As someone who has watched the Mariners since the early 90's, when Griffey Jr entered the scene, it's been a really rough time since the magical 95 season and the 2001 record wins season.
Therefore, it's very easy to be pessimistic about the M's and to watch the team from a "who cares" perspective.
However, there's always a part of me who has wanted them to achieve what the current Astros have achieved, which is going from the laughing stock of MLB, to a power house team for years to come. That being said, I typically go to 1-5 games per season every year, which will be much harder to accomplish when games are sellouts.
This is the first time in 20 years where I've felt the potential is there if the front office really wants it, but some things must first happen to achieve this so let's break that down into 3 categories.
1) Pitching and Defense
a) Run Differential
b) Errors
c) Starting Pitching
2) Coaching
3) Free Agency Acquisitions
1) Pitching and Defense
First off is pitching and defense, which are the key ingredients to any championship caliber team.
I know this year's Mariners mock the term "run differential" with their own social media coined phrase "fun differential" but if you cannot hold the opposition to fewer runs than yourself then you run the risk of losing most games.
Run Differential: The Mariners got incredibly lucky this year as they won close games and got blown out in a lot of other games causing their "fun differential" to be incredibly negative, which is very rare for a team who won 90 games.
Run differential is the key factor in looking at pitching and defense because simply put the fewer runs you give up the higher your differential can be.
It's no surprise that almost all the playoff teams were in the top 10 in this stat over the season. In fact the top 4 teams in the league also led the league in run differential.
The Mariners ranked 18th in the league at -51. That's 51 more runs given up than scored over the course of the season. The only somewhat good thing here is the Mariners were -11 at home and -40 away thus they are building a better team for their home park compared to past seasons.
Errors are a big issue adding to the run differential, as the Mariners took a step backwards this season in errors led by 2 of their "gold glovers" in Kyle Seager (14 errors) and JP Crawford (12 errors). However, the team overall ranked 7th in the league at 0.49 errors/game compared to Atlanta and Houston around 0.45 respectively.
Overall this led to Seattle being 14th in the league in 748 total runs with 60 being unearned. This made Seattle 17th in the league giving up 4.62 runs/game.
Pitching is the largest factor here and the Mariners need to improve their starting rotation if they want a shot at competing in the playoffs. They ranked 19th in the league in average against at .247, 16th in ERA at 4.30, and 13th in WHIP at 1.28. Note that all these values are an improvement over past seasons and mostly have to do with poor starting pitching as their bullpen ranked 8th in the league at 3.88 ERA, 5th in WHIP at 1.22, and 3rd in saves at 51.
2) Coaching
Second factor is better coaching. Developing the talent, improving the team, and making the right calls.
This is an interesting topic as Scott Servais was a final candidate for AL manager of the year as he took a team who looked terrible on paper and led them to a 90 win season.
However, Servais has a long history of making bad managerial decisions when it comes to starting lineups, defensive substitutions, sacrificing runners over, defensive alignments, and mismanagement of the starter pitchers and bullpen. These are all subjective things and if you look at Servais' history you'll see he has 3 winning seasons in 6 years, which is middle of the road. He certainly has captured the support of the players and most of the fans with his positive attitude and tv show quotes though.
Unfortunately, the team's bad run differential and extremely low hitting average are not 100% on the players as most of them are fairly inexperienced starters in the Majors. Servais needs to have good coaches around him developing players in pitching, defense, hitting, and helping him make the right calls at the right time.
In terms of hitting, the team's batting average was ranked dead last at 30th at .226, having the 5th most strike outs in the league, and rank 28th in OBP at .303.
I put this on the coaches as Servais and gang seem to have the emphasis on extra base hits over average. As a fan of small ball (getting on base and moving runners) it hurts to see such low averages and high strike outs.
The home runs can be fun but good teams know how to get on base and move runners, which is 100% on the coaching staff to emphasize over swinging for the fences every at bat.
The coaching changes going into 2022 look fairly minimal but hopefully the promotion of Negron to the majors will help.
Servais could still use an experienced bench coach to help him with in-game decisions as his experience in this specific area is not good. Most writers place Servais in the bottom third of MLB manager rankings which is most likely why he didn't win AL manager of the year.
3) Free Agency
The Mariners need to make a splash to replace a couple key positions and bolster their starting rotation
Key Players Leaving.
Players Who are Free Agents:
- Kyle Seager - starting 3B, heart of the team, aging, low average, high cap at $18.5M (should let go)
- Yusei Kikuchi - SP, flashes of a good season early on, injury prone, high cap at $16.5M (should let go)
- James Paxton - SP, missed entire season which is common, younger w/ cap at $8.5M (should let go)
- Joe Smith - RP, aging, horrible season, medium cap at $4M (should let go)
- Tyler Anderson - SP, young, great mid-season acquisition as a 4th starter, cap at $2.5M (should re-sign)
- Sean Doolittle - RP, aging, hasn't been good in 3 seasons, cap at $1.5M (should let go)
- Keynan Middleton - RP, young, had a horrible season, cap at $800k (should let go)
- Jose Marmolejos - utility, young, backup bench player, cap at $575k (should let go)
- Jimmy Yacabonis - RP, young, good season, cap at $570k (should re-sign)
- Hector Santiago - RP, aging, caught cheating twice, cap at $570k (should let go)
- Robert Dugger - SP/RP, young, terrible career stats, cap at $570k (should let go)
- Ryan Weber - RP, aging, hasn't been same since bicep surgery, cap at $570k (should let go)
If I'm Dipoto I'd be looking at bolstering the starting rotation and finding a big name to put in the infield. The outfield feels covered for years to come as the Mariners already have 4 quality starters and a couple more in the minors who will be coming up.
Weak or Missing Positions:
- C: Tom Murphy has horrible defense, Luis Torrens is mediocre, and Cal Raleigh can't hit yet. The Mariners could trade 1-2 of these guys and find an upgrade in FA.
- Pedro Severino is an intriguing name here as he's young and coming off a good season on a terrible Orioles club. Luke Maile is also a serviceable replacement.
- 3B: Seager is most likely gone due to his age and cost but there's a few good names out there in FA.
- Kris Bryant, Eduardo Escobar, Jonathan Villar, Hanser Alberto, and Matt Duffy. Bryant may be too costly, but Escobar and Duffy are young, affordable, and each are coming off solid seasons. Duffy is also capable of playing anywhere in the infield which helps.
- SP: Kikuchi seems to be leaving for Japan and Paxton can't seem to pitch a full season. Anderson may sign elsewhere but hopefully gets retained. However, this will leave the M's down at least 2 SP's. This is great because Kikuchi and Seager could clear enough cap to afford a big arm in the rotation which the Mariners desperately need if they intend to make a playoff push. This position is their biggest need.
- Noah Syndergaard, Clayton Kershaw, Marcus Stroman, Kevin Gausman, Carlos Rodon top the charts for the big name acquisition. Most of these guys will land $20M+/yr deals for 3-6 year contracts but they're all all-star caliber players who can help carry a team to the playoffs.
- Other names for a second spot in the rotation are Alex Cobb, Danny Duffy, Drew Smyly, Michael Pineda, Zach Davies, Robbie Ray, Anthony DeSclafani, Kwang-hyun Kim, Alex Wood, Julio Teheran, John Gant
- RP: The Mariners had a top 5 bullpen last year but are about to lose quite a few arms. SP acquisitions could help them move some young starters who struggled into a bullpen role to help fill it but there's quite a few names out there. RP's seem to swing year to year so it's tough to gauge talent based on what the M's did last year.
- There's about 40+ RP's available with WARs above 0.1 so Dipoto has plenty of options to fill out the pen. Some intriguing names out there include: Steve Cishek, Kenley Jansen, Ryan Tepera, Andrew Chafin, Kendall Graveman, Brad Hand, Alex Colome, Hunter Strickland
- Note the M's could make a move at 1B, 2B, or SS and move some players around. For instance, signing Marcus Semien and moving Toro to 3B or signing Anthony Rizzo and moving Ty France to 3B or DH.