What are the Seattle Mariners doing right?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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I ask this partly because I was reading old threads and was amused at how some early predictions haven’t really panned out. cough cough Texas Rangers cough cough

My beloved Seattle Mariners are currently 31 and 9. In the first 40 games, that’s over .750 ball. Much has been made of this; although they were expected to be a reasonably good team, most of the commentators I saw were picking Oakland to take the division, and certainly nobody expected the Mariners to rack up one of the dozen best starts in major league history.

Let me be clear, though, this is not a gloating thread. It’s way too early for even the most optimistic fan to start getting up some serious hopes. With three quarters of the season yet to come, there’s still plenty of time to choke. (Ask a Boston fan.)

Still, it seems evident that the M’s are doing something right, or they wouldn’t have won all but one of their series (a homestand against Toronto; I was there for the bitter disappointment of game three). So, out of curiosity, I thought I should ask the SDMB’s baseball fans for their thoughts on the subject. I’ll reserve my own opinions for now, so as not to bias the discussion. I’d especially like to hear from non-Mariners fans, people who have watched their teams play against the M’s, to hear their perspective, though of course M’s fans are welcome (as long as you stick to the no-gloating guideline, please).

So:[ul][li]What are the Mariners doing right? Hitting, pitching, ephemera like management style or playing philosophy, whatever? Which aspect is most important?[/li]
[li]Which players, in particular, have proved most valuable so far? Or to look at it another way, who can the team not afford to lose?[/li]
[li]Where are the Mariners weak? Other than the obvious, what’s got the most potential to bite them in the long run? And how would you shore up this element (add a player, or whatever) without damaging the current team’s chemistry?[/li]
What are the odds of this success being sustained through the season? Obviously, part of the magic of the game is how the short term gets ironed out by the long term, so how much of their success so far can be attributed to luck or statistical anomalies, and how much to good baseball?[/ul]I look forward to any and all thoughts.

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Pardon me…But shouldn’t this be about my Twins? The lowest payrol in MLB at 24.2 million. That’s less than A Rod makes in a year. 4 of 6 from NY. 2 of 3 from Boston. 28-11 who picked the Twins to do anything this year? Come the 22nd and 23rd…we shall see who has bragging rights.

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Congrats on those M’s Cervaise. There’s nothing quite like having your team not just in the hunt but blowing away the competition.

I favor the Cards and the Braves, and the NL in general, but what the hell, any excuse to talk baseball.

What are the Mariners doing right?
Just about everything. They’re 30 runs above league avg offensively, 38 runs defensively. Their starters are 3rd in ERA, their relievers 2nd, with a super .193 BA against. They’re 2nd in fielding percentage. They’re 35 of 41 in stolen bases, which is outrageous. And Edgar Martinez hasn’t even started to hit yet.

  • Which players, in particular, have proved most valuable so far?*
    Ichiro, I guess. He’s sure on base all the time. Baseball Prospectus has run fine articles on him the last 2 days.

  • Where are the Mariners weak?*
    Bret Boone is playing way over his head. In the last few years I’ve seen the Reds, Braves and Padres all give up on him and for the same reason. He’s convinced he’s a slugger and while he always stops producing the long ball he never stops trying to do what he can’t, resulting in outs and more outs. Doesn’t listen and doesn’t adjust. I guess you can tell he’s not a favorite of mine.

…how much of their success so far can be attributed to luck or statistical anomalies, and how much to good baseball?
As you may know the ratio of runs scored to runs allowed is a good predictor of winning percentage. Using the Pythagorean method devised by Bill James, the M’s figure to be 27-13. That’s excellent, even superior, but not eye-popping so you can say they’ve been lucky to that extent. Still they keep putting up more runs than the other guys and you can’t argue with that.

Maybe I’ll see you in St. Louis late this September. Good luck.

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Ichiro, for sure. Sele and the entire bullpen, except possibly Tomko, are all doing well. McLemore, Boone, Olerud and Edgar are playing well, though the last two are having fairly “normal” years for them.

Boone is playing over his head, as is McLemore. The entire bullpen isn’t quite THIS good.

On the other hand, Al Martin has been horrid, Dan Wilson, David Bell, and Carlos Guillen have been pretty unimpressive. Moyer had better improve that ERA or his won loss record will take a dive.

To be fair, I think that MOST teams with a record as good as Seattle’s are going to overperform relative to their Pythagorean projections.

I don’t believe Seattle is quite THIS good, but they look pretty solid to make the playoffs.

Finally, I think that Ichiro will tail off, possibly dramatically, unless he starts taking more walks. 'Course, he might show more selectivity as the season goes on.

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As far as I’ve seen, it’s not really a lack of selectivity that causes Ichiro (and what a great name that is - right up there with Augie) to not walk - it’s the fact that he just doesn’t swing and miss. Like, ever. I think at last count, he had swung and missed something like 8(!!!) times all year. That’s utterly disgusting.

And, to crib a few numbers from that Baseball Prospectus article:

Ichiro has probably the best shot ever at the big 56 (assumming that he can continue to average hits in 18 out of 20 games, he should have a 56-game streak every seven seasons or so).

He’s on pace to set the all-time hits record (272, beating the record of 257).

He’s on pace to absolutely KILL the all-time AB record (752 against 705).

These last two depend heavily on the rest of the team continuing to reach base, though.

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I bet the Mariners are especially thrilled to have a reliable closer like Kazuhiro Sasaki, particularly after having suffered through the many years of Bobby Ayala’s deeply incompetent reign. God, why did he have an MLB job for so long?

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He didn’t walk much in Japan, either, IIRC. As far as lack of selectivity, we’ll see. If I were an opposing pitcher, I’d be throwing pitches out of the strike zone to see if he’d chase them.

The Baseball Prospectus article was great.

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Bumping this thread, since we’re headed into the All-Star break and the Mariners continue their dominance. Other than a rough stretch versus Oakland in June, the torrid pace continues unabated: The June record of 18-9 only looks bad compared to April’s 20-5 and May’s 20-7. So far, July is 5-3. Overall, that’s 63-24, which projects to an absurd final record. One other noteworthy stat for playoff consideration: A 35-12 road record, with no series losses. (At least one split, though.)

Basically, this is a status report, checking in to see how many of the opinions and projections above have panned out, and to see which remain valid and what else can be said for the M’s in the second half.

Ichiro has not faded. He’s hitting .347 with 23 K’s in 386 appearances (!), and based on his graph, he’s holding steady.

Bret Boone has not faded. He’s hitting .324, and his 83 RBI ties him in the AL with Juan Gonzalez behind Manny Ramirez’s 84. Hitting behind Edgar Martinez, John Olerud, and others certainly hasn’t hurt his totals, but his discipline at his plate seems to have been significantly improved, apparently from spending time with Edgar and other professional hitters. (He even deigned to bunt in the 10th the other night.) His glove’s been good, too; he only has 5 errors thus far. He still has a big mouth, though.

Some starting pitchers have struggled a lot. (Notably Halama, who went down to AAA and immediately pitched a perfect game, the first in the history of the Pacific Coast League.) Freddy Garcia, on the other hand, has turned into a demon, pitching back-to-back shutouts, one a complete game.

The bullpen has struggled a bit also, perhaps from overuse when Sele or whoever can’t get out of the fourth. (He was solid today, though.) Sasaki finally got dinged a couple of times, and Ryan Franklin isn’t as dominant as he first appeared to be. Jeff Nelson, on the other hand, is solid, and Arthur Rhodes is right behind him.

And a final note: Despite how amazing some of this has been, none of it means anything if the M’s choke in the postseason. Even projecting their current record out to a ridiculous 120-plus wins, if the Yankees’ overpowering fastball pitching lineup knocks them out (Jamie Moyer is basically a finesse/junkball thrower, and the others are a mixed bag), the number of wins will be meaningless. Besides, if I were Lou Piniella, assuming I could get to 100 wins, I’d sit down the first-stringers with the division clinched and make sure everybody’s healthy for a month later.

So the questions now are the same as they were before. What should worry the Mariners? Where are they solid? What should they change, and what should they keep doing? Whose possible injury would hurt them the most? How should the other teams come at them in the second half?

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I told my friend that w/o Randy, Kenny G or ARod, the Mariners might get to the World Series. Pinella finally got the pitching to match the great hitting the Mariners always had since he became manager. And Inchiro was definitely the best find by any North American team in the early part of the century.

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By the way, it occurs to me that this should have gone in IMHO initially. I thought I put it there – I certainly intended to – but I guess not.