The long arduous baseball season came to an end Sunday afternoon for the Seattle Mariners when they would receive no more help from the lowly Texas Rangers. Behind stellar pitching from Sonny Gray, the Oakland Athletics pulled the rip cord on their free fall in the standings and ensured at least one more game against the Kansas City Royals Tuesday night, while Felix Hernandez’s phenomenal effort against the Los Angeles Angels came to an abrupt halt when manager Lloyd McClendon removed him from the game once news of the A’s win reached Safeco Field.
The outing for Hernandez did guarantee he wins the AL ERA title and gained him one more win on his resume for AL Cy Young consideration. But, the win proved to be one too few over the course of an 162 game schedule, leaving Mariners announcers to talk for four innings about how this team overachieved and exceeded expectations this season.
But the reality is that this Mariners team may have just missed one of the better chances to not only get into the postseason but advance a round or two.
One Run Games
The Mariners were 18-27 this season in one run games. Every division winner in baseball had a winning record in one run games, led by the Baltimore Orioles and St. Louis Cardinals who had identical 32-23 records in the close ones.
American League wild card teams Kansas City and Oakland had losing records in one run games but only three games under .500, 22-25 for KC, and seven under, 21-28 for Oakland, compared to nine under for the Mariners.
The San Francisco Giants, one of the wild cards in the NL, finished four under .500 at 18-22.
Had the Mariners merely gone something like 20-25 in one run games, they would have made the playoffs.
Extra Innings Games
Only the Los Angeles Dodgers made the playoffs with a losing record in extra innings games at 6-12. Every other team to make the playoffs – the Orioles, the Tigers, the Royals, the Angels, the A’s, the Nationals, the Cardinals, the Pirates, and the Giants – all had winning records in extra innings.
What was the Mariners record in extra innings? Four and Seven.
Now without looking at the actual box scores for these 11 games, it’s not apparent whether some of these games are also included in the 45 one run games. I suspect some, if not most, are. But, nevertheless, a winning record in extra innings this season would have placed the Mariners squarely in the playoffs.
Run Differential and Expected Wins
I wrote a column several weeks ago about how the Mariners were underperforming their expected number of wins based on run differential. As we now have the complete season to look at, the Mariners expected win loss record is 92-70, five games under their actual record of 87-75 and ahead of the Royals (actual record – 89-73 – and expected win loss – 84-78) and the A’s (actual record – 88-74) for a playoff berth.
Just Get on Base
The Mariners were 27th in MLB with a .300 on base percentage. Playoff teams make up 7 of the top 10 teams in OBP this year and that’s no coincidence. You can’t score runs or win games if you don’t get on base.
Enough with this nonsense of young players “being aggressive at the plate.” Maybe take a walk every once in a while. The Mariners ranked 26th in walk percentage with 6.6%. Compare that to the A’s who led the majors with 9.4%. Two or three percentage points may not sound like much, but it’s a lot when projected out over 6200 plate appearances. It’s actually a few hundred runners on base. A runner here and a runner there and maybe Seattle wins a few more one run games.
Sensational Pitching from the Bullpen Squandered
This season the Mariners bullpen logged 498.1 innings, compiled a 25-20 record, saved 51 games, and led the majors in ERA with a 2.60 mark. That’s the good news.
The bad news? Don’t expect this type of performance again next season. Not because these guys aren’t good. They also led the majors in xFIP at 3.32 and were fifth in FIP at 3.24. But because bullpens are notoriously volatile.
For example, the best bullpen in the majors in 2013 as measured by ERA belonged to the Atlanta Braves with 2.46, This year’s Braves bullpen finished 11th at 3.31.
Expect a regression next season, which means a win or two will need to be found somewhere other than in the bullpen that provided 4.6 WAR this season.
Wait till Next Year
Somehow that rallying cry doesn’t seem as unlikely and delusional as in seasons past. There are certainly areas the Mariners can improve for next season, especially offensively. But the skeptic in me can’t help but think this was the year to break out and make a post season run, not next year.
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