Where are the Mariners on the first power rankings of the season?

I wasn’t expecting the Mariners to be at the top of the newest power rankings released by the MLB, but I was hoping that they would receive a little more respect. In the first power rankings of the 2021 season, the Mariners are ranked 24th. Previously in the pre-season rankings, the Mariners were the 23rd best team.

The Mariners deserve to be a bit higher in the power rankings

The M’s haven’t been very good statistically speaking. The Seattle offense has the 13th most strikeouts in the league, ranks 27th in home runs, 26th in ERA, and has walked the sixth most. Not very promising numbers, right?

But if you look at the advanced numbers, the Mariners are actually not that bad. The Seattle offense ranks 19th in wOBA, 14th in wRC+, 14th in BB%, and 10th in BABIP. So, it’s not like the Mariners aren’t doing anything at all on offense. Of course they are struggling in areas like strike outs and ISO but being in the middle of the pack for wRC+ and being below average for wOBA makes me think we deserve a better ranking.

The other area I haven’t addressed yet is the pitching. Both the basic and advanced metrics for our pitching has been pretty brutal. But all this to say, we are 5-4 and third in the AL West so that has to count for something.

Other teams the Mariners should be in front of

One of the biggest head scratchers for me is that the San Francisco Giants are ranked 22nd. The Giants were ranked 22nd in the pre-season rankings and are still in the same spot. Granted they are 6-4 and third in their division like the Mariners but were they really more impressive than Seattle?

The Giants lost the opening series to us, upset the Padres, and swept the Rockies. I don’t know about you, but I think the M’s have had a better start to the 2021 series if we are going strictly based off of results. We defeated the Giants, lost to the White Sox, and defeated the very talented Twins.

The Cubs are another interesting pick by the writers. They are the 18th team in the rankings and were 14th prior to the start of the season. The Cubs have lost some of its star power after trading Yu Darvish and are currently 4-6 in the NL Central. Should they really be six teams higher on the list than the M’s?

The same could be said for the Washington Nationals who are off to a rough 2-5 start, but I think they are a better team than the Cubs on paper.

Overall, I am not very impressed with how the Mariners are playing and the rankings aren’t a good reflection of the team’s potential. I expect the Mariners to easily get into the 10’s by the middle of the season as our team starts to pick it up, especially guys like Marco Gonzales and Dylan Moore.