I’ve always enjoyed Halloween. Ever since my kid(s) were born, it’s gone to a whole new level. Dressing up with them (I’m Mr. Clean today), going out and helping them Trick or Treat, stealing… I mean, eating the candy that they forgot about. It’s great. In honor of that, I wanted to take a look back at the Mariners 2022 season to check out some of their spookiest stats of the season.
What spooky stats stand out from the Mariners 2022 season?
We start off with the best treat that the Mariners gave us this season, Julio Rodriguez. He became one of just 25 Mariners to have a bWAR of 6.0 or higher, putting himself into a rare echelon of baseball history stats. The 25/25 HR/SB club, top 25 in BA, good defense in CF, and all at 21. Julio Rodriguez was easily the best treat of the season.
There is good scary and bad scary. The good scary is George Kirby’s walk rate for most of the season. In his first 22 starts (he made 25), he walked just 15 people in 117.2 innings, for a crazy low rate of 1.147 BB/9. The league leader on the season was Corey Kluber with a 1.152 BB/9. If Kirby qualified, he would’ve led the league. AS A ROOKIE!
Then, there is the bad scary. Jesse Winker. Whether he truly didn’t care about getting better, was hurt, or it was some combination of the two, it was an awful season. One that you might shield your kid’s eyes from. .219/.344/.344. Please don’t hire him for security on Halloween, because he won’t be able to defend anything with a -2.4 dWAR. AHHHHHH!
Cal Raleigh’s BABIP was scary also. We know that his BA wasn’t great, but that’s because he had awful luck. With a league average rate of .291, Big Dumper was 65 points below that at .226. Talk about some scary luck.
The run that Andres Munoz went on was frightening. Starting in June, he would put up an ERA of 1.63 and a K rate of 13.41 throughout the remainder of the season. Whenever he came in, it was lights out. He led Los Bomberos, one of the most dominant bullpens in baseball throughout 2022. Swanson was the underrated one this year, with a 1.68 ERA on the season, and a remarkable 45-game start to the season, with a 0.86 ERA on August 31st.
I thought about recapping the final series of the playoffs, but that was too scary for me. All in all, it was a great season for the Mariners, with some fun and scary stats. 2022 was definitely more Treat than Trick, and I hope we see more of that in 2023.