Superman fans know Bizarro as the supervillain with all the attributes of Superman, but with some of the powers reversed, like cold vision instead of heat vision. Seattle Mariners fans, accustomed to really good pitching, anchored by King Felix Hernandez, and, well, really not so good hitting, spearheaded by usually no one, may be thinking that the M’s since the All Star break have been replaced by a team from an alternate universe. The results are mostly the same – they lose slightly more than they win – but the way they’re going about it is entirely alien.
Decent Hitting
During the “second half” of the season, the Mariners, as a team, are FIRST in the American League in hitting, having created 8.5 WAR (wins against replacement) over 400 player games. The team in second, the Toronto Blue Jays, generally considered an offensive juggernaut, has created 7.8 WAR in 360 player games.
A look at a few key offensive statistics finds the Mariners sixth in the league in on base percentage, a marked improvement over their perpetually low standing. The team is taking walks at an 8.1% rate since the break, to rank fourth in the league, behind just the Blue Jays, Cleveland Indians, and New York Yankees. The K rate is still very high, though, at 21.9%, with only the Minnesota Twins whiffing more at 23.4%. But, whatever the Mariners are doing during this admittedly small sample size of approximately 40 games, the result is an offense that is producing at a league leading pace, with a weighted runs created plus (wRC+) of 119, or 19% better than league average.
Terrible Pitching
On the other hand, the pitching has been abysmal, punctuated by several atrocious outings by Felix and the ultimate meltdown and designation for assignment of the former archer in residence, Fernando Rodney. Seattle’s pitching staff ranks dead LAST in the AL, as the only team to produce negative WAR since the All Star break, a stunning -0.4. To put this into perspective, the M’s would have been better off with a good AAA staff than the one they have in the majors.
The staff ERA has been 5.45 since the break, nearly half a run higher than the next worse team, the Twins. Opposing hitters have a league leading base average on balls in play (BABIP) of .313 against Seattle. Once those baserunners get on, the Mariners staff is allowing them to come home at a league worst 67.0% left on base percentage (LOB%). On top of that, the Mariners staff has allowed a league leading 16.2% home run to fly ball ratio (HR/FB).
And while team defense remains slightly below average with a -0.4 defensive WAR, balanced out somewhat by the only two plus defenders on the team, Austin Jackson in centerfield and Kyle Segar at third base, the blame for the ridiculous number of runs allowed falls solely on the pitchers themselves. This can be evidenced by a league leading 4.71 FIP (fielding independent pitching). The staff does fair somewhat better when looking at xFIP that substitutes the league average HR/FB. The xFIP metric places the Mariners seventh in the league with 4.06.
The Results?
Ironically, being a decent hitting ball club with terrible pitching seems to yield the same results as being a really good pitching team with poor hitting – a sub .500 record. It is the often cruel nature of baseball that a two month stint of decent hitting should go to waste in a season that any reasonable run back to .500 would have put the Mariners right back in the thick of the wild card race. Just look at the once left for dead Texas Rangers.
More than likely both the hitting and the pitching will regress back to the man over the last five weeks or so of the season, with the results in the W and L columns being roughly the same. And, opposing teams will continue to be metaphorical kryptonite, both green and red, to this Bizarro Mariners team of 2015.
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