Week 4 Recap

The Mariners entered this week on a six game losing streak and extended it to eight before snapping it with a win on Wednesday. The wins this week were filled with drama with three late inning wins and a few bullpen meltdowns. Kyle Seager won AL Player of the Week for his heroics and he certainly deserved it. This week would have looked much different (1-5 vs 3-3) if Seager hadn’t taken it upon himself to right this sinking ship.

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 (4/14-27).

Batters

•  I briefly touched upon Kyle Seager in the lede but I want to dive into his performance this week a bit more. Prior to this week, Seager was mired in a slump that was eerily reminiscent of the way he ended last year. After the All-Star break last year, he slashed just .212/.309/.336. What’s missing from that quick glance is the fact that Seager increased his walk rate by two points to 11% over those final months of the season. He’s continued to improve his walk rate this year, bumping it up by another point to 12%. I was never really worried about Seager because he has shown a consistent ability to get on base. If we dig a bit deeper into his plate discipline stats we can see that he’s swinging a bit less than his career average (41% swing rate vs 45% career average) but he’s still making just as much contact (83% contact rate). His batting average on balls in play is a low .241. Those balls will eventually start falling in for hits and we’ll realize that nothing was wrong with Seager in the first place.
• Both Brad Miller and Dustin Ackley have sat against the last two lefties the Mariners have faced. Willie Bloomquist filled in at short and Cole Gillespie has filled in in left. Neither is as good as their left-handed platoon counterpart but it seems like Lloyd McClendon is tired of seeing Miller and Ackley flail away when facing lefties and has started riding the hot hand. Both Miller and Ackley will need to turn their seasons around quickly or else a demotion to Triple-A Tacoma might be in their future.

Pitchers

•  Erasmo Ramirez started the year with a great start but his control has eluded him since then. His excellent spring training seems so far away now. He’s walking way too many batters and he can’t keep the ball in the park, giving up at least one home run in each of his starts. Since the schedule has worked out so that the Mariners won’t need a fifth starter until later this week, Ramirez was demoted to High-A to get in some work against minor league batters. Everything is pointing towards Hisashi Iwakuma returning to the Mariners on Friday, which would have been Erasmo’s regular turn in the rotation. It looks like he’ll get one more start at Triple-A Tacoma before rejoining the Mariners next week. Let’s hope he’ll be able to regain his control during this brief journey to the minors.

AL West Standings

The Week Ahead

Starting today, the Mariners will play ten away games in nine days–a doubleheader is scheduled for next Wednesday in Oakland–as part of a seventeen game stretch without an off day. The weather may or may not cooperate in New York to start this week so the Mariners might receive some respite but it’ll still be a pretty taxing few weeks for the team.