Why Seattle Fans Should Be Worried About the Mariners' Slow Start

The 2015 MLB season is 15 games old, and fans are already beginning to take stock of their team’s performance. Several clubs—particularly the blistering-hot New York Mets—are off to fast starts, outperforming projections and delighting their supporters.  

Other teams, however, are struggling to meet expectations. The Seattle Mariners, picked by many to win their first division title since 2001, are one of these teams. It’s early yet, and the law of averages applies to baseball more than perhaps any other sport. But Seattle—tied with Texas for last place in the AL West—may have cause for concern. 

Let’s start with offense.

Last month, Grantland’s Ben Lindbergh projected Seattle to win more than 88 games en route to a division title. In his analysis, he included offensive projections for each player in the Mariners’ starting lineup. And this is one cause for concern.

Seattle’s biggest offensive threats are actually playing pretty well. Star second baseman Robinson Cano is at or near his projected batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage. Prized free-agent acquisition Nelson Cruz, who hit 40 home runs last year, is clobbering opposing pitchers, hitting .328 with eight home runs and a 1.107 OPS. Cruz has outperformed expectations across the board.

Here’s the problem: If your two best offensive players are playing really well, you should be winning games—and Seattle isn’t. It would be one thing if the Mariners were 6-9 while Cruz and Cano were struggling; it’s another if those two are mashing. 

If we compare Lindbergh’s projections with each player’s current stats, just two players in the team’s starting lineup—catcher Mike Zunino and first baseman Logan Morrison—are underperforming. That suggests that just two of Seattle’s nine players can expect their numbers to improve substantially.  

The other seven players in the lineup, meanwhile, will probably either maintain their current pace or, in several cases, regress. Cruz, for instance, is hitting .328. Lindbergh projected him to hit .250. Shortstop Brad Miller has an unsustainably high BABIP (.371), per Rotowire.com, and will almost certainly come down from the clouds. 

In sum, Seattle isn’t winning games despite outperforming expectations at the plate. That’s a dangerous combination. It will help if Zunino and Morrison find their stroke, but frankly, average production from that pair will not turn a 6-9 team into a contender. 

It’s not as if the Mariners have played tough competition and simply lost to top-tier teams, either. With the exception of last week’s series with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Seattle has only played teams in its own division (which it’s supposed to win).

If Seattle hopes to earn its first division title in over a decade, the team needs players not named Cruz or Cano to make meaningful contributions at the plate. (They could also afford to stop making silly mental mistakes like the one in the Vine below.) 

Now let’s turn to pitching and defense, the perceived cornerstones of title-winning baseball teams. The story here is pretty ugly, which explains why the lineup’s relatively good performance thus far hasn’t resulted in wins. 

Seattle’s pitching problems are at neither the top nor the bottom. The team’s ace, Felix Hernandez, has been his usual self, winning his first two starts while holding opponents to an anemic .186 batting average. Plus, projected No. 5 starter J.A. Happ has been a pleasant surprise as the only pitcher on the staff with more than 20 innings pitched and a 2.61 ERA. 

But the teams No. 2 through No. 4 starters have been inexplicably awful. Grantland’s Lindbergh projected Hisashi Iwakuma, James Paxton and Taijuan Walker to combine for more than 500 innings and an average ERA below 4.00. Instead, Iwakuma has the lowest ERA of the bunch at 6.61, and none of them are averaging six or more innings per outing.

ERA can be a misleading stat, but the picture isn’t much prettier when it comes to fielding independent pitching and walks per nine innings pitched.

Iwakuma, Paxton and Walker are all currently sporting FIPs at least 0.70 worse than projected. Iwakuma’s current FIP (6.26) is nearly three full points higher than his projected 3.42. And while Iwakuma and Paxton are actually walking fewer batters than expected, Walker’s current BB/9 is an absurd 7.1.

In short, the rotation needs to turn it around. Hernandez has been solid, but Happ is likely to slow down at some point, as he’s outperforming projections nearly across the board, and the team can’t afford to pitch any worse than it has. One further note: Seattle’s closer, Fernando Rodney, has posted an 8.53 ERA with a WHIP over 2.00. The bullpen has not helped Seattle’s subpar starting performances.

Finally, defense. The normally sure-handed Cano already has two errors, as does third baseman Kyle Seager. As a team, Seattle has 10 errors, good for 18th in the league (per ESPN.com). Zunino, highly touted for his defense, also has an error.

To be fair, this is not yet something for Seattle fans to worry about. Cano, given his history, seems unlikely to continue his poor fielding, and the same goes for Zunino. But when your pitching has let you down, and when you’re struggling to win games despite hot starts from your two best hitters, you really can’t make errors in the field. 

The Mariners can’t pitch (after Hernandez) and are struggling in the field. They’re hitting pretty well, but seven of their nine players are actually playing better than expected. With some of those seven players likely to regress, the team’s poor pitching and fielding will be even more glaring.