to the Astros and Rangers and their hopes were dashed. The Wicked Witch of the West had won. After being a game over .500 with about two weeks to go in the season, they ended the year on a 4-11 skid and finished six games below .500.

Mariner fans were once again disappointed by the team’s inability to make the playoffs, but there’s enough talent here to be competitive again in 2018. Let’s look at what went right, what went wrong, and the top offseason needs for the Seattle Mariners.

What Went Right

The biggest surprise on offense was catcher Mike Zunino, who came into this season with a career batting line of .195/.262/.370. He showed promise at times in previous seasons, most notably when he hit 22 home runs in 2014, but even then it came with a .254 OBP. This year, he hit .251/.331/.509 and set career highs in pretty much everything.

Zunino still struck out too often (nearly 37 percent of the time, a career high), but he also had a career-high 38.6 percent hard hit percentage and the best rate of home runs per fly ball that he’s ever had. Combine that good batting line with a good glove behind the plate and you get 3.6 Wins Above Replacement for Zunino, which made him the second-best catcher in the American League, behind only the Yankees’ Gary Sanchez.

The one big caveat in Zunino’s season was a .355 Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP). His career rate is .273 and he’s not the type of player who would be expected to have a high BABIP (like Ichiro Suzuki, for example). Prior to this season, his best BABIP was .267 in 52 games in his rookie year. If you adjust his batting line from 2017 by reducing his .355 BABIP to his career mark of .273, his 2017 triple-slash becomes .208/.293/.466. That’s much more like the Zunino from the first four years of his career.

Other bright spots on offense included the core of the Mariners’ lineup—Nelson Cruz, Kyle Seager, and Robinson Cano. They were all around 3.5 WAR players. Cruz has proven to be a very good signing so far. Jean Segura and Mitch Haniger had good years that were limited by injuries, with Segura playing 125 games and Haniger playing 96. Center fielder Jarrod Dyson was very good on defense but was injured in early September and missed the rest of the season. Ben Gamel showed enough to be someone to watch next year.

The Mariners used 17 different starting pitchers in 2017, ranging from the 29 games started by Ariel Miranda to the single game started by four different pitchers (remember Ryan Weber?). Only two teams in the last 60 years have used more. The bright spot among this group was “Big Maple”, James Paxton, who had a 2.98 ERA and struck out a career-high 28.3% of the batters he faced. Health problems limited him to 136 innings, but they were very good innings.

Beyond Big Maple, the Mariners got five good starts from Mike Leake after acquiring him in a trade with the Cardinals. Andrew Albers started six games and had a 3.16 ERA, but his 3.99 FIP was less impressive. Similarly, Erasmo Ramirez had a 3.92 ERA in 11 starts, but with a 4.71 FIP that suggests it’s not likely to be repeated.

The Mariners’ bullpen finished in the middle of the pack in WAR. Nick Vincent (3.20 ERA, 2.82 FIP in 64.7 IP) had good numbers from the right side. Closer Edwin Diaz wasn’t as dominant as he was in 2016. His strikeout rate dropped and his walk rate went up, but he still saved 34 games and had a 3.27 ERA (4.02 FIP).

What Went Wrong

Overall, the Mariners’ position players were solid, but there were some offensive holes. For a stretch early in the season, no one was hotter than Taylor Motter, the long-haired utility guy. He hit .239/.316/.523 in his first 29 games. Then cold, harsh reality set in and Motter hit .176/.225/.224 in the last 63 games he appeared in. He ended up being a below replacement-level player.

Also below replacement-level was first baseman Danny Valencia. He hit .256/.314/.411 in 500 plate appearances and was awful in the field. Valencia’s primary skill is his ability to hit left-handed pitching, which he was able to do. He was 18% above average against lefties. Unfortunately, he was 14% below average against right-handed pitchers and there are far more righties than lefties pitching in the big leagues. Valencia is much more useful to a team that has a solid left-handed bat to pair with him in a platoon situation.

In the outfield, Guillermo Heredia split most of his time between left field and center field. According to UZR, he was adequate defensively in left but not good at all in center. Based on 533 career plate appearances (.249/.322/.333), he doesn’t have a good enough bat to be an everyday player if he isn’t a top notch fielder and he doesn’t appear to be a top notch fielder according to the metrics.

It was revealed after the season that Heredia played with a dislocated shoulder all year long, so maybe there’s more here than we’ve seen, but he didn’t hit for much power in the minor leagues either. He also trailed off significantly in the hitting department from mid-August on, which could be attributed to his shoulder injury.

The Mariners really struggled on the mound this year, in part because of the numerous injuries they suffered and in part because of the ineffectiveness of a few pitchers who were expected to pitch better than they did. Ariel Miranda started 29 games but had a 4.90 ERA (and 5.60 FIP). Yovani Gallardo started 22 games and had a 6.28 ERA (5.85 FIP). That’s 51 starts given to two pitchers who combined for a 5.48 ERA between them. No one thought Gallardo would be great, but he also wasn’t expected to be as bad as he was.

Then there was King Felix Hernandez, who had the worst season of his 13-year career. Injuries limited him to 16 starts. When he did pitch, his 4.36 ERA was the second-worst ERA he’s ever had, but his 5.02 FIP was his worst. He also had major problems with home runs, allowing 17 round-trippers in 86.7 innings. The Mariners seem to know the king is no longer The King, so they expect to treat him more cautiously next season.

As mentioned earlier, Drew Smyly missed the entire season. He was supposed to be a mainstay in the rotation, as was Hisashi Iwakuma, who was limited to six starts. Iwakuma had arthroscopic right shoulder debridement surgery in September and won’t resume throwing for five months. Don’t expect either guy to pitch for the Mariners next year.