The Mariners offense is still being haunted by a specific curse

At this point, it's almost a form of cyberbullying to accuse the Mariners' offense of being lackluster. It's a point that, although undoubtedly true, has been beaten to death. Nonetheless, it's difficult to imagine any major league lineup of simply being ineffective and it's even more surprising to see just how consistently Seattle has struggled to create runs.

It's easy to simply blame the players and the numbers would seem to suggest that it's simply a skill issue. It's almost as if players come to the Mariners and magically begin to hit worse. A simple look at many players' numbers before and after joining the team only adds fuel to the fire.

It's somewhat of a mystery as to why this is the case. Sure, T-Mobile Park is at sea level, but it shares a similar elevation to 13 other ballparks. It's definitely on the colder side but that's largely because it doesn't quite get that hot here in Seattle while cities that are chillier at the start of the season like Chicago and Minneapolis tend to heat up quite a bit in the summer. If everything on paper is the same, could it be that the Mariners are just unlucky?

The Mariners have some of the unluckiest hitters in MLB in 2026

A simple way to assess offensive luck is to look at the difference between a team's actual Weighted On-Base Average (wOBA) vs. its Expected Weighted On-Base Average (xwOBA). The Mariners have a difference of -.012 between their wOBA and their xwOBA, the second-largest gap in MLB.

There are several batted balls that illustrate this point. Against the Astros, Julio Rodríguez hit a ball that would've been a home run in 22/30 ballparks but instead landed harmlessly in Daulton Varsho's glove at the warning track. Given its exit velocity and launch angle, that batted ball had an xwOBA of 1.916 but ended up with a wOBA of just 0. In an eerily similar event that also came against the Astros earlier in the year, Cole Young hit a ball to deep center field that also would've been a home run in 22 ballparks but not in Daikin Park.

Here is a list of the Mariners with some of the largest negative gaps between their actual wOBA and their xwOBA. See if you notice a pattern.

A difference in wOBA of .030 may not seem like much but it's important to acknowledge that it's a very compressed statistic. Unlike OPS, even the best players have wOBAs that don't seem much higher than average. Yordan Alvarez currently leads all of MLB with a .437 wOBA while Ezequiel Tovar is at the bottom of the list with a wOBA of .254. A difference in wOBA of .030 is what separates Pete Crow-Armstrong from TJ Rumfield. The former is a runaway MVP candidate while the other one is a solid bat at first base.

Not everyone seems to be affected by the offensive woes of playing for the Mariners. Randy Arozarena seems to be largely unbothered and his OPS+ while playing for Seattle (124) is actually better than what it was during his tenure in Tampa Bay (122). Still, it's impossible for one man to carry an entire lineup.

Much of this is out of Seattle's control but one could make the argument that the front office could've done more to protect against this sort of regression in the offseason. The Mariners are delicately holding onto a 50-50 chance to make the playoffs but if they do miss out, it should absolutely be something the organization is taking into consideration this winter. One can't always control how things play out but in baseball, you can sort of make your own luck.

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