How good was
Seattle last year? Well, they underperformed their Pythagorean record by seven games -- and still won the division by 8, coming up one win short of 100. They led all of baseball with a team ERA of
2.98; this despite a fourth starter,
Jay Young, with an earned run average of an even 5.00. This is a team that built an offense around the inimitable
Ichiro! and succeeded -- no, flourished. Never mind their first round playoff exit; the 2006
Seattle club came within shouting distance of the 116-win
2001 edition. To say the least, an excellent season it was.
But can they do it again? The payroll's increased a handful of dollars, but Cy Young winner Joel Pineiro is now a
Pirate, and after the signing of
Juan Pierre, AL batting champ Chris Snelling has gone to
Oakland in exchange for third base prospect Will Catania. How do you make up for those two player-seasons? Is it even possible? To have a chance,
Seattle will need a repeat of the 30 wins and 430 innings of sub-2.50 ERA ball that they got from
Tomo Ohka and
Odalis Perez. But neither had ever pitched as well as they did last season. Maybe they've established a new level of performance, improved their control just a touch and changed their grip a quarter-inch on that two-seam fastball to get just enough bite to confound lefties eight times out of nine. But even if that's the case, if 35 year old shorstop
Rich Aurilia loses a step, and a few outs turn into RBI singles, then those 2.50 ERA's are 2.75, or 3.10, aren't they?
The best teams are those with a minimal chance for a worst-case scenario. Look at the
Hose. If
Mark Buehrle gets a lobotomy and
Magglio Ordonez goes on a Mormon mission, we'd probably win ten games this year, and then TotalEnd would
owe me a hell of a lot of chocolate milk. Well, the
Mariners may have won 99 games last year, but they're not that far away from the "20 gallons of chocolate milk" scenario, either. Behind the front two in their rotation, they have 26 year old
Clint Nageotte, with 36 god-awful major league innings under his belt. He's their #3. The fourth starter is
Gil "Ga"
Meche, who posted a 6.26 ERA in 26 innings last year, and his scouting report reads something like "hope the real estate business pays well!", same as fifth starter
John Halama's. Don't know if that weights equally or more or less than a few seasons of league-average pitching but we have a 35 year old with a mediocre strikeout rate and an oft-injured 26 year old here, not
Randy Johnson. How many playoff teams you know of with three starters who
might, if things break just right, be league-average pitchers?
The bullpen is fine; excellent, even. Could be the best in the business. Most of the puzzle pieces from last year's lineup return and
Luis Castillo and
Juan Pierre are glossy new additions, if not necessarily from a different puzzle. But they should fit OK. And
Adam Dunn, who hit a middling .242 last year, could provide a whole wealth of run scoring just by a 20 point uptick in his batting average. But despite all of the team's speed and the high batting averages of
Scratchiro! and
Doug "Zwieback"
Mientkiewicz, something is telling me that this team isn't going to score enough runs, even if they did place ninth in the majors last year in that department.
Sabermetrics is probably what keeps me fascinated with baseball as much as anything else. It's fun to think that there's an objective truth out there, because where is there an objective anything in our lives? But there's also some truth in the quotation, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." Ultimately, you can turn numbers into anything you want, and when the standings read all zeroes, you're just guessing anyway, because, to use the trite expression, anything can happen. And often it does.
So I won't lie. I don't know why I think the
Mariners are going to disappoint this year. But a year removed from their second-best season ever, I can't even promise that they'll finish over .500. It's just a gut feeling.
But it's a strong one.
p.s. happy easter, one and all.