Week 6 Recap

Now that was a successful week. The Mariners were able to take 3 of 4 from the Athletics and split 4 games with the Royals this past week. In the second game of the doubleheader on Wednesday, we were actually playing for the division lead. There were some stinkers mixed in over the weekend–the Mariners were shut out over seven innings against former Mariner Jason Vargas on Friday and our defense committed five (!) errors in a loss on Sunday. But overall, the team played really well with excellent performances in Oakland and a 1-0 shutout on Thursday.

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 (4/28-5/11).

Batters

• James Jones has received pretty regular playing time since being called up and he’s made the most out of it. He’s providing the spark at the top of the lineup that should have come from Abraham Almonte. It’s just 27 plate appearances so there’s little we can actually say about his approach but it seems to be a focused aggression (whereas Abraham Almonte’s approach was haphazard aggression).
• Robinson Cano is starting to worry me. He’s on pace to hit under 30 doubles for the first time in his career and he has just one home run through 38 games. I know we expected a drop in power numbers but it wasn’t supposed to be this significant. His plate discipline numbers are all right in line with his career norms but his batted ball distribution is all out of whack. He’s hitting more ground balls which are coming at the expense of fly balls (2.52 ground ball to fly ball ratio; 1.56 career ratio). A home run to fly ball ratio of just 3.4% isn’t helping either. He’s still getting on base and he’s driving in runs so its not like he’s a complete offensive black hole. Something to keep an eye on as the season goes on.

Pitchers

• Hisashi Iwakuma is back and he hasn’t lost a step. In his eight inning shutout on Thursday, he looked like the same pitcher who was third in the Cy Young voting last year. In that start, he needed just 93 pitches to get through eight innings, limiting the Royals to just four base runners. Its amazing how much better this rotation looks with Iwakuma and Felix healthy and dealing.
• Erasmo Ramirez was better in his spot start on Wednesday, limiting the Athletics to just two runs in six innings. I thought that the Mariners would keep him up on the major league roster but he was sent back to Triple-A Tacoma to continue working on his approach. Brandon Maurer will continue to hold onto the fifth spot in the rotation until one of James Paxton, Taijuan Walker, or Ramirez is ready to rejoin the team.

AL West Standings

The Week Ahead

The Mariners finish up this grueling streak of games with three games at home against the struggling Rays. After a much needed off-day, the Mariners head out on the road to Minnesota to play a weak Twins team. This should be a week where were able to add some wins to our season total.