When it's all said and done, are the Mariners better as they head into 2024 season?

Hitting...That other thing baseball teams have to do

Hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things to do in spo… Nope. Stop. Go directly to jail. Do not collect RSN revenues.

The narrative all off-season has been will the Mariners do enough/spend enough/improve internally enough at hitting the baseball to break through the crowded AL West. To quote some obscure football guy named John Madden, “You can’t win a game if you don’t score any points”. The 2023 Mariners proved that statement in eight games last year that they failed to score a single run.

In this age of baseball though scoring one or two runs is about the same as scoring zero. When you add the total of last year’s games the number balloons from eight to 34. Of those 34 games where the M’s scored two or fewer runs only eight were wins and seven of those came as the result of a shutout by Mariner pitching.

Without the best pitching staff in the American League, that’s a 1-33 ball club when we score two or fewer runs. All of which should illuminate the point that going out and becoming an offensive juggernaut through off-season acquisitions was not the plan, not reasonably achievable, and most importantly not necessary. We just have to figure out a way to not stink up the joint 34 times a year. 

A great change-up is almost imperceptible 

Like Jamie Moyer clenching up his toes inside his cleats, some changes are harder to see than others, but no less effective.  It may seem as though the Mariners have simply attempted to replace in the aggregate what they have lost from last year's squad. Geno, Teo and “The Man from Waukesha” were all great power hitters who drove in a ton of runs last year, 238 to be exact.

What’s just as important is what isn’t replicated in the numbers of the folks doing the replacing. These three players accounted for 557 strikeouts last year. For reference, Ichiro struck out 792 times across his 11+ seasons as a Mariner.

The aggregate of replacements this year (Garver, Raley, Haniger & Polanco) totaled 363 strikeouts last year. Raley was the worst offender with 128, but his platooning this year should limit exposure to tough lefties anyway and I’d bet that total shrinks for him in ‘24. A conscious effort has been made to eliminate excessive strikeouts from this lineup as it was put back together after the key departures. 

Outside help to improve inside players

There was no Shohei push. Even though one of them practically begged to come here, there was no Boras 4 signing. The most impactful signing the Mariners made in my humble opinion wasn’t even a player, but rather a coach. The Brant Brown of it all will be largely overlooked. That is unless what happened in Miami last year repeats itself in Seattle.

If you’re unfamiliar with Brown he’s a new hitting coach that was in the Dodgers organization and then the Marlins last year.  There’s a great article in the Miami Herald by Jordan McPherson from last September that does a wonderful job of illustrating Brown’s approach to offense and how it manifested in the Marlin stat lines. Jazz Chisholm’s shirt might have summed it up best: “Coach Says Color Inside The Lines”.

It can’t truly be as simple as don’t swing at bad pitches right? However he did it, Brown’s approach resulted in a .30 point team batting average jump and a 2.9% drop in strikeout rate. The Marlins went from sixth worst to sixth best in MLB at BA on pitches in the strike zone. The most interesting stat in the article shows a significant decline in games where Miami scored 1 or fewer runs. There were 38 in 2022 and only 24 in 2023 (with 25 left to play). Didn’t we just talk about this? Be a Brant Brown fan. 

Ok so like… are the Mariners better this year or not?

For every statement this off-season about how Mariner brass has refused to spend on big names, there should be an accompanying statement about how sneaky good Dipoto and Hollander have been at, oh let’s call it coloring inside the lines shall we?

Working with what you’ve got and targeting one aspect of this offense to improve that raises the floor. It almost feels like low-hanging fruit but striking out significantly less is just an obvious way to suck less severely. When you’ve got the best pitching in the league that only stands to improve from last year, that one way to stop sucking might just result in a double-digit win total gain year over year.

Brant Brown’s approach alone seemingly made the Marlins competitive in 14 more games, and that was with no roster construction focus on K rate. When you look at this Mariner team position by position it’s difficult to say that they’ll be significantly better or worse than last year offensively. It’s only when you look at the intention behind the overall roster and approach that a vision starts to emerge.

That vision is what will lead to more consistent offense one through nine for Scott Servais and Co. I nearly threw up in my mouth when I heard that Seattle had removed itself from the race for Shohei. All was lost and the sky was falling in the emerald city. Until I looked up and it wasn’t.

It’s far from obvious but this Mariner fan believes that there has been marked improvement and reason for optimism. Lots of love, and Go Mariners.