Sound the bells! Pop the corks! If you’ve got fireworks, set those bad boys off! The Seattle Mariners have a winning record in April for the first time in seven years. In 2009, Seattle finished April with a 13-9 record, but that was a while ago. While that record is a couple of games better than we finished the opening month of the season this year, it’s still great to see a winning month at the top of the schedule.
Historically the Mariners are not a good team early. Through Sunday’s game against Kansas City, the team holds a career record of 148-170 in April. So, yes, these are the type of numbers that bode well for a playoff hunt. They’re a half-game back of the Texas Rangers going into May, and I believe the team still isn’t up to full speed. Kyle Seager is Batting .150, Aoki is right around .200 and Cruz hasn’t gone on one of his power surges yet.
While there are more little things we could commiserate about, the joyful reality is that the Seattle Mariners are doing more right than wrong. So we’re just going to have a good old fashioned love fest about our boys in blue and teal, and fantasize for a moment about what the best-case scenario is for the season.
One thing that stuck out to me over the first month of the season was how often Seattle was walking. It was well exemplified by the game Friday, where we won with only one hit, but had seven walks. Sure, none of those walks lead directly to runs scored, but they certainly had an effect. They lengthened innings; kept opposing hitters in the field and they wore down pitchers.
There’s a fairly straightforward statistic teams look at when they gauge the viability of sustaining success. The basics of the idea are to combine the walk and strikeout numbers of both pitchers and hitters for your team and assign them a plus/minus rating. For hitters, you give plus-one for walks and minus-one for strikeouts. For pitchers, you give plus-one for strikeouts and minus-one for walks. Simple enough, right? Overall, do your pitchers strikeout more batters than they walk? Do your hitters walk more than they strikeout? Last year, the Mariners finished the year with a big number in the minus column.
Like all baseball statistics, you can’t rely on this alone as a formula for success. It doesn’t account for hits, defense, or numerous other factors that go into every baseball game. But it’s a fun way to look at whether or not a team, as a whole, is giving themselves more opportunities for success than they’re giving their opposition. The Mariners are currently plus-40, which is good for second in the American League.
The Mariners don’t have the second best record in the league, which is a pretty good indicator that balls and strikes aren’t the only factor at play. Baseball, however, has a six month long regular season and I believe that over the course of a long season, being on the positive side of walks and strikeouts will make you a hard club to beat.
A lot of the recent success of the Mariners can be attributed to a fantastic streak by their starting pitchers. Across the board, Seattle starters have been everything you could want in the last week or so. Felix looks like the crowned king of pitching everyone expects him to be and Taijuan Walker seems poised to challenge the crown as he comes into his own as a staff ace. Nathan Karns showed off an electric arm last week against Houston and Wade Miley went the distance on Saturday with a complete-game shutout of the Kansas City Royals.
The bullpen has continued to shut teams down and hold small leads with a returned-to-form Steve Cisheck in the closer role and a pile of young arms and reclamation projects in front of him. Our much-improved outfield defense was on display in Fridays win, as Leonys Martin made a game-ending catch while crashing into the centerfield wall and somehow holding onto the ball as he came tumbling to the ground.
The one area the team still isn’t entirely clicking on is the offense. The team is managing to walk more than they strikeout and has stolen a few wins without much run support, but sooner or later they’ll have to hit. Cano has been the power hitter on the team, belting eight homers in April, but has yet to hit anywhere near his career batting average. Nelson Cruz has done just enough to not get worried, and role player, Seth Smith, and future star, Ketel Marte, have been bright spots in a dreary field of offensive mediocrity.
More good news lies on the horizon as well, with the Mariners playing a potentially easy schedule in May. With series against Tampa Bay, Houston and Minnesota lined up in the coming weeks, Seattle is in great position to add some run support to what has been one of the more dynamic pitching staffs in the league thus far.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago saying that if the Mariners could get through their most recent road trip with a winning record, they’d be in good shape to come out of April ahead. Lucky for me, and Mariner’s fans at large, the team did just that. They finally faced some right-handed pitching and took advantage of it and here they are at the beginning of May with a wining record and only a half game back of the division lead.
They have a schedule to take advantage of and momentum on their side. Could it be that our very own bad-news bears have turned a corner? Could they be in perfect position to take the west and make a run at a championship?
We have a long way to go. And I’m absolutely positive there will be turbulence. But for right now, for this brief moment in early spring, our Mariners look like the real deal. My advice is to reach into the back of your closet, dust off that old jersey or hat, and buy some tickets for the next sunny day you have off. Enjoy the hell out of every moment of this season, because before you know it, you may be able to say you were at one of those early-season games where the team really took off. I went to 20 home-games in 2001, and I don’t regret a single one of them.
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