The Seattle Mariners (71-56) were a game above .500 at the All-Star break, but now find themselves in the thick of not only the American League wild-card hunt but also the AL West race. Entering Friday, they find themselves tied with the Houston Astros at one game back of Texas in the West, while also holding onto the second wild-card spot with a 1.5-game lead over the Toronto Blue Jays and a 3.5-game lead over the Boston Red Sox.
Since play resumed after the break the M’s have gone 26-12, including a 16-5 record in August. The franchise record for wins in a month is 20. They have six games left before the calendar flips and they’ll be at home against the two worst teams in the American League, Kansas City and Oakland.
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Seattle has eight losses since July 20, and in those eight games, they have been outscored by a total of ten runs. Even when they’re dropping the occasional game they’re still in it until the end. The Los Angeles Dodgers, winners of 11 straight at this time last week, have lost two games since August 17. The first was 11-3 to Miami and the second was 8-3 to Cleveland.
That just shows how impressive this Seattle Mariners streak really is. Every team has an off night, even when they’re just stacking up wins. Not this team.
One of the more impressive season stats on this club is that they have 13 players with at least 50 plate appearances this year that have a WRC+ over 100 (100 is league average). That’s the most league-average players on one roster in MLB.
So what has changed for the Seattle Mariners the last month and led to their stunning outbreak?
A tale of two halves
It’s true that Seattle has 13 players with a wRC+ above 100, and while that speaks to their depth as a team, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the club has been excellent all year long. In the first half, the team ranked 20th in baseball as a unit in wRC+ at 96, just below league average, and 18th in run scored.
In the second half, the bats have come alive. Seattle’s 127 wRC+ ranks second in baseball, right behind the Atlanta Braves 128 and well above the third-place Dodgers at 121. They’re sixth in runs scored, but second in ERA at 3.69, right behind the Toronto Blue Jays at 3.67.
When you add it all together, the Seattle Mariners are excelling on both sides of the ball. During this 26-12 stretch they have added 50 runs to their run differential on the season, which now sits at +86, third-best in the American League. The Baltimore Orioles (78-48) have the best record in the AL, and their run differential is at +83. It’s the Tampa Bay Rays (+172) and Texas Rangers (+181) that beat out the Mariners here.
The Julio Roríguez show
During the All-Star festivities in Seattle, Julio Rodríguez put on a show for the hometown fans and the baseball world by slugging a record 41 homers in the first round of the Home Run Derby. The crowd was electric during that performance. The fans in Seattle love J-Rod, as they should.
He’s returning some of that love and even doing his best to show that times are different now after two decades of missing the playoffs. J-Rod has 49 career home runs in 254 career games. If he hits one more long ball in the next 14 games, he will become the fastest player to reach 50 homers in franchise history, surpassing Álex Rodríguez’s 269. Not a bad way to start a career.
But he does more than hit bombs. During this second-half run, J-Rod is leading the team in fWAR with 2.4 wins above replacement, while swingin’ it 73% better than league average with a 173 wRC+. He’s also batting .344 with a .402 OBP to go along with eight homers and 12 stolen bases. From August 16-19 he recorded at least four hits in each of those four games. According to Sarah Langs of MLB, his 17 hits are the most hits in a four-game stretch since at least 1901.
At the All-Star break, he was hitting .249 with a .310 OBP. During this torrid second half, he has upped those to a .277 average and a .337 OBP. With six games to go in the month, he’s batting .404 in August.
Big Dumper bringing the thump
If you’re a fan of home runs, why not look to Cal Raleigh, a.k.a Big Dumper, who has been providing the thump from behind the dish for the Seattle Mariners? In the second half he has 13 homers, second-most in baseball behind Matt Olson’s 14. He has 24 dingers on the season, which leads all catchers, and he’s one of only six qualified backstops that has a wRC+ better than league average at 112. Raleigh led catchers in bombs last year, too, with 27.
Monday’s two-homer game was his fifth multi-homer game of the season. According to ESPN Stats and Info, the only two players in team history with more multi-homer games in a single season are Ken Griffey Jr. (three times) and Álex Rodríguez. Raleigh is also the only catcher in franchise history to record two home runs and six RBI in a game, which he also did on Monday.
Big Dumper is also a top-ten pitch framer, stealing strikes for his already dominant pitching staff, while also being above average at just about every other facet of catching, per Statcast.
Seattle Mariners deadline additions have come up big
After the trade deadline, many around baseball were wondering what the Seattle Mariners were doing. Arguably their biggest move was trading away their closer, Paul Sewald. Yet, Sportsnaut pointed out that the additions they made were actually upgrades over Kolten Wong’s 65 wRC+ and A.J. Pollock’s 51 wRC+. Wong was DFA’d and Pollock was traded to San Francisco.
So just how have Trent Thornton, Dominic Canzone, and Josh Rojas performed? In 15 games, Rojas is one of those 13 players with a wRC+ above 100. He has 54 plate appearances with Seattle and has a 121 wRC+ while playing second base, nearly doubling the offensive production the team was previously getting from Wong.
Canzone has been slightly below league average with a 98 wRC+ in 16 games (58 PA), but he’s been getting regular playing time in left field, a spot that Pollock had seen some time. The left field spot had mostly belonged to Jarred Kelenic, who is currently on the IL, giving Canzone regular playing time.
Thornton has been fantastic out of the Seattle ‘pen in his ten appearances, racking up a 2.53 ERA and a 1.03 WHIP.
The outstanding pitching
Twenty-one pitchers have tallied at least three outs for the Seattle Mariners since the All-Star break. Just five of them have been worse than the league average, small sample sizes and all. One of those pitchers, Emerson Hancock, was just placed on the 60-day IL, effectively ending his season. Another, Bryan Woo, was just activated from the IL after missing two weeks with right arm inflammation.
When you talk about championship-caliber rosters, you need to talk about the depth a team has beyond the 26-man, or sometimes even the 40-man roster. Seattle has shown they can do it with the bats recently, but the pitching staff has been there all season. They rank second in ERA (3.69), first in FIP (3.72), seventh in strikeout rate (9.13 per nine), and first in walk rate (2.51 per nine) in all of baseball.
George Kirby (3.28 ERA) and Luis Castillo (3.15) have led the rotation all season long, and in seven second-half starts, rookie Bryce Miller has joined the party with a 3.49 ERA and 1.86 walks per nine. In a short playoff series, they’d match up favorably with any trio out there.
25-year-old reliever Matt Brash has lowered his walk rate from 5.86 per nine last season to 3.64 in 2023, while also raising his strikeout rate from 11.01 to 14.58. He has a 3.31 ERA and four saves for the M’s. Andrés Muñoz has a 2.78 ERA and eight saves. Both are listed as closers for Seattle with the departure of Sewald.
This team can beat you in a number of ways. One night they’ll put up double-digit runs in a slugfest. The next they’ll shut you out. The way this team is playing right now, they look dangerous. In last year’s playoffs, they were eliminated in three games by the eventual World Series champion Houston Astros, yet they weren’t pushed around. The first game was a one-run contest, followed by a 4-2 loss. The elimination game looked to be the most telling, as the two clubs exchanged zeroes all the way until the 18th inning when Jeremy Peña hit a solo homer in the top of the inning that ended up being the difference.
Sometimes those tough defeats are great learning experiences. We’ll find out what Seattle learned from that loss over the next five weeks and potentially into October.