Tuesday, March 10, 2015

The Mariners 2015 Season Prevew: A Negative View


I decided to write a negative view and a positive view this year. If you don't want to be brought down off your spring training high don't read the below preview.  I'll post something more upbeat and optimistic about the upcoming 2015 season later.

Well the Mariners have done it again. They followed up a surprise winning season by adding a big name free agent and building up all kinds of preseason hype. This time the free agent is Nelson Cruz and the hype is so big that in Las Vegas they have the third best odds for an AL team to make the World Series. It has all resulted in the city's fanbase starting to dream. However for me it is all just too eerily similar to 2007 and 2009. In the 2007 offseason it was Erik Bedard and talk of finally returning to relevance. In 2009 it was Chone Figgins and the cover of the ESPN the Magazine MLB season preview. You might remember both of the follow up seasons turned into unmitigated 101 loss disasters.  The overselling of the 2015 M's and their constant history of failure has basically turned me into a pessimistic mess. I want to believe this year will be different. I want to believe baseball games will have actually meaning in August. But, I just cant get myself over the hump of pessimism.


This year's big name signing is DH/OF Nelson Cruz. He was the only major leaguer to hit 40 homers last year. Since 2009 Cruz has never hit less than 22 homeruns. In the same time frame he hasn't had a SLG below .460, which would have led last year's M's. Their highest SLG in 2014 was a tie between Kyle Seager and Robinson Cano's at .454. These are all very exciting stats for the slugger. However, I am still expecting a flop from Cruz.

Over the last ten years M's free agents have basically always been failures and Cruz has lots of red flags around him (Cano's 2014 season is the one exception to this rule). Nelson Cruz is 34 and he missed 30+ games in 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2013. Expecting an aging and injury prone slugger to stay healthy over an entire season is a lot to ask. Additionally, up to this point in his career he has played in small hitter friendly bandboxes for his home park. Baltimore, where he hit a career high in homeruns, has an especially small park and it is famous for basically during anyone into a power hitter. Safeco is far from a hitters park. In fact it is one of the most pitcher friendly ball parks in the Majors. Lots of power hitters have arrived in Seattle only to watch their home runs vanish.

One of the most important defensive positions in baseball is shortstop. The majority of the balls in play get hit their way and they have to make quick athletic plays frequently. Because of this a shortstop doesn't have to hit as well as other positions. It is common for a starting shortstop to be one of the worst hitter on his team. Advanced stats like WAR and wRC+ give shortstops a little bit of a boost to their offense numbers to adjust for the lower level for an average player. The problem is the Mariners shortstops are truly awful at hitting. They aren't just shortstop bad, they are all world bad. Brad Miller was so bad that they brought Chris Taylor up from AAA to replace him. Chris Taylor did so poorly that they replaced him with Brad Miller, the same guy from earlier.

In 2014 Brad Miller, the supposed offensive player, had a wRC+ of 84. His triple slash was .221/.288/.365. He only managed to get up to those numbers by putting up a torrid September where he hit .314/.340/.549 in 20 games. By any stretch of the imagination this was a crappy season for a big leaguer. Miller's backup/replacement, Chris Taylor, managed to do better at the plate. He compiled a wRC+ of 103, which makes him just about league average. Taylor only played 47 games and had 151 at-bats in 2014. So his stats are definitely a small sample size, but if he can hit like that and play solid defense he might just be a passable big leaguer.

During the spring the Mariners have a big decision to make about who their starting shortstop will be. If one of these guys pops, by which I mean plays at replacement level or better, the team will have a chance. If the two guys combine for a season like 2014 the position will be a black hole, which could definitely destroy any chance at a playoff run. The team brass doesn't seem scared about the shortstop position, but I know I am.

Lately the Mariners have been running a commercial on 950 KJR to try and sign people up for season tickets. One of the selling points they are using is that season ticket holders get first access to playoff tickets. This needs to stop. The M's haven't made the playoffs since 2001. They haven't had a legitimately good team since 2003. This year's team isn't a sure winner, they could definitely struggle. Using the playoffs as a selling point is just asking for trouble. They are basically just jinxing themselves. It isn't as egregious as the team's 2010 season slogan "Believe Big" but it is definitely tempting fate. Why risk it? Stop counting your chicken, or in this case wins, before they hatch.

I know these three points all seem really negative and they are. Despite the rampant optimism in Seattle this spring I cant bring myself to get on board. I am stuck being a negative Nancy. I hope that Nelson Cruz works out and hits 30+ homers and I hope that one of the shortstops sticks and turns into a legit big leaguer. I would love if the M's made the playoffs for the first time in years and I had to scour StubHub to try and get tickets to a home game at Safeco. The problem is I just cant bring myself to get over the years of failures. I can't bring myself to look past their glaring holes.

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