Jarring statistical collapses make Mariners' offensive struggles no surprise

The Seattle Mariners aren't 4-7 because they're being outpitched. They've scored only 38 runs and are batting a league-low .188, and it all makes sense once you start digging into things like bat speed and the quantity and quality of their contact.

The offense is especially low-hanging fruit following a 2-1 loss to the Texas Rangers on Monday, in which Cal Raleigh's first home run of 2026 was one of only two hits the M's got all game. Heck, even Dan Wilson couldn't spin it positively afterward.

All this is happening against the backdrop of online discourse about how Seattle's bats just plain look slow. It takes literally seconds of searching on Baseball Savant to confirm that the Mariners are indeed among the big losers in average bat speed relative to 2025:

It bears noting that Seattle's bats aren't slow just compared to last season. They're slow by 2026 standards as well, with their average speed tying for 20th out of 30 teams.

Mariners' slow bats are turning hittable pitches into impossible-to-hit pitches

All this explains a lot, starting with how the Mariners are simply not hitting too many hittable pitches. Check out how they're performing within both the overall strike zone and in the heart of the strike zone:

Moreover, it's hard to separate these numbers from the club's performance against fastballs, for which it ranks 29th with a .209 average and 30th with a 29.3 whiff percentage.

It's tough to hit when you're literally not hitting where batters are supposed to do their best, much less when you're also swinging through a pitch group that accounts for 55 percent of all pitches. But what about when the Mariners do make contact?

That picture isn't pretty either, with MLB.com's Mike Petriello pointing out that the Mariners are the biggest loser in hard-hit percentage relative to 2025:

As nice as it is that he's off the home run schneid, Raleigh might as well be the poster boy for Seattle's offensive struggles. Julio Rodríguez is also swinging a cold bat despite a couple of clutch knocks. Though he's at least avoiding strikeouts, Josh Naylor hasn't been such a prize at the plate either.

Cold weather was an issue when the Mariners began their season at T-Mobile Park, but that excuse vanished in Anaheim and now in Arlington. So… maybe it's the World Baseball Classic's fault?

We can debate these and other theories all the livelong day, but what matters is that the Mariners' early offensive struggles aren't all Jo Adell-related bad luck. They literally need to swing the bats better, and expectations should shift downward until that happens.