Week 19 Recap

This weekend was all about reliving Mariners history as Ken Griffey Jr was inducted into the Mariners Hall of Fame and the former Seattle Pilots came to town for a three game series. It was disappointing then when the Mariners allowed twenty runs to score in three games and only mustered seven of their own. Luckily we came away with a win, sparing us from the sweep but it was definitely a disappointing week all around.

One of the things that has slipped under the radar this year with the resurgence of our offense is our dismal defense. The Mariners committed seven errors last week, four in one game. I think this GIF speaks for itself:

Errors aren’t the best metric to gauge defensive efficiency, so lets go to FanGraphs and see how the Mariners stack up against the rest of the league: The Mariners rank last in the majors in both Defensive Runs Scored (-74) and Ultimate Zone Rating (-63.6). In terms of wins, the Mariners defense has given away between six and seven wins this year. That’s incredibly bad.

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 (7/29-8/11).

• Don’t look now, but our catching tandem of Henry Blanco and Humberto Quintero have been actually producing at the plate recently. They’ve been hitting clutch home runs and they’re making contact and getting on base at a decent clip. Who could have predicted that our 74-year-old catching monster would actually be useful.

• Danny Farquhar has flourished in his new role as closer for the Mariners. He hasn’t given up a run in his last nine appearances and has racked up 21 strikeouts against just four walks in that time. His first four appearances as closer have gone off without a hitch and he’s been as dominant as ever.

AL West Standings

The Rangers took first place in the division this last week and enter this week riding a seven-game winning streak.

The Week Ahead

The Mariners begin a nine-game roadtrip on Tuesday with a three game set in Tampa Bay followed by three in Arlington and three in Oakland. Texas is on fire lately but we have our top two pitchers going up against them. The highlight of the week is Saturday featuring a matchup between Felix and Yu Darvish, two of the front-runners for the AL Cy Young award.