The Washington Nationals were 19-31 50 games into the 2019 season. They won the World Series.<\/p>\n
The Mariners were 13-2 15 games into the 2019 season. They went 68-94.<\/p>\n
There is no team in MLB \u2013 not even the herculean Dodgers \u2013 who will completely avoid stretches of suck in a 162-game season. It\u2019s the nature of one of the least predictable team sports, where the best clubs win 60% of the time and the worst 40.<\/p>\n
With that throat clearing out of the way and a dab of context established \u2013 we can point to the obvious: This Mariners\u2019 start stinks.<\/p>\n
Thirteen games into this season, it appears Seattle (4-9) has regressed to its offensively anemic ways. Fresh off a three-game sweep in Texas, punctuated by the Rangers\u2019 3-0 win on Wednesday, the Mariners sit in last place in the American League West and at the bottom of MLB in batting average (. 184). No other squad is below .200.<\/p>\n
The good news is that the pitching staff has been unsurprisingly excellent \u2013 posting a 2.62 ERA thus far, which is third in MLB. And though it\u2019s virtually impossible to think the bats won\u2019t warm up to a certain extent, it\u2019s fair to wonder if the M\u2019s offensive output last year was an outlier instead of a preview.<\/p>\n
The story after this six-game road trip is the same as it was after the season-opening seven-game homestand. The Mariners\u2019 pitchers notch 1-2-3 innings, while the Mariners\u2019 2-3-4 hitters flail.<\/p>\n
Cal Raleigh is 7-for-49 (.143) with one home run. Julio Rodr\u00edguez is 7-for-49 with no home runs. Josh Naylor is 5-for-48 (.104) with zero dingers. These aren\u2019t large enough sample sizes to warrant batting order changes yet, but they speak to uncomfortable realities that many Mariners fans might not want to face.<\/p>\n
Examples? One is that Raleigh may never come close to matching last year\u2019s 60-home-run season, which resulted in him finishing second in the AL MVP voting. I don\u2019t think anybody would be disappointed if last year ends up being the best year of the catcher\u2019s career. It was one of the better seasons in MLB history, after all. What might cause some to shudder, however, is if Raleigh\u2019s 34 home-run season in 2024 goes down as his second best season. It was solid, but well short of the spectacular showing that made Cal one of the most recognizable faces in MLB. His performance thus far suggests the pre-2025 Raleigh is the one fans should brace for. I\u2019ll happily be wrong about that.<\/p>\n
Another harsh truth might be Rodr\u00edguez being forever destined to start slow. This is Year 5 for the three-time All-Star, and it just seems that fans have to deal with him being a wreck before becoming a wrecking ball. He\u2019ll almost certainly come around to being an All-Star caliber player as the season goes along. He always has. But it has long seemed the difference between the center fielder getting top-five MVP votes and being an actual MVP contender is what he does in April and May. So far, it\u2019s been more of the same.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s Naylor. Josh had one of the best stretches of his career after he was traded to the Mariners near the deadline last July. His WAR with the Mariners in the final two months of the season? 2.2. His best WAR in any previous complete season? 2.3.<\/p>\n
In other words, Seattle got a version of Naylor no team had really seen before. Seemed like they had to sign him to a long-term deal after that. They did. But expecting something similar to his production last year might be wishful thinking.<\/p>\n
T-Mobile Park is notorious for its stinginess toward hitters \u2013 particularly in the colder months. But the M\u2019s had only one game in which they scored more than three runs this road trip \u2013 and averaged just 2.16 runs per contest. That\u2019s not a T-Mobile problem. That\u2019s just bad offense.<\/p>\n
Even so, fangraphs.com is projecting Seattle to win more games than any other AL team but the Yankees. If the Mariners were a stock, I\u2019d buy the dip.<\/p>\n
But that dip in offense is as familiar as it is frightening. And being five games under .500 can quickly become 10 if certain shortcomings aren\u2019t shored up.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll maintain my position last week and say it\u2019s still early. Just not so early where fans can\u2019t worry yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Washington Nationals were 19-31 50 games into the 2019 season. They won the World Series. The Mariners…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2392],"tags":[5,620,4,619,65,3235],"class_list":{"0":"post-671489","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-mariners","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mariners","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-seattle","12":"tag-seattle-mariners","13":"tag-seattlemariners"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116373643175702177","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}