How the Seattle Mariners Went From Postseason Longshots to World Series Contenders
Centerfielder Julio Rodríguez has been historically red-hot since the All-Star break, and turned his team into the kind of wild-card threat that nobody wants to face in October.
As recently as the All-Star break in mid-July, any discussion of MLB’s most disappointing teams in 2023 had to include the Mariners. Seattle was barely above .500 (45-44) at the Midsummer Classic, a big downgrade from the twin 90-win seasons that had made it one of baseball’s most surprising success stories of 2021 and landed it in the playoffs in 2022. With one of the youngest teams in MLB being led by one of its brightest future stars — centerfielder Julio Rodríguez — it was fair to expect more this season than sub-20% playoff odds.
But since the All-Star break, the Mariners are 26-11 (.703) through Tuesday, a record that trails only the red-hot Los Angeles Dodgers at 25-10 (.714). Moreover, Seattle has added more than 50 percentage points onto its playoff probability and 6 points onto its championship odds — the largest gains among all teams (see chart below). And on Aug. 19, the team moved into possession of a wild card berth for the first time all season long, bumping the Toronto Blue Jays out of the picture. In the span of just six weeks, the Mariners went from fighting for their postseason lives to legitimately contending for that elusive first World Series in a very checkered franchise history.
So what changed? Perhaps predictably, Seattle’s reversal of fortune starts with Rodríguez, who is hitting .347 with a .985 OPS since the break. It has long been clear that the Mariners will go as far as he takes them, and the past month-plus is the clearest proof of that yet. It’s no coincidence that when Seattle’s record was barely breaking even, Rodríguez’s performance at the plate was also barely breaking even; he had a 103 OPS+ (just 3% better than average) entering his turn as the hometown star at the Home Run Derby. Now that he’s hitting again, the Mariners are winning again — plain and simple.
That’s a lot of pressure to put on a 22-year-old, of course. It would have been understandable for Rodríguez to suffer a sophomore jinx in 2023 after winning Rookie of the Year with one of the most dominant arrivals in MLB history last season. According to Wins Above Replacement, he had the eighth-most valuable debut of any batter since 1901, better than even Joe DiMaggio, Bryce Harper, Jeff Bagwell or plenty of other Hall of Fame-caliber players who had strong rookie years.
Aside from the truly exceptional players who start at the top and keep climbing, there isn’t much place to go from that type of performance except down.
Early this season, it looked as if Rodríguez was succumbing to the all-too-familiar combination of pressure and regression. Although Rodríguez’s hard-hit rate held up, his swing was still off — his average launch angle was down by nearly two degrees, and he wasn’t pulling the ball at even a league-average rate anymore. Both factors combined to sap his home run power, cutting his slugging percentage from 30% better than average to just 1% above average. Rodríguez is so good at so many things that he was still tracking for 4.5 WAR despite the hitting slump, but Seattle ranked just 14th in runs per game at the break with the centerpiece of its lineup struggling to regain his form.
Through it all, Rodríguez maintained a policy of keeping the game fun — with an “I got this” sense of calm that made it seem as if he knew the numbers would come around. That’s just another way in which Rodríguez has drawn easy comparisons to a legendary centerfield predecessor in Seattle … and then some. Because not even Ken Griffey Jr. ever robbed a home run quite like the one Rodriguez pulled back on Aug. 8. He pretended to miss the ball, only to reveal it in his glove several beats later, after San Diego Padres slugger Fernando Tatis Jr. had started his home run trot.
Whether it was the rhythm of those 61 derby bombs or (more likely) his midseason adjustments of using a wider stance and starting stronger in his legs, Rodríguez is also in a much better place at the plate now. His season-long launch angle and exit velocity have both crept upward, his pull rate is among MLB’s leaders over the past six weeks, and consequently his power is back to roughly where it was last season. By OPS, Rodríguez has been the 16th-best hitter in baseball since the All-Star break, and Seattle ranks No. 6 in scoring over that span.
During the past week alone, Rodríguez is on one of the hottest streaks of any hitter in MLB history. His run of 17 hits in four games — a span in which Rodríguez hit .773 with a 1.909 OPS — broke an AL/NL record which had stood since 1925.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said after the record-setting fourth game. “Nobody in the history of Major League Baseball has seen anything like it. But what can you say? Julio is just smoking-hot right now.”
In baseball, of course, it takes more than one player to turn a team’s fortunes around.
Beyond Rodríguez, Seattle is getting more from its bullpen — a group that has gone from 10th in Win Probability Added to fourth — and a lot more from various spots around the diamond — including catcher (Cal Raleigh has an .897 OPS since the break) and second base and left field (where Dylan Moore and rookie Cade Marlowe have been revelations). Even more help arrived this week, with shortstop J.P. Crawford being activated off the injured list.
For a team that added little of note at the trade deadline, this late-season version of the Mariners is somehow looking like one of the teams you’d least like to face in the playoffs.
If Moore gets penciled in at second base over Josh Rojas, every member of Seattle’s current starting lineup has an OPS better than league average. In other words, this group of hitters might have no discernible weaknesses by the time the playoffs roll around, assuming the Mariners can hold onto their grip in the AL wild card race.
The same might be said of Seattle’s rotation, which boasts three starters — Luis Castillo, George Kirby and Logan Gilbert — with Fielding Independent Pitching marks at least 10% better than the league’s, plus a couple of others (Bryce Miller, Bryan Woo) who are slightly above-average as well. And then there’s that scary bullpen, with a top four — Andrés Muñoz, Matt Brash, Justin Topa and Gabe Speier — whose FIPs are all at least 30% better than average.
The forecast models give Seattle a 72% probability to make the postseason, whether as the wild-card nobody wants to match up against or even a dark-horse division-title candidate (28%) in the stacked AL West. Neither status is what anyone would have predicted for this team in mid-July, but these Mariners are baseball’s latest reminder that a lot can happen when a team’s best player suddenly gets smoking red-hot again … and again … and again.
Filed under: Baseball
Original story: How the Seattle Mariners Went From Postseason Longshots to World Series Contenders