Edited by Jack E. Cody
By July, Cliff Lee had already hit the DL once for a 15-day stint, with Milton Bradley hitting .212 with a 28% strike out rate, and with Figgins hitting .231 with 0 homers (not that he's a power guy anyway). Jack Wilson also spent time on the DL, Griffey Jr. hit .184 and retired on June 3, and just forget about Bedard since he did not pitch a single inning in 2010. Oh yeah, and Eric Byrnes hit .094 before being released in May. All of that led to the trade that sent Cliff Lee to the Texas Rangers on July 9th and brought back some players including first baseman Justin Smoak, a top prospect.
By the end of the 2010 season, Bradley had been placed on the Restricted List and Figgins posted an average of .259 (he had a much better second half) with just one, lonely home run.
Even some of the original Mariners not acquired in 2010 had disastrous seasons. The Converted third baseman Jose Lopez posted a .239/.270/.339/.268 line with just eleven long balls and a total WAR of .7. Franklin Gutierrez hit .245/.303/.363/.300 with twelve homers and a 24.1% strike out rate. On the other hand, he did have 25 stolen bases and a 41.7% fly ball rate. But his offensive WAR (which just measures how many runs a player contributes for just offense) was -7.7.
It was no surprise that the Mariners finished with just 61 wins even though Felix Hernandez won the AL Cy Young with a 2.27 ERA and 232 strike outs in 249.2 innings pitched. However, due to the Mariners' terrible offense that scored just 513 runs over the whole season, he only had thirteen wins and twelve losses. To put that into perspective, no other team in the majors scored below 600 runs.
This off season, though, was a little better. The Mariners first named Eric Wedge the new manager, and then later re-signed Erik Bedard and Jack Wilson to one-year deals again. They also signed catcher Miguel Olivo and shortstop Brendan Ryan to two year deals. The Mariners originally got Ryan from the Cardinals in a trade for Maikel Cleto, who was one of the better prospects in the Mariners system last year, ranked number nine by Marc Hulet's 2010 edition of Mariners Top 10 prospects on Fangraphs.
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| Though I haven't even mentioned Ichiro in this post, he is still the best hitter on the Mariners and continues to be one of the best in the game. |
Finally, the Mariners also signed Adam Kennedy, Manny Delcarmen and Chris Ray to minor league contracts.
Seattle's closer David Aardsma had hip surgery just about a month ago but should be ready for opening day. Seattle was looking to trade the right handed pitcher but that has obviously been put on hold. Aardsma last year, in his second season with the M's, had 31 saves (out of the 61 Seattle wins) with 5 blown saves, a 3.44 ERA and 49 strike outs in 49.2 innings.
Lastly, the Mariners have two top prospects in Dustin Ackley and Michael Pineda. I'll just talk about Pineda to save time.
Pineda is 21 years old. He has a mid-to-high 90's fastball and an above average change up that is 84-85 mph. He also carries an average slider. He uses his strong core and legs to drive through and add that extra velocity to all his pitches. He avoids deep counts and walks by pounding the strike zone constantly with a fastball that possesses a lot of life and sink to it. He has great deception due to his max-effort pitching motion and pitch speed deferential. On the other hand, there are a lot of injury concerns for him. His very jerky motion should be a worry for Mariners fans and he has already had significant elbow and forearm injuries. All the injuries aside, this is what he has done in the minor leagues thus far:
Season | Team | G | W | L | GS | CG | ShO | SV | IP | |
2008 | Mariners (A) | 26 | 8 | 6 | 21 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 138.1 | |
2009 | Mariners (R) | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 3 | |
2009 | Mariners (A+) | 10 | 4 | 2 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 44.1 | |
2010 | Mariners (AA) | 13 | 8 | 1 | 13 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 77 | |
2010 | Mariners (AAA) | 12 | 3 | 3 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 62.1 |
And
H | HR | BB | SO | K/9 | BB/9 | LOB% | BABIP | ERA | FIP |
109 | 7 | 35 | 128 | 8.33 | 2.28 | 79.70% | 0.271 | 1.95 | 2.87 |
2 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 12 | 0 | 100.00% | 0.333 | 0 | 0.53 |
29 | 3 | 6 | 48 | 9.74 | 1.22 | 67.90% | 0.248 | 2.84 | 2.73 |
67 | 1 | 17 | 78 | 9.12 | 1.99 | 75.10% | 0.306 | 2.22 | 2.16 |
54 | 9 | 17 | 76 | 10.97 | 2.45 | 66.80% | 0.29 | 4.76 | 3.6 |
Those are some really gaudy numbers. I think that if he fixes his pitching mechanics, then he should be a top-of-the-line starter. In Seattle, though, he is obviously going to be behind King Felix
That's my shpiel for the Seattle Mariners. My projection is 70 wins. I don't think they can contend because, put simply, the offense is just not good enough.
(Statistics in courtesy of: fangraphs.com and espn.com)
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