The Mariners Are on the Brink of Wasting an All-Time Rotation
While the bats have been the Mariners' biggest weakness in years past, their struggles have reached new, infamous heights in 2024
When an opposing team faces the Seattle Mariners, there are no days off against their rotation. The Mariners’ starters strike fear into their opponents before each contest, only to live up to the hype on the hill night after night.
With five guys who can go out and pitch like a true ace on a nightly basis, this group has cemented itself as the game’s best starting staff. Their 3.38 team-wide starters ERA backs that up, with a wide gap between them and the No. 2 rotation (the Phillies at 3.57).
The Mariners’ rotation has been lethal across the board. First off, their arms are workhorses, leading MLB in innings pitched. They also lead the league in BB/9 with a minuscule 1.75. They rank third in FIP, fourth in xFIP and fourth in fWAR.
Logan Gilbert has taken an extremely crucial step forward this year, receiving his first All-Star Game nod and leading all of baseball in WHIP (0.90). If all holds, he should finish in the top ten of AL Cy Young voting for the first time in his career.
George Kirby and Luis Castillo have been excellent and reliable as expected. Each has made 29 starts with a mid-3.00s ERA
Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo have taken massive steps forward in their sophomore campaigns.
Not only are both remaining effective deeper into the season this year (Woo led baseball in innings pitched during August after having a flurry of injuries early on in the year), but both have much-improved secondaries and subsequently had fewer fits against lefties in 2024. Each allowed an OPS over .900 to lefties a season ago.
The two have looked like young aces in their own right as of late. Miller has developed a wicked splitter (hitters are putting up a .169 batting average against it), and Woo has increased the value on both his changeup and sweeper (hitters have an .080 batting average against his sweeper).
They have been (mostly) healthy, durable and flat-out dominant.
This point has been echoed all season: The Mariners will be one tough out in October with this starting rotation leading the charge.
The caveat? They may be slotting turns on the golf course this fall rather than in an October rotation.
Once upon a time on June 18, the Mariners had a ten-game lead in the AL West. But that firm grip on the division evaporated in record time. The club has lost 14 games on the Astros over the last two months.
The Mariners sit at .500 with a 70-70 record, 5.5 games back of the first-place Astros in the AL West. The amount of ground they will be tasked to make up in the next 22 games is substantial, given the limited time left before the regular season’s end and the fact that they have just three more games against Houston.
The cause of Seattle’s freefall? One can look right at the 13 position players that form the group’s offense. Because while the bats have also been the Achilles’ heel of the team in years past, the problem has reached new, infamous heights in 2024 to the point where their offensive struggles have completely brought down a miraculous pitching staff.
Mariners Offense By The Numbers
Where do you want to start when zooming in on the 2024 Mariners offense? Because the issues sit all across the board.
The Mariners have the worst team batting average in the league (.217). They have the third-worst team OPS in baseball (.670) behind the pitiful White Sox and Marlins.
They also rank dead last in hits by nearly 40 (992), they are last in doubles (189), 29th in triples (12), 26th in runs scored (566) and RBI (536), and 18th in wRC+ (98).
The issues don’t fall on one or two players, as it has been a root issue up and down the lineup. Nearly every guy is having a career-worst season, sans Cal Raleigh, Luke Raley and one month of Randy Arozarena.
Julio Rodríguez’s lackluster campaign has been well-documented. He holds a .686 OPS for the year, and since the start of 2023 has displayed superstar-level play for just five weeks’ time, occurring last August.
J.P. Crawford has spent his share of time on the injured list and is hitting .195 with an 87 wRC+ after being a top-ten hitter in the American League a season ago.
Jorge Polanco has had a strong second-half turnaround, but for the year has just a 90 wRC+ and a 0.1 fWAR.
Mitch Garver has looked like a shell of himself since inking his two-year, $24 million contract in Seattle this winter. He is hitting .167 with a .612 OPS and a -0.5 fWAR. Once expected to be the everyday DH, he has now essentially been relegated to the team’s backup catcher job.
It keeps going on and on. The Mariners placed Ty France on waivers due to another very disappointing year; the Reds claimed him last month. Josh Rojas had a red-hot first six weeks of the year, but since May 15 he is hitting .194 with a 71 WRC+ and a .572 OPS. Justin Turner has a .685 OPS through his first month-plus with the Mariners.
You get the picture: It has been an utter disaster.
The Strikeouts
Oh, the strikeouts. Look, punching out a healthy amount in today’s game is not the end of the world if you are also consistently doing damage at the plate and getting on base, both for individuals and teams.
But when you’re maneuvering down the yellow brick road that leads to the all-time single-season strikeout record like the Mariners are, that’s where to draw the line. Especially for a team that doesn’t rank favorably in pretty much any other area of offense.
Seattle had the second-highest K% in the league in 2023. This offseason, they vowed to cut down on the punchouts, part of the reason why they traded/did not bring back any of Teoscar Hernández, Eugenio Suárez, Jarred Kelenic and Mike Ford. Those four players all possessed a 30% strikeout rate or higher in 2023.
But after bringing in Garver, Polanco, and Raley, and trading for Arozarena and Turner, what has been the result? Things have actually gotten worse.
The Mariners are striking out 27.4% of the time, 1.1% ahead of the Rockies, who have the second-highest K% in MLB.
Their team strikeout total currently sits at 1,422 with 22 games to go. The 2023 Minnesota Twins hold the all-time record with 1,654 total strikeouts in a season.
Where This Has Led
Aside from wasting such a strong season from the rotation, the Mariners’ offense is additionally responsible for manager Scott Servais’s midseason firing.
The M’s fired Servais on August 22 after nearly nine years with the club and what was the second-longest managerial tenure in baseball behind that of Kevin Cash with the Rays.
Under new manager Dan Wilson, the Mariners are 6-6 with a +21 run differential. Yet, with very few on-field changes – in a day and age when the manager’s job is to be a motivator and simply deploy the blueprints of the front office – how much of a difference will a new managerial hire truly make?
All signs point to Servais serving as a scapegoat for the team’s underwhelming play, with the bulk of that stemming from their performance at the plate.
Final Thoughts
Is there a world in which the Mariners’ offense could anchor a major September turnaround and push the team into the playoffs? Sure. After all, while they are 5.5 games out, they still have a trio of matchups left with Houston during the last week of the season.
Should Seattle get themselves within a game or two and win that series, the M’s would still very much have a fighting chance entering the final weekend – especially since that would give them the tiebreaker over Houston.
But that is a big if, as the offense has not had one well-above-average stretch all season. Entering the year, this team looked to have the chance to be one of the most formidable Mariners’ offenses since the start of the rebuild after 2018. But it just hasn’t shaken out that way.
To buy into a turnaround for the offense, most will be in “see it to believe it” mode. And if the Mariners can’t escape their own self-dug ditch, then unfortunately, the only competition this incredible rotation will participate in come October will be on the golf course.
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