Where the Mariners players ranked in fWAR by position in 2023

Pitching is a bit different when it comes to qualifications. I decided to go with 100 IP+, which puts us at 127 candidates. That's still just about 4 starters per team. (Only 44 meet "qualified" status, which needs to be changed). I thought this would be a good number, and gets Bryce Miller into the group, although Woo and his 87 innings stay out.

Starting Pitching: George Kirby (4.4 fWAR) 11th of 127
Starting Pitching: Luis Castillo (3.4 fWAR) 20th of 127
Starting Pitching: Logan Gilbert (3.2 fWAR) 25th of 127
Starting Pitching: Bryce Miller (1.9 fWAR) 64th of 127

All three of those top pitchers actually meet the "qualified" mark for baseball, throwing over 162 innings. Maybe 2th, for Gilbert, doesn't seem great to people, but it's still a very impressive mark for your third pitcher. To know that you can throw Castillo/Kirby/Gilbert is a massive advantage. It also helps to take the pressure off of guys like Miller and Woo. To me, that Miller number is still impressive, and he flashed some great stuff this year with his Spencer Strider lite fastball.

Until September, Kirby and Castillo seemed neck and neck. If the Mariners really are going to have two pitchers each year battling for Cy Young contention, then we should be in a really good place going forward.

For relievers, we are going with 40 innings here. It's a fair amount of innings still, and gets you to 198 qualified pitchers that meet that mark.

Relief Pitching: Matt Brash (2.1 fWAR) 4th of 198
Relief Pitching: Andres Munoz: (1.3 fWAR) 31st of 198
Relief Pitching: Justin Topa (1.1 fWAR) 46th of 198
Relief Pitching: Gabe Speier (0.6 fWAR) 96th of 198
Relief Pitching: Taylor Saucedo (0.2 fWAR) 137th of 198

Brash obviously stands out here, dominating the Fangraphs leaderboards for fWAR. A 2.1 mark is incredibly impressive, especially when he doesn't have saves really, with those going to Munoz and Sewald for the majority of the season. It's the mix of appearances of strikeouts that greatly increases his worth, leading all of baseball with 78 appearances. He had 107 Ks, which was 109th in baseball. That's insane when you consider hes a reliever and only threw 70.2 innings.

Topa is the fun one. He had 1.1 fWAR, and came out of nowhere. The Mariners trusted him a lot, and he was actually T-2nd in appearances with 75, alongside Miguel Castro and Emmanuel Clase. I like that Speier had a solid mark, and that Saucedo even made the list. Yeah, he's 137th, but that's as the Mariners 5th option out of the pen. To get worth from 5 relievers? That's a really good sign.

The Mariners had a ton of good players this year. Expectations were high, and they didn't meet them, but the run of good luck and chaos ball had to come back and bit them at some point. Stay tuned for a review of the Mariners as a whole, and see how this year's team compares to the ones from the past two seasons.