What Has to Happen? (Also, Cactus League Game 4: Mariners at Diamondbacks)
George Kirby vs. Humberto Castellanos, 1:10pm
Right now, the M’s are projected for 76 wins by Clay Davenport, 80 by Fangraphs, and 83 by Baseball Prospectus. Somewhere in that range that’s on the edge of the playoff hunt, now that each league gets six spots, but probably outside of it. There are too many teams that look a bit better, and of course the projections are looking at the M’s 2021 run differential a lot more than their 2021 record. The M’s seem done with major acquisitions, too. Sure, they’ve brought in an entire minor league team’s worth of depth pieces on minor league contracts – and just today, they added Billy Hamilton and Andrew Albers – but not much is going to change the math as far as the projections go. But the M’s, and probably many of you, can and probably should disagree with the assessment that’s shared by most of the projections, too. The projections last year never envisaged 90 wins, so it’s a fair point. What I’d like to do here is to try to sketch out what a team with wild card aspirations would look like given the M’s roster: where, specifically, would the improvements come from?
To me, a realistic goal to contend would target 86-87 wins or so. To have a good shot at *that* without relying too much on fun differential, I think the M’s would need to average about 0.3 runs scored per game than they give up. That would give them a run differential at the end of the year a bit below 50. Nothing crazy; we’re not trying to make them Blue Jays-West, or Dodgers-North. By their (in)actions, they’re pretty clearly not trying to be. If you want to think about a real-world example of a team that averages 0.3-ish more runs scored than runs allowed, look at last year’s Oakland A’s. They had a slightly better differential at 0.35, giving them a positive run differential over 50, but they’re right in the ballpark. They won 86 games last year; not good enough for the playoffs, but it might be if they could repeat that performance (note: they have no intention of even trying to do so). Given their ballpark and division, they got there by allowing only 687 runs on the year while scoring 743. (This is almost a perfect inverse of the 2021 Mariners, who scored 697 and gave up 748.) Right now, the M’s are projected to score 734-704 runs, with BP’s tally of 719 a pretty good midpoint.
Given everything that’s happened in baseball the past several years – with multiple balls used last year, a super-charged turbo ball in 2019, and a more demure 2018 version – I’m not even going to speculate on the run environment we’ll see in 2022. These run totals could be laughably high or low, which is why I’m trying to focus more on the per-game difference, rather than the seasonal total. But it can be helpful to convert them into seasonal totals, as that’s often what we think about when we think about a team’s strengths/weaknesses. So – BP’s total runs works out to 4.43 runs per game. They could add 10 runs by rounding that up to 4.5 runs/game. Where would the runs-allowed average need to go? If scoring’s at 4.5, it would need to be around 4.2, which works out to a stingy 680 runs on the year.*
You could get there another way, of course. Leave the runs-allowed in the 740s (as Fangraphs and Clay Davenport have them) and try to create a murderer’s row of an offense, but to me, that’s a harder sell. It’s hard because the M’s ballpark remains weird, and oddly hard to get hits in, and scoring runs without hits remains challenging. That same factor makes pitching improvements – or runs-allowed improvements – easier. Thus, I think much of the focus has to be on the pitching-and-defense side of the ledger. Thanks to the acquisition of Robbie Ray, the M’s starting pitching – a clear weakness last year – looks a lot better. Starting pitchers figure to get about 900 innings out of 1,400-1,450 total innings on the year, and FG seems them yielding 440 runs or so. Getting that down by 50 would require taking the total SP from 4.21 to 3.90. It’s doable, if a bit ambitious. But you don’t need to save that much, because…they have a bullpen, too. FG expects the M’s to allow about 244 runs in relief. So, let’s save 20 from the ‘pen and 30 from the rotation. That would look like a rotation with an ERA of 4.09 in about 900 IP, and a bullpen with an ERA of 3.63 in 555 IP.
This is considerable, but it’s also not unthinkable. One of the things that all of the projection systems ding the M’s for is Marco Gonzales’ FIP/DRA, etc. which has consistently been worse than his actual runs allowed (and especially his ERA). Just assuming Marco pitches to his actual-runs-allowed career average gets you a chunk of runs-saved. Robbie Ray’s career averages are higher than his projections, but it’s worth noting that no one forsees him repeating his 2021 success. There’s margin for error there, but obviously a re-run of his Cy Young campaign would come in handy. I’m not comfortable just assuming that, but it would do wonders for the team’s RA. The M’s could save more runs by simply not running out replacement-level starters, one of those things that *sounds* easy enough, but then James Paxton gets hurt in his season debut, and Nick Margevicius and Ljay Newsome are hurt and you still need someone to throw baseballs. But right now, Justus Sheffield is projected to be too close to that replacement-level line to really help. Thus, you can either assume a bounce-back year from him in a swing-man, 7th-starter kind of role, or you can assume that the M’s vaunted pitching depth is ready and able to give you more than the vets like Asher Wojciechowski and Andrew Albers can. Some of the projection systems *love* Matt Brash and George Kirby, so one way to get pretty far towards our goal here is to simply give the innings currently slated for Sheffield, Wojciechowski, Margevicius and company (that’s 117, by Fangraphs, or 102 by BP, just for a sense of scale) to Kirby/Brash, or perhaps to Kirby/Brash and Logan Gilbert.
This is, on the whole, optimistic, but it’s also not outlandish. It requires a ton of things to happen that did not happen last year, not least of which is the M’s staying healthy. Another would be improved OF defense. But all in all, it’s a bit easier to see a path towards contention than it was before I started this. Small improvements spread over 1,400 innings can really add up. But they can’t simply assume them, they actually have to make the improvements.
That’s why today’s game will be fun. George Kirby is starting this game, and could – COULD – have a path to an opening day job. I still think Brash has the edge just because of his 40-man spot, but Kirby probably needs to pitch in Seattle at some point if the M’s are going to keep their runs-allowed below 700. Is he ready? How many innings is a realistic goal for someone with a grand total of 90 2/3 IP in his pro career?
1: Crawford, SS
2: France, 1B
3: Winker, LF
4: Haniger, RF
5: Frazier, 2B
6: Toro, 3B
7: Kelenic, DH
8: Rodriguez, CF
9: Torrens, C
SP: Kirby
I’ve been enjoying the shortened spring training because teams know they have to get their starters work; we haven’t seen any true “Cactus League Special” line-ups with only 2-3 guys who’ll be on the MLB team thus far. I’m somewhat shocked they’ve given Luis Torrens his catcher’s glove back. They didn’t let him catch an inning down the stretch last season, and even worked him out at 1B instead of C. I’d assumed his catching career might be done, but given his batting projections, it’s probably good to keep him behind the dish for as long as they can. Julio in CF, as the M’s said they’d do…I really hope this works out, and I’ll get over it, but maaaaaan, Seiya Suzuki would’ve looked really good on this roster.
* This will never not shock me, but the 2014 M’s allowed a total of *554* runs in 2014. It wasn’t ancient history; this wasn’t the dead ball era. But the batting ice age of 2010-2014 was a massive change to the game, and the rebounding of scoring has been so dramatic. It all happened so fast that I think it’s hard to really see and think about. 554 runs! In a full season! By the Mariners! The 2021 LA Dodgers had one of the best pitching staff’s of my life, and put up a Pythagorean wins of 109. They gave up 561.
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3 Responses to “What Has to Happen? (Also, Cactus League Game 4: Mariners at Diamondbacks)”
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Glad you mentioned OF defense. That has been one of my concerns and it amazes me that more people haven’t expressed the same concern.
Another thing that I keep thinking about is the extra-innings record. Seattle went 14-7 with the runner-on-second rule, which is gone (for now).
I like the trades we’ve seen and love the Ray signing. It’s just not enough, and I think they really blew an opportunity letting Suzuki go to Chicago.
They probably blew a few other opportunities, but maybe there’s a surprise still waiting for us.
I think it was Divish who speculated that Suzuki probably wanted to go somewhere he could star in his own story, versus being constantly compared / contrasted to Ichiro or Ohtani.
I don’t know if I’d buy that. He got a bigger payday than the projections. That alone is telling and he had a chance to be a hero in Seattle, helping end a 20-year postseason drought.
But who knows.