Week 8 Recap

Well, howdy there pardner. The Mariners had some BIG games against some BIG teams from Texas this week. But we ended up spinning our wheels like a lassoed bull and ended up right where we started.

Ok, that’s enough of that. The Mariners split both of their series this week. A promising start to the series against the Astros turned sour as Brandon Maurer threw a stinker on Saturday and we ran into Dallas Keuchel, a surprising top-10 pitcher in the AL. Robinson Cano continued his hot streak and actually hit that elusive second home run.

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 (5/12-25).

Batters

• Like I mentioned in the lede, Cano has been hitting the lights out the past few weeks. In his past fifteen games, Cano has 25 hits and just 5 strikeouts. He’s also been hitting line drives a full third of the time he’s putting the ball in play, an incredible rate. This is what it looks like when a great hitter is on his game. A few weeks ago, I wrote about how Cano’s ground ball rate was abnormally high leading to the lowest power numbers he’s ever put up. Well, these past two weeks we’ve seen Cano correct his batted ball rates and they are starting to move closer to his career norms. And I was worried about him. Ha.

Pitchers

• There wasn’t much need for the bullpen this week but in the few high leverage innings outside of the ninth inning, Lloyd McClendon turned to Dominic Leone. He responded by striking out 20% of the batters he faced without walking anyone. It seems like Leone has earned the trust of McClendon and will be seeing more high leverage innings in the future. This isn’t a bad thing, he brings a fastball in the mid-90’s and a cutter and slider which allow him to rack up the strikeouts. So far he’s been able to keep his walk rate down but if it starts to creep up, he could become another Yoervis Medina, an erratic thrower who doesn’t inspire confidence.

AL West Standings

The Week Ahead

The Mariners play seven games against two of the best teams in the AL. Not only that, but we draw both Verlander and Scherzer in that three game series against the Tigers. If we can end this week anywhere around .500, then I’d call it a success.