Mariners 2023 Report Cards: Logan Gilbert was good... but was he good enough?

This is going to be our first report card of the season for the 2023 Mariners. Yes, it is coming out before our team report cards, but I wanted to jump right in and get to the players as we, behind the scenes, gather fan responses and sodo mojo repsonses to put together articles about how the season went from those respective perspectives. Logan Gilbert gets the honor of being the OG report card for 2023.

Why? Well, he's my favorite Mariners player and it's my site (technically me and Trevor, but you likely know what I mean). So, I decided to have him be the first one.

Logan Gilbert gets a B- Grade on his 2023 season report card

I really wavered on this one. It was either going to be a B or a B-. Part of that reasoning is last season. He had a better ERA+, better ERA, better FIP, gave up fewer homers, and had a higher BABIP. You can't argue that this season was better, because there aren't enough metrics to support that argument.

However, he didn't have a bad season. His numbers were still pretty good. 3.1 WAR (oddly the same as last season), five more innings, made all 32 starts, 15 more Ks, one fewer hit, and 13 fewer walks resulting in a WHIP that was just 1.075 compared to last year's 1.180. His ERA/FIP climbed from 3.20/3.46 to 3.73/3.85, and a big part of that was home runs allowed. He gave up just 19 last season, but 29 this season.

He did go 6 innings 20 times, turning in 18 Quality Starts. With just four outings less than 5 innings, we could count on him every time out there. Compare that to 2022, and those same numbers would be 18,16, and just one start under 5 innings. Everything was pretty close, and really, it was the homers that skewed his season.

Should we have expected more from him this season? Was that an unrealistic expectation to get the same type of numbers that we saw last year? I think everyone was hoping for a 3.50 ERA, maybe a couple more strikeouts, and definitely fewer homers. He was a horse (oddly enough, Gilbert and Kirby were T-14th at 190.2 IP), and every single team in baseball would want Gilbert as their 3 (or even 4, if Ray would've been healthy...possibly).

Next year, it would be great to see a bit of improvement and get back to the homer rate from 2022. He's been throwing his version of the ghost fork, and if the homers drop back into the teens, a similar... or even better season could be in the works for Gilbert. For now, because of the home runs, I'm sticking with a B- grade.