Perhaps because expectations were so high, the Seattle Mariners’ performance this season seemed extra low.
Yes, 76-86 isn’t going to cut it. Especially not when you have one of the game’s best pitchers and have snagged a top-tier free agent hitter each of the past two offseasons.
Remember in spring training when Robinson Cano said Seattle looked like world champions “on paper”?
Well, I look like a superhero on paper — at least the sheet my 6-year-old daughter was doodling on this weekend.
The knee-jerk reaction is understandable.
Fire the manager! Lloyd McClendon might have less job security than air-conditioning salesman in the Arctic.
Fire the general manager! Oh, the Mariners did that already.
But when you pick through the bones of the recently deceased season, you find that the Mariners weren’t that far off from contending for a postseason spot.
This isn’t to excuse the many disappointing aspects of this team. Rather it’s to show that even over a 162-game season, the margin between success and failure is often slim.
Seattle played more extra-inning games than any team in baseball, going 10-13. Pittsburgh was the only other team to play more than 20 extra-inning games.
Seattle also lost 29 games by one run. Only the Chicago White Sox and Tampa Bay lost more.
If you want to blame one group for Seattle’s failings this season, it has to start with the bullpen.
Only five teams had a worse bullpen ERA than Seattle’s mark of 4.15. The Mariners bullpen blew 24 saves — again, only five teams blew more.
That futility in close games was a big reason the Mariners’ season never got any momentum. Once they’d string together a couple of wins, a mojo-killing close loss would knock them back to square one.
That’s puzzling considering the Mariners had baseball’s best bullpen the previous season. Seattle returned nearly the entire group that had a league-low 2.59 ERA and only 12 blown saves.
But when Fernando Rodney’s roller-coaster ride went off the rails, neither Carson Smith nor Tom Wilhelmsen took the closer role by the reins. Joe Beimel and Danny Farquhar regressed. Yoervis Medina and Dominic Leone were traded mid-season.
Fixing that bullpen should be where new general manager Jerry Dipoto should start. But that’s easier said than done for someone who will spend the next few seasons digging out from the wreckage of the Jack Zduriencik era.
Zduriencik’s philosophy of throwing top dollar at each year’s hottest free-agent hitter was outdated by at least 10 years. The teams in this year’s playoffs are marked by top-to-bottom depth, which the Mariners don’t have.
Nelson Cruz had a fantastic year and Robinson Cano was excellent in the second half. But the Mariners still ranked 23rd in hitting, which shows fallacy of Zduriencik’s team-building strategy.
But Jerry Dipoto must also overhaul a farm system that has been a failure at developing homegrown talent. In 2012 and 2013, the website Minor League Ball ranked the Mariners’ farm system as one of baseball’s five best.
Some prospects have been traded, but most never panned out. Minor League Ball now ranks the Mariners’ farm system 17th.
The Mariners face a long road to being a consistent contender. But Seattle still has good starting pitching. The middle of the batting order is a nice core to build around.
With a few tweaks, especially to the bullpen, it’s not hard to imagine Seattle swinging 12 of those 29 one-run losses the other way.
And if that had happened, the Mariners would be getting ready for a wild-card game today instead of picking up the pieces of shattered expectations.
Micah Rice is The Columbian’s Sports Editor. Reach him at 360-735-4548, micah.rice@columbian.com or on Twitter @col_mrice.
