Ranking the Seattle Mariners best seasons ever by Pitchers

I’ve already done an article on the greatest seasons in Mariners history by hitters. What about pitchers though? Which pitchers for the Mariners have had the greatest individual seasons in team history?

The list isn’t quite as long as it was for hitters. Pitchers normally have a bit lower WAR than hitters, and it looks like that for the Mariners as well. The Mariners have had 34 hitters with a 5.0 oWAR or higher, but only 22 pitchers. I could’ve pushed it out to a 4.0 WAR and 39 occurrences, but that would just get messy. Props to JJ Putz on a 4.0 WAR back in 2007, though.

It does show how tough it is, or how non-elite Mariners pitchers have been since the turn of the millennium. Not sure if this is a spoiler or not, but there have only been two Mariners since the year 2000 to have a WAR of 6.0 or higher in a season. One should be pretty obvious.

Which Mariners had the greatest pitching seasons in team history?

Anyway, I need to make sure to put in the disclaimer again as I did in the hitting article. This isn’t just a regurgitation of the highest numbers based solely on WAR. I’m looking through the numbers and trying to figure out who had the greatest seasons. There are other things in play. Just like there were for worst contracts (Miguel Batista had a good first year and two awful ones. It was a bad deal, but not all-time awful).

So who all made the list of the greatest pitching seasons in Mariners history? Let’s get started with the older generation and a handful of Mariners who only accomplished a 5.0 WAR or better once in their tenure with the team.