State of the Mariners: At the Deadline 2007

With the trade deadline having passed the other day, questions about who was coming and going to Seattle have been answered; Nobody. Unless you include Mr. Domestic Violence himself being traded to Philadelphia for a mid-level 26 year old dare I call him prospect. The fact of the matter is that Bill Bavasi did not bring in the player(s) that I feel is/are needed to contend for the World Series let alone the playoffs. Now if someone asks me about playoffs, I'm likely to go Jim Mora Sr. on them. "Playoffs? Are you talking about Playoffs?" Lets take a look at some of the teams that we are going to be competing with for the playoffs and their AL ranks in certain categories.

Average
SEA: 4th
NYY: 2nd
DET: 1st
LAA: 3rd
CLE: 7th

Thats kind of un-settling to know that three of the teams that we're competing with are hitting for a higher average than we are. In the last seven days, we are 11th with all the aforementioned teams ahead of us.

Runs
SEA: 7th
NYY: 2nd
DET: 1st
LAA: 5th
CLE: 3rd

Well if you can't out-pitch them, you've got to out-score them. We haven't been able to do that as each of the 4 teams that we're competing with are in the top five in the AL.

Slugging Percentage
SEA: 9th
NYY: 2nd
DET: 1st
LAA: 8th
CLE: 4th

We are last once again. We are even behind the Angels who pride themselves in small-ball rather than power. That is a huge problem.

On-Base Percentage
SEA: 8th
NYY: 1st
DET: 3rd
LAA: 5th
CLE: 4th

Way behind the rest of the pack here, the Devil Rays and the Orioles have a better team OBP than we do.

Walks
SEA: 14th
NYY: 3rd
DET: 11th
LAA: 12th
CLE: 4th

I show this right after OBP because if we were more patient as a ballclub and drew more walks, our on-base percentage would atleast be a few ranks higher. To put this into perspective, we have 271 walks, the 12th ranked Angels have 313, and the 3rd ranked Yankees have 412.

ERA
SEA: 11th
NYY: 7th
DET: 10th
LAA: 3rd
CLE: 8th

Its a little surprisng to see that 4 of these 5 teams are ranked 7th or higher. Though we shouldn't be surprised to find ourselves last in that group with the inconsistency of our starters this season. If you take the bullpen out of that, I would be willing to bet that we are in 13th, slightly ahead of the Devil Rays. This should underscore the mistake that Bavasi made by not acquiring a starting pitcher.

Average Against
SEA: 10th
NYY: 7th
DET: 8th
LAA: 5th
CLE: 9th

Bottom of the pack once again, this can be attributed to the seemingly every-other performances of Jeff Weaver and Horacio Ramirez. You know, the ones where they either can't catch a break or just flat out get hammered. When your pitchers are throwing 25, 30, 35 pitches in an inning, for multiple innings in a game, thats a problem.

Base Runners Against per 9 Innings
SEA: 4th
NYY: 7th
DET: 3rd
LAA: 10th
CLE: 9th

If you think that 4th is good, its not. This is one of those categories where you want to be in double digit ranks if you can be. So really, we are second to last in that group surrendering 13.4 base runners per nine innings. Walks are definitely a major contributor here.

Innings per Start
SEA: 10th
NYY: 12th
DET: 8th
LAA: 4th
CLE: 2nd

This is a big category in the scheme of things because it demonstrates perfectly how bad our starters can be and also the need for either a new starting pitcher or a solid 8th inning reliever to shorten the game providing a starter could not be had at the deadline. Our starters, on average, go 5.8 innings per start but I'm sure if you analyzed Weaver and Ramirez, they would be one of the worst 1-2 punch in the back of the bullpen in the majors.

If we even want a chance at making the playoffs, we need to improve in some of these categories. If you want to battle the big-boys in the playoffs, you've got to match them or atleast come close to them statistically in the regular season. This season, we haven't done that in many categories.

My Prognosis: Not Good. We are going to have to limit losing streaks to no more than 2 games and find a way to win games started by Weaver and Ramirez.