The real career ERA leader for the Seattle Mariners

From time to time, I’ll find myself looking around at the all-time stats for the Mariners. Whether it’s just because I love looking at Edgar’s stats, or being curious about where JP Crawford’s 2021 2B total ranked all-time for the Mariners, I’ll end up there every once in a while. Earlier this offseason, I noticed something that I swore was a mistake on the Mariners pitching records.

Have you taken a look at the Mariners career leaders in ERA? You would think that, with such a volatile stat like ERA, that there would be one person at the top of the list. Seriously, it should be pretty tough for there to be a tie there, right? I wouldn’t have thought that there would be two people tied at the top of the list.

Well, I was right. There isn’t a tie with two people at the top of the list. There is actually a four-way tie at the top of the list! What’s also funny to me is that all of them have thrown a no-hitter, with one of them throwing a perfect game.

The Mariners have a four-way tie for best career ERA on the team for qualified pitchers

James Paxton, Felix Hernandez, Randy Johnson, and Hisashi Iwakuma all have a 3.42 ERA. It’s mind-boggling every time I think about it. The fact that four people, all over 500 career innings, could come to the same number in ERA.  It’s about to get crazier too when you see just how close it is and was to the tie being broken.

What I wanted to do was break it down further. Push those decimal points out, and see who the true ERA leader was in Mariners team history. Let’s get started and check out how the tie was almost broken in 2021, and instead, was further cemented.

#4: James Paxton: Innings Pitched: 583.2, Earned Runs: 222, 3.423187 ERA

It was Paxton, but his lone start in 2021, he went 1.1 innings and gave up one run. This right here, this proves how insanely close this list is. Before he walked to the mound that day, Paxton had the best ERA in team history at 3.41557. When he left the mound that day after his injury, he was now 4th all-time with an ERA of 3.423187.

One scoreless inning. That’s all it would take for Paxton to jump back to first place with the Mariners. One out and he would go to third, two outs and he would stay put at third, and getting a third and final out would jump him past second and back into first. Hundreds of innings, even thousands for some of these pitchers, and it all comes down to a single out.

If that’s not baseball, then I don’t know what to tell you.

Of players to come through Seattle, Paxton has to be up near the top for players I really wanted to see stick around and stay healthy. He seemed like a great guy, was a lot of fun to watch, and could talk to birds.

He’s actually the Mariners career leader in FIP with a 3.13, T-2nd in adjusted ERA+ at 117, 2nd in WHIP, and 2nd in K/9. He was so close to becoming the team leader in ERA, but unless something changes and he comes back after being in Boston, Paxton will go down as 4th in ERA in the history of the Mariners.

#3: Hisashi Iwakuma: Innings Pitched: 883.2, Earned Runs: 336, 3.422105 ERA

This one surprised me a bit. I think Iwakuma might actually go down as one of the most underrated players to ever be on the Mariners. He was the first miss on the best contracts handed out by the Mariners this millennia. Setting aside his best season, which I’ll get to in a minute, he was extremely consistent the rest of his time in Seattle. He had a 2.3, 2.4, 2.6, and a 2.4 WAR in four of his first five seasons with the team.

If you can get a stretch like that from anyone other than your ace, you’ve got a darn good pitcher on your hands.

After starting the season in the pen for the Mariners his rookie year, Iwakuma moved to the rotation halfway through the season and never looked back. That first full season as a starter in 2013 was special, and a big part of the reason that Iwakuma is tied for the career ERA lead on the Mariners.

He made every start that season, throwing 219.2 innings across 33 starts. Anytime you can get 6.2 innings from your starter on average, you know you’ve got a good one. The 2.66 ERA was super impressive, as was the 1.006 WHIP. He even led all American League Pitchers in WAR, beating out Cy-Young winner Maz Scherzer, who had a 6.5 compared to Iwakumas 7.0.

The hope was the Mariners could strike gold again with another international signing when they brought on Kikuchi. Instead, he ended up as one of the worst deals the Mariners ever signed.

#2: Felix Hernandez: Innings Pitched: 2729.2, Earned Runs: 1037, 3.419099 ERA

Oh, Felix. Watching him in his prime was a thing of beauty. Mariners fans all over know just how underappreciated he was because of the lack of run support the team was able to provide for him. Just check out this stat from a Schoenfield article over on ESPN back in 2016.

“It was the 45th start in which Hernandez allowed zero runs or one run and didn’t get credit for a win.”

That was only in 2016. That number made up 13.4% of his starts up to that point. In fact, in those 45 starts, Felix had a record of 0-5. It gets worse. He had 118 games where he threw a quality start and didn’t get the win, going 0-42 with a 2.19 ERA in those starts. He even threw something called an “Ultra-Quality Start” (UQ) in a mind-boggling 43% of his starts.

Think about some of it for a minute. Felix had 418 starts. 258 Quality starts, 180 UQ starts, and his record was only 169-136. Teams win 68% of the time a pitcher has a quality start, so just in this quality starts Felix should’ve had 175 wins. Then you still have the other 160 starts. Give him wins in 40% of those games, and Felix gets to 239 wins. Maybe you think the numbers are skewed low or high, but we can all agree Felix had awful run support.

Felix through 199 games from 2009-2014, and only had 86 wins to go along with his ERA of 2.73. He should’ve won way more than that. Like 40+ games more. Yeah, on a normal team with run support, Felix would’ve won 20+ a year, especially throwing seven innings a night.

Does this have a ton to do with the ERA conversation for the Mariners? No, not really. Felix was dominant though, and he deserved better. With just 1.2 innings more, Felix could take over the best ERA in team history. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen, which leads us to the true career leader in ERA for the Mariners…