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

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.