In case you haven’t noticed, the Seattle Mariners offense is terrible. Like, absolutely and tragically terrible. It is so bad, in fact, that they currently have scored 23 fewer runs than any team in the majors, this despite having the use of a DH, unlike 16 other teams in the bigs (maybe 17 since Adam Dunn hardly counts anymore). That leaves Seattle on pace to score an embarrassingly low 534 runs this year, the lowest mark in the majors since… last year’s Mariner team.
Just how bad is that? Some might say that it is a lineup so bad that it doesn’t belong in the majors. As hyperbolic as that might sound, it might actually be correct.
Take for example the Reno Aces of the Pacific Coast League, that’s a Triple-A baseball league, in case you didn’t know. The Aces have scored a whopping 825 runs so far this year, the most in the Pacific Coast League, far exceeding the output of the Mariners by, oh, a few hundred runs. With the difference in competition level and ballparks, the Mariners should still be better than the Aces, right?
Maybe, maybe not. There is only one way to find out for sure and that is to compare the most recent Mariner lineup to the most recent Reno lineup, using Major League equivalencies for the Reno hitters to give us an accurate comparison (or as accurate as possible, since MLB equivalencies are not a fine art yet).
Here’s the side-by-side breakdown:
- Ichiro (.624) vs. Frey (.629)
- Wilson (.550) vs. Abreu (.639)
- Ackley (.879) vs. Langerhans (.824)
- Carp (.825) vs. Tracy (.787)
- Kennedy (.665) vs. Gillespie (.729)
- Olivo (.628) vs. Miranda (.717, in this case, this is his OPS during his 174 at-bats time in the majors this year)
- Gutierrez (.502) vs. May (.754)
- Robinson (.686, just promoted, so this is his MLB equivalency) vs. Hallberg (.597)
- Seager (.888, just promoted, so this is his MLB equivalency) vs. Schmidt (.636)
As you can see, we took a few liberties with this since the Mariners have, wisely, dipped into the minors recently to bolster their flimsy lineup with Kyle Seager and Trayvon Robinson. We also had to add Schmidt to the Aces lineup since Reno was playing sans-DH in their most recent game.
Regardless of these minor adjustments, the results aren’t looking so good for the Mariners. They do have superior OPS numbers in four spots, but the average OPS of the Seattle lineup is .694 whereas the Reno lineup checks in at an average of .701. So, yes, technically, the Reno lineup is barely better than the Seattle lineup. At least it was a close call, so Seattle has that going for them.
Now, before all you Seattle fans get too upset and start setting aside your tall skinny half-caf extra foam green tea lattes to leave an angry comment, please realize that this exercise isn’t just being done in order to take cheap shots at a bad team (if I wanted to do that, I would’ve cheated and replaced Seager with Chone Figgins). What you should take away from this is just how little talent the Mariners actually have on their roster right now. Even if you allow for a cushy margin for error with the MLB equivalencies (and really, we should, because we have almost a decade of evidence that 31-year old Ryan Langerhans is never going to post an .824 OPS in the majors), Seattle would only be considered marginally better than Reno, at best. For a team that was considered something of a dark horse contender as recently as 2009, it is depressing to think that they are fielding a lineup that compares so unfavorably to a minor league team.
If there is a glimmer of hope for Seattle, it is that their youngsters in the order are the ones performing well, or at least threatening to. Dustin Ackley appears to be fully capable of living up to his lofty expectations and Mike Carp thus far seems like he could be useful too. Trayvon Robinson and Kyle Seager are much more unknown quantities, but at least they have promise, unlike the veteran detritus making up most of the rest of the lineup. Replacing offensive deadwood like Jack Wilson, Franklin Gutierrez, Adam Kennedy and maybe even Brendan Ryan is going to take some time. Even Ichiro is no longer the offensive sparkplug he used to be. Really, Seattle doesn’t have a single position player on the roster older than the age of 28 who is even a league average offensive performer right now. Going young is obviously the right move in that case, and Seattle is headed in that direction, but it is going to take a long time to go from being this bad to even average when you have basically no veteran help to keep the lineup’s head above water while the franchise waits for their kids to develop.
Sorry, Mariner fans, it looks like it could be a few years before you get to watch a capable lineup again… unless you move to Reno, of course.
