Week 12 Recap

• The Mariners started this week in third place with a four game series against the rival Angels and a three game series against the division leading Athletics on the docket. We end this week still in third place after dropping the series with the Angels but winning the series against the Athletics. Just try and predict these Mariners and they’ll surprise you every time.

• After two disappointing losses on Thursday and Friday in games started by Felix and Iwakuma, the Mariners ended the week in style with two come from behind wins against the Athletics. Both games were capped by exciting home runs, one off the bat of Raul Ibanez and the other, a walk-off, pinch-hit home run by Kendrys Morales. What a fun way to end this week! 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 (6/10-6/23).

• Raul Ibanez continues to defy all our expectations for how well a 41-year-old could perform. His isolated slugging percentage is .284, higher than Miguel Cabrera and Jose Bautista. Is this level of performance sustainable? Probably not. Right now, he’s hitting a quarter of all of his fly balls over the fence (25.0% HR%). Historically, sluggers like Barry Bonds, Jim Thome, and Ryan Howard have been able to sustain a HR% of 25%. Raul’s career HR% is just 13.3% and its pretty unlikely that’s he’s discovered the kind of power that Bonds or Thome exhibited. Even with such a high offensive performance, Ibanez has only accumulated 0.2 WAR, taking huge negatives for his fielding. Watching Ibanez has become pretty enjoyable while he’s hitting home runs but as soon as he starts to fall back to earth, the Mariners should start looking at benching Ibanez more often and letting someone else patrol left field. (cough, Ackley, cough)
• The never ending roster shuffle continued this week. Mike Morse was finally placed on the DL after injuring his quad almost a month ago. Justin Smoak is back after dealing with his own injury issues and Franklin Gutierrez played in one and a half games before injuring himself again. What a mess. Lookout Landing has a post up detailing just how messed up the decision making has been for the Mariners this last month. In short, the decisions that have been made recently are signs of an organization that is completely lost and scrambling to react to every little situation without any rhyme or reason.
• Franklin Gutierrez hit a home run in his first game back from the DL. In his second game back he made an amazing catch in center field and ran into the wall injuring himself again. At this point, we should be enjoying any glimpse of Gutierrez we can see. His days are numbered—not just as a member of the Mariners but as a professional baseball player. I can’t help but think of the sad story of Rocco Baldelli when thinking of Guti.

• Jeremy Bonderman has strung together four starts where he has allowed 2 runs or less. This may give the impression that Bonderman has been a valuable addition to the starting rotation. This is a mirage. Bonderman’s ERA may stand at 3.30 but his FIP is a whopping 5.22. He’s walking far too many batters, isn’t striking out anyone and his batting average on balls in play (BAPIP) is an unsustainably low .235. Bonderman is also stranding 83% of his allowed base runners (league average is 73%) meaning he’s getting pretty lucky. Pretty soon his luck will catch up with him. Luckily, the Mariners have a perfectly capable replacement waiting in AAA-Tacoma, Erasmo Ramirez. Ramirez has returned from his spring training injury and has been lighting up the Pacific Coast League. Through five starts, he has a 2.23 ERA and has struck out 25% of the batters he’s faced while only walking 5.4% of them. Last year, Ramirez showed enough promise that the Mariners should be excited to see what Ramirez will actually be able to contribute. Instead, three-fifths of the rotation is taken up by veterans on one-year contracts. Lets get this rebuilding fully underway!

AL West Standings

The Week Ahead

The Mariners have a short week with two off-days in between two series at home. We get a rare look at a few NL Central teams as the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Chicago Cubs come to town. In the last five years, the Mariners have a 40-38 record in Interleague play. The Pirates are actually playing well this year and find themselves in second place in their division. The Cubs are actually in a very similar place as the Mariners, both find themselves in the midst of long rebuilding cycles and are just now seeing some of their young players producing. This should be an entertaining week of ball.