The first 6 games haven’t been anything much more than completely underwhelming and honestly deflating. The team did not finish on the highest note coming out of spring training, but they certainly had some bright spots to go with that. Julio Rodriguez finished with the most RBI’s in the Cactus League. The Mariners were one of the highest scoring teams in the Cactus League. There were definitely worries coming out of spring training especially the pitching with the so many high scoring games but those have shown to be null and void as most of the given-up runs were guys who didn’t make the 26-man roster or were minor league players. Unfortunately, it seems like nothing good has translated from spring training to the start of the season for the offense.
Thursday night the Mariners started the season off with a clutch 4-2-win vs an underrated and hopeful Athletics team. Since then, the Mariners are 1-4 and have lost the first 2 of this Detroit Tigers series. Nothing really promising has been shown except some individual performances and a pretty decent and strong bullpen.
Lets fix this
This offense has been off to a cold, and I mean cold start. As of Wednesday morning, the Mariners have 2 guys batting over .250 with 4 games played being Dylan Moore and Jorge Polanco. This team has a team batting average of .166 and seems to only score runs via the long ball (At least in the series vs the A’s) and the offense is once again hoping that games aren’t high scoring because then you can most certainly count this team out so far. I am not sure the new torpedo bats that have been causing waves can save this offense, but I am being optimistic that once the Mariners get their hands on these bats, they can score a few more runs.
Very small sample size but the strikeouts are just as high as they were last year. Julio Rodriguez has 19 at bats and 8 strikeouts already. Randy has been a bright spot for the most part with a few homers, but he is batting .158 and with 6 K’s in only 19 at bats. This goes top to bottom too with a bad top of the lineup probably comes a bad bottom of the lineup. JP Crawford has slowly been regressing since the start of his contract extension he signed but it’s bad to start this year being out starting shortstop with only 1 hit in 6 games batting .067. On the bright side JP is still walking a lot with a .300 OBP, so hopefully he finds his groove and can ascend the lineup once more.
I mean it doesn’t take a genius to tell you but only a casual baseball fan that the Mariners off-season additions might not be too much of contributors. Donovan Solano has barely played with only 7 at bats and 4 K’s. Rowdy Tellez has started rough too batting .100 with 5 K’s in 10 at bats. One can hope that this team will be unlocked by torpedo bats but this start has been abysmal offensively.
The Good
There is some good that should be harped on to start the season. The rotation looks pretty good to start the year. Luis Castillo had a rough start Friday night, but we can assume that will level out and he will be a pretty consistent gamer for us. Bryce Miller didn’t go too deep and got hit off a little bit but there is a lot of hope he will find his groove. Logan Gilbert at the time of this blog is the only pitcher to make 2 starts and he was excellent on Opening Day and pretty decent last night with stats like, 12 IP, 18 K’s, 3.00 ERA, and .670 WHIP. Bryan Woo had the best performance this weekend in his first start of the season going 6 innings with 3 hits, 1 ER, 5 K’s and a 1.50 ERA. First time starting the year on the roster and he had a very promising start in his 3rd season as a Mariner. The bullpen has been fine, but Andres Munoz has been the bright spot to no one’s surprise as he has shown up and showed out with 2 saves in his 2 innings pitched.
I am missing someone who started one of these nights in that last paragraph and that’s Emerson Hancock our former 6th overall pick, highly praised college pitcher but unfortunately, he hasn’t come into place. It was bad Monday night with 6 ER and not being able to finish the inning with only 2 outs and is now headed to Triple A and being replaced by Jhonathan Diaz until George Kirby comes back. Emerson’s future seems really unclear and he doesn’t have a firm spot in our rotation and soon will run out of options so it might be safe to assume he will be traded in the future, but only really holds trade value from the fact that he was the 6th overall pick a few years back.
End of the day we saw 2 wins and like no runs this week with some boring and frustrating baseball and only a few good moments like Julios nuke of a homer Sunday or Randy’s bat slam on opening day. Hopefully this team can figure it out because wasting so much pitching potential and some supposedly great players would be a shame. The fans are annoyed, and the front office is limited. This hasn’t created a great environment for the team and were going to have to find some stability, wins, and runs soon.