Week 10 Recap

• Big news today as the Mariners have called up Mike Zunino from AAA-Tacoma. In his first full year as a professional, Zunino has hit .238/.303/.503. He has certainly showed his strong power potential but he is not a polished hitter and has struggled against advanced AAA pitching recently. This is clearly a desperate move by the front office to try and salvage something positive from this season. But rushing unprepared prospects is not the answer to the problems this team faces. The roster is still full of veteran stopgaps and hasn’t yet been stripped down like Houston or Miami so what’s the point in bringing up Zunino? If Zunino is on his way, shouldn’t we be calling up all of our other prospects to see which of them will stick? Dave Cameron at USS Mariner makes an excellent argument for why this move signals the end of the Jack Z era in Seattle.

• Speaking of prospects, the 2013 MLB Draft was held last weekend. With their first round pick, the Mariners selected 1B/3B DJ Peterson. Peterson was thought to be one of the most polished hitters in the draft this year and has drawn comparisons to Edgar Martinez and Paul Konerko. I’m not a scout to I’ll defer to more educated opinions, both Lookout Landing and USS Mariner have assorted thoughts on the draft.
• The first three players selected in the draft were position players with strong hitting tools. The Mariners selected only three pitchers in their first ten picks and fifteen out of forty players selected. Can you guess what the Mariners were focused on?
• As for the games that actually count, a pretty meh week for the Mariners. There was the crazy game on Wednesday where the first run of the game wasn’t scored until the fourteenth inning and twelve runs were scored between the fourteenth and sixteenth innings. Baseball!

Player Performances

One of the features I’m including is a look at the recent player performances from the past two weeks. That small of a sample size will give us some pretty extreme data points. If you want to see the methodology behind these statistics, check out this page. The two tables below are the batting and pitching data from the last two weeks (5/27-6/9).

• Of the players currently on the active roster, there are four that have a chance be on the team next year-Morales, Seager, Franklin, and Saunders. All of the rest are temporary stopgaps that will either be traded or released during the offseason. Fun!

• Jeremy Bonderman won his first game since 2010 on Friday. Good for him. Perseverance and dedication do payoff sometimes.
• Danny Farquhar has struck out over 40% of the batters he’s faced. That’s third best in the league among pitchers with at least 10 innings pitched.

AL West Standings

The Week Ahead

The Mariners finish their homestand with three against the Astros. This year the Astros are 11-5 against the Mariners and the Angels and 1-14 against the Athletics and the Rangers. That doesn’t make much sense but hopefully the Mariners will start to reverse that trend this week. After a day off, the Mariners travel to Oakland for a three game series continuing a thirteen game stretch against AL West opponents.