{"id":679206,"date":"2026-04-19T16:01:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T16:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/679206\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T16:01:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T16:01:16","slug":"on-the-mariners-9-13-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/679206\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Mariners\u2019 9-13 record"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mariners have dug themselves a hole.<\/p>\n

The Mariners have played 22 games this year, or about 13.5% of the 2026 season. They are 9-13 and in fourth place in the AL West. They\u2019ve had losing streaks of four games and five games and haven\u2019t looked particularly competent against anybody but the free-falling Astros. It\u2019s a less than ideal start for a team that was considered the favorites in the American League on Opening Day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Mariners are still the favorites to win the AL West, but they\u2019ve lost about 14% from their division odds, according to FanGraphs<\/a>. The Rangers, in turn, have added about 14% to their odds to win the division, after starting 11-10. Most of that movement is the Rangers three-game sweep of the Mariners in Arlington last week. The ongoing series this weekend is tied 1-1 ahead of Sunday\u2019s rubber match. It\u2019s suddenly a massive game for the Mariners, in the scenario where the two teams are tied 5 1\/2 months from now.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The projections are still quite bullish on the Mariners overall. They hold the second best World Series odds in the American League and the fourth best odds in the majors. They haven\u2019t really bottomed-out or experienced any major injuries to deter the projections. They also aren\u2019t alone in their slow start: the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Phillies and Mets have each started out several games below .500 despite strong projections. This is just kind of how it goes. Even great teams tend to play poorly at some point each season.<\/p>\n

But as Dan Szymborski recently pointed out<\/a> for FanGraphs, teams can play themselves out of the postseason with a bad April. With fairly even competition in the American League this year, a few extra losses early puts pressure on an outsized win streak later in the year. To some extent, the Mariners have used up one of their allowable skids right out of the gate. I wouldn\u2019t say they\u2019re far behind, but they are indeed behind.<\/p>\n

The good news? The Mariners aren\u2019t necessarily playing too bad. Their offense has been middle of the pack with a 96 wRC+, and their pitching has been elite, leading the league in FIP and WAR. This certainly isn\u2019t their top gear, but Base Runs estimates the Mariners record at 12-10. They\u2019ve been \u201cunlucky,\u201d in other words.<\/p>\n

What the heck are Base Runs? You\u2019re likely familiar with run differential, which gives us a clue about a team\u2019s quality by looking at how many more (or less) runs they score than their opponents. Base Runs takes this a step further and estimates a team\u2019s quality based on their performance in individual at bats. One way to think about it is five doubles in an inning and five doubles scattered across a game provide the same amount of information on a team\u2019s true talent, according to Base Runs. It turns out this works quite well, and Base Runs is one of the essential metrics for, \u201cIs my team playing good or bad?\u201d<\/p>\n

Right now, the Mariners are playing OK. They\u2019ve bested their opponents by Base Runs in most games this year, including a few they ultimately lost. Plus, Base Runs is agnostic on Jo Adell\u2019s Big Night \u2014 there\u2019s a very real world where the Mainers are 13-9 right now.<\/p>\n

Of course, by \u201cvery real world,\u201d I mean no such thing. The Mariners really did lose those games, and they really do have to make up that ground. And there are legitimate reasons for concern. The lineup has struggled, though it\u2019s more complicated than that. The Mariners leadoff and 5-9 hitters have posted a 122 wRC+ \u2014 third best in the majors<\/a>. But their 2-4 hitters have posted a a league-worst 53 wRC+. That\u2019s pretty much the difference between the Mariners and their potential so far. Those spots have been occupied by Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodr\u00edguez, and Josh Naylor, a trio that was projected among the best in the majors. You could look at this one of two ways: 1) these guys are pretty much locks to wind up well above average, and surely their best days are ahead of them, or 2) they\u2019re wasting a narrow window of everything else going right.<\/p>\n

The other notable hangup isn\u2019t unexpected. The Mariners defense is just plain bad. I mean, it\u2019s \u201ctoo early to say anything definitive about 2026,\u201d but they were really bad last year, so I expect as much. I am encouraged by Cole Young\u2019s new range, but that seems to be offset by Brendan Donovan playing out of position (and maybe hurt).<\/p>\n

The Mariners were supposed to be good and they\u2019re still supposed to be goodThe Mariners have played OK and better than their record indicatesThey haven\u2019t bottomed out but the pressure is on<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll check in on these figures again at the 40-game mark in three weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mariners have dug themselves a hole. The Mariners have played 22 games this year, or about 13.5%…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":679207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2392],"tags":[5,620,4,619,65,54376,3235],"class_list":["post-679206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-seattle-mariners","tag-baseball","tag-mariners","tag-mlb","tag-seattle","tag-seattle-mariners","tag-seattle-mariners-analysis","tag-seattlemariners"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116432214676242974","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679206","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=679206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/679206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/679207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=679206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=679206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=679206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}