THE FRONT ROW with DEREK BAYLEY: Mariners: Score four, you may win It all

Since the franchise came into existence in 1977, the Seattle Mariners and their fans have seen just about everything. From winning 116 games in 2001, to then going on the longest playoff drought in the four major sports combined, the M’s are becoming highly impressive at finding creative ways to break fans’ hearts year in and year out. 

And the 2024 season might top them all. 

On the morning of June 19, the Seattle Mariners rolled out of bed in Cleveland, Ohio, coming off an 8-5 victory over the Guardians moving their record to 44-31 and pushing their lead in the AL West to a season-high 10 games. 

Things were great. 

Not only had they won a bunch of games, but the Houston Astros and defending World Series champion Texas Rangers had gotten off to extremely sub-par starts. The M’s weren’t tearing the cover off the ball by any means but were doing just enough to win tight games behind their elite starting pitching staff and tidy bullpen. 

The question was: Is it sustainable? Could they keep winning games using the same formula that was used in the first 75 games? That would be, as the kids say it nowadays, a hard NO. 

WAKING UP that morning of June 19, your average Mariners fan had to feel on top of the moon. We were finally going to get over the hump, win the division and leave the Astros and Rangers in the dust for years to come without a worry in the world with the best starting pitching staff in baseball. 

There was one glaring problem in those first 75 games. They couldn’t hit the ball. 

Waking up that morning in Cleveland 13 games above .500, the M’s had a .222 team batting average, third worst in baseball — only ahead of the Oakland A’s and the incredibly dreadful Chicago White Sox. They averaged 7.2 hits per game which was only ahead of the White Sox. They weren’t exactly getting on base in other ways either, as they ranked 25th out of 30 in OBP. 

Smells like fraudulent behavior, doesn’t it? That’s exactly what it was. 

From the first 75 games to the last 75 games, there has been an obvious lack of approach stepping up to the plate. For the last few years, the Mariners have been chasing more home runs and a higher exit velocity (the speed in which the ball comes off the bat), even if they happen to strike out a few more times. 

Well, maybe lack of approach isn’t the right way to put it — how about the wrong approach. Entering Friday, they were still hitting .222 as a team, tied with the 33-114 White Sox for last in the majors. What is impressive is that the M’s are in the middle of the pack in on-base percentage at .310, in large part because they are fourth in the MLB in drawing walks only behind the Yankees, Brewers, and Dodgers. 

The 2024 Seattle Mariners have the best starting pitching staff in baseball, and I don’t think it’s particularly close. Not only having the durability to last a 162-game season, the starters had 89 quality starts this year (6-plus innings pitched, 3 earned runs or less) through last Thursday, compared to the next best, the Phillies with 77. As an entire staff, they also have  the best WHIP of 1.08 (next best is Detroit at 1.17) as well as having the best ERA at 3.52, slightly ahead of the Atlanta Braves. 

Behind Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, Luis Castillo, Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo, why is the approach at the plate to pull the ball, hit more home runs, and hit the ball as hard as you can when it clearly hasn’t worked? 

The M’s have scored more than four runs in 78 games this season and are 64-14 in those games. You tally one more run to that and they are 52-4 when they score over five runs, which looks like a typo every time I see it. Those numbers and records obviously speak volumes to how elite the pitching staff is, but wouldn’t you want to come up with a game plan on the hitting side that would give you the best chance to score four or more runs? 

WHEN LOOKING at team batting averages, it is fascinating — not only the M’s at the bottom, but also with the teams at the top. Starting with the San Diego Padres at No. 1 (.265 average), if you go straight down the list you get to No. 15 (Toronto) until you get to a team that is under .500. Basically, the best teams in baseball have the highest team batting averages. Rounding out the top five after the Padres are the Diamondbacks, Astros, Phillies and Dodgers. How are those teams playing right now? Same thing with OBP: You will get to No. 13 on the list before you get to a team below .500 (Blue Jays), with the top five being the Diamondbacks, Yankees, Dodgers, Brewers, and Padres. 

The lack of hitting for average and record-setting strikeouts at the plate this year have given the Mariners absolutely zero margin for error. Whether it’s a couple high-leverage bullpen arms going down due to injury (Brash, Santos, Garcia), or some key balls/strikes calls late in games by the home-plate umpire, the offense is giving no room for error because most of the games are low-scoring barnburners (especially at home). 

A perfect example is the second game of the three-game set against the Yankees last week. Another pitchers' duel and not a whole lot of timely hitting from the Mariners, creating no margin for error in the highest-leverage situation of the year thus far. 

Down 2-1 in the bottom of the 10th with runners on the corners and no outs, Randy Arozarena wildly swings at a slider low and away for strike three. The bat goes flying, helicoptering toward Julio Rodriguez who’s the baserunner on third base. With no awareness whatsoever, Julio naturally goes to avoid the flying bat and ends up going well into foul territory not understanding the situation and the play still being live. He immediately gets thrown out at third creating a strike ‘em-out, throw ‘em-out double play, and the game ends three pitches later when Justin Turner strikes out swinging. 

Bryce Miller threw another gem, spinning one-run ball over 6 innings and handed it off to a strong game from the bullpen. Had Julio not gotten thrown out at third base, would they have won the game? We’ll never know, but it goes right back to there being no margin for error because of zero situational/timely hitting in the nine innings prior and finishing the game 2 for 9 with RISP and 14 more strikeouts. Rinse and repeat. 

ONE OF the more fascinating stories with the Mariners this year was Ty France. France struggled at the plate in his 88 games with the M’s this year before being DFA’d and then traded to the Cincinnati Reds. After a slow couple games with the Reds, France has since hit the cover off the ball, getting back to hitting the ball up the middle and the other way, oddly enough what he was doing when he was hitting his best with the Mariners. 

In 88 games for Seattle, France batted .223 with a 28% strikeout rate. In 44 games with Cincinnati, he is batting .279 with a 17% strikeout rate. In various interviews with France after being traded, he has since said that the M’s wanted him to pull the ball more and hit the ball out of the ballpark as opposed to looking up the middle and the other way like he’s doing now. Weirdly enough, he is hitting more home runs with his ‘new’ approach as well as having a much higher exit velocity while striking out significantly less. 

A big disappointment this season is the signing and expectations regarding Mitch Garver. Jerry Dipoto didn’t make Garver his rare “free agent splash” for him to sign a two-year, $24-million deal to end up being the backup catcher. He signed him to be the everyday DH and that just hasn’t worked. The fact that the combination of Jerry and Scott Servais stuck with having a DH hit less than his weight was astonishing, but is also what happens when you’re paying him as much as you are. 

I feel for Garver. However, when you don’t live up to expectations, especially for a team like the Mariners that seem to fit that mold year in and year out, things don’t sit well when you can only play a quarter of the games late in the season because you’ve been that bad with the bat in your hands. Garver has started behind the plate for the M’s in 19 games. Giving Cal a breather in those games, the team is 8-11 (after starting 4-0) and Garver is 10 for 55 at the plate with 22 strikeouts. He’s a few steps behind Cal when calling a game and pitch-framing. 

Along with Garver, one of the more disappointing players this season has been JP Crawford, and I’m not sure it’s entirely his fault. Putting the injury aside where he missed some time, the change in approach at the plate needs to change fast. Like Ty France, Crawford’s pull-the-ball approach is ridiculous. When he is hitting his best — which was the last couple of years — his ability to slap balls into left field and get on base is what made him such a valuable leadoff hitter. 

Leadoff hitting is one of the more underrated things in baseball that I feel like doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. When you look at the MLB standings and at the best hitting teams in 2024, check out their leadoff hitters. Just to name a few: Steven Kwan, Luis Arraez, Jose Altuve, Francisco Lindor, Brice Turang, Corbin Carroll, Shohei Ohtani, Jarren Duran. 

All these guys are elite at what they do, and that is hit for a great average and get on base. Some are going to hit more homers (Ohtani, Lindor, Schwarber), but a big reason why these top teams are so good at hitting and scoring runs is because they have a great tone-setter at the top of the lineup. The hottest team in the MLB the last couple of months has been the Arizona Diamondbacks and I don’t think it’s much of a coincidence that the timing is in line with Corbin Carroll getting hot at the top of the order even with Ketel Marte and Christian Walker nursing injuries. 

Noticing the change in approach in JP Crawford’s at-bats was evident right from the start of the season. So much so that two weeks into the season I started charting his roll-over groundouts to the right side of the infield. From the start of the season, Crawford grounded out to either the first or second baseman 38 times in the first 54 games before his IL appearance. Some of these were hit hard, but for the most part, these were lazy roll-over ground balls that in 2022 and 2023 would’ve been hit the other way. 

The reason he got paid by the Mariners is because of his gold glove fielding as well as his ability to set the tone for the offense and get on base, not hit home runs. In 2023, Crawford hit .266 with a .380 OBP. This year he’s going to play around 105 games and is hitting .201 with a .306 OBP. His strikeout rate has gone from 15% in 2022 to 23% in 2023 and up to 26% thus far in 2024. He struck out more times in his first 84 games played this year than he did in the 145 games he played in 2022. Get his approach back to looking back up the middle/the other way and know that he will still run into a few home runs. More importantly, get him back to being that guy that is going to get on base for the big boys right behind him to drive him in. 

A BIG reason why the Mariners are hitting the ball better lately is in large part due to Victor Robles, as he is slashing a .333 average and a whopping .404 OBP since arriving in Seattle. Why have the M’s fallen in love with this guy so much and the fact that he’s already re-signed? He wreaks havoc on the base paths, and you want to know why? Because he gets on base. Not because he gets pull happy, not because he’s trying to hit the ball out of the park. 

He has been a perfect leadoff man and is a great example of your guy you want setting the tone at the top of the order, and a great example of what JP Crawford can strive to get back to. Not necessarily the base-stealing aspect as he’s not that guy, but the overall approach of doing everything he can to get on base, that 'see ball, hit ball' type approach. 

Watching someone with an elite approach at the plate is as pleasing as it gets for the old-fashioned baseball eye. The first name that comes to mind when it comes to elite approaches is Juan Soto. Watching him be the one in control of his at-bat is one of the more impressive things I’ve watched recently when it comes to the little things and is what makes him amazing, all while being in the beginning of his prime and specifically hitting in front of Aaron Judge. 

Having a pitcher throw his best off-speed pitch right where he wants, and Soto basically looks it all the way back into the glove and does the “Soto Shuffle” has to be one of the more deflating things for a pitcher. His patience as well as his focus to hitting the ball up the middle/other way is something that is highly underrated and can be learned from. His talent is obviously exceptional, but using that talent and combining it with the best approach in the world is incredible. 

One guy that I’ve always been impressed with is 39-year-old Justin Turner. He’s been a great veteran presence since being traded to the Mariners at the deadline and can be a great resource for the younger guys finding their way in their approach to the plate. Turner’s old-fashioned approach at the plate is a large part in why he’s had such a long, decorated career. 

His career .285 average and .362 OBP is impressive in itself, but the stat that really impresses me is the 17.5% strikeout rate. Albeit a short sample size since being traded to the M’s, he’s batting .256 with a .358 OBP and a 21% K-rate, well below the M’s 31% K-rate as a team. 

The treatment of Scott Servais is something that I’m surprised hasn’t been talked about more post-firing. I understand that something needed to change, but firing the second-longest tenured manager in the MLB midseason was a head scratcher, not to mention the fact that he learned of his firing online completely replicates the Seattle Mariners franchise. 

Servais had a career managerial record of 687-638 (.515 win percentage) and was able to lead the M’s to breaking the longest active postseason drought in the four American major sports combined, all while dealt the hand of Jerry Dipoto and the front office not doing him any favors when it came to bringing in elite hitters and being as cheap as cheap gets when talking about free agency signings. Servais wasn’t perfect by any means, and I don’t disagree with the firing, I disagree with the timing of the firing. 

The guy managed his way into being second on the all-time Mariners wins/win percentage list by a wide margin, and we couldn’t respect him enough to let him finish the season out? Certainly a head scratcher, but by no means surprising by Jerry Dipoto. 

It is no secret that Servais struggled hiring competent hitting coaches that were going to go about the hitting side the right way. That certainly failed, and you are already seeing significant progress with Edgar Martinez and Dan Wilson behind the helm. Is it just a honeymoon phase? Only time will tell. 

WITH EVERY problem, there must be a solution. With the way the team is constructed currently and going forward, the game plan and question that needs to be asked every day is “how do we score four runs today?” You see their record this year when scoring more than four runs. 

The elite pitching staff will still lead the way, but having that Moneyball approach from specifically the contact hitters (Crawford, Rojas, Moore, Polanco, Turner) is extremely important with guys like Cal, Julio, Luke Raley and Randy Arozarena taking care of the long ball. Getting rid of the pull-happy approach will reduce the overall K-rate and narrow the focus to putting balls in play especially in situational-hitting. 

Potentially missing the playoffs with the best rotation in baseball and one that is perfect for October baseball just cannot happen. 

Currently the Mariners are hitting .222 as a team. Bringing back the old-fashioned, contact-hitting approach throughout the lineup will certainly elevate that average and help get to that magical number of scoring four-plus runs. Playing the hypothetical game a little bit, if the M’s were to hit anywhere in the .240-.245 range as a team, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they would be the World Series favorite being in the middle of the pack on the team batting average list. 

Before spring training started, if someone told the M’s staff and front office that they would only have to hit .240 as a team to be a serious World Series contender, would they do anything different approach-wise? Would that change the overall approach if they knew what they know now and win roughly 80% of their games if they get to four runs on any given night?

Derek Bayley, a former Lakeland High and Washington State University golf standout now in his first season as an assistant coach at WSU, is a long-time fan of baseball and the Seattle Mariners.