By Blaidd Drwg

I was looking at the Mariners media guide this morning at the Mariners all time top 10 in offensive categories and I saw this in hits:

All Time Leaders
Edgar Martinez – 2,247
Ichiro – 2,230

Ichiro has 15 hits this year, which would put him 3 away from surpassing Edgar. I found it strange that I had not heard anything about this in the local press, so I did a little digging. Turns out, the Mariners Media Guide has a big error – the table should read like this:

All Time Leaders
Edgar Martinez – 2,247
Ichiro – 2,030

Ichiro, barring injury, should pass Edgar this year, just not this week.

Every year I read through the guide (yes, I am that much of a baseball geek) and every year I find a bunch of errors and typos, but never anything this bad. Note to the Mariners – hire someone to proofread your media guide, since it is what you distribute to the actual media.

By Blaidd Drwg

In case you missed it, Larry Stone wrote an article entitled “Five rejected April Fools prank stories (No, Prince Fielder is NOT coming to Seattle)” in yesterday’s Seattle Times. He was trying to be funny, but in reality, 2 of the 5 stories would actually make the Mariners a better team if they happened:

2) Mariners trade Ichiro for Prince Fielder in blockbuster deal – Oh how happy would I be about this, a genuine power hitter in the lineup and a guy who probably has not hit his best seasons for a guy who probably is on the verge of a serious decline. Fielder is going to end up eating himself into the DH role in a couple of seasons, but the way I look at it, he is better than Ichiro currently and he will still be a significantly better than average hitter in 5 season when Ichiro is league average or worse. Besides, you can replace Ichiro pretty easily for a season while Mike Saunders gets ready to be a full time MLB player. Trade a slap hitter for a masher? In a second.

3) Griffey announces retirement – oh, one could only dream. I am not a fan of Griffey (and I am not shy about it) and I don’t understand how a city could love a guy who basically said that he hated it here and forced the team to trade him. The guy needs to call it quits – he was overmatched last season, but his ego is causing him to stay on. Yes, he can still hit mistake pitches over the plate a long way, but frankly, teams aren’t afraid of pitching to him anymore. He was pretty awful last season, is batting under .200 in spring training and is probably going to get 450 – 500 plate appearances this season since Wak just has to have him in the lineup (an probably batting 4th). If this team is serious about contending, can you really waste that many at bats on a guy who will hover in the low .200’s all season in an already suspect lineup?

by Blaidd Drwg

With the plethora of predictions for the Mariners 2010 season out, it got me thinking, how did a team which scored 640 runs in 2009 manage to win 85 games. Their expected wins were 75 based on run differential and they managed to get lucky and win 35 games by 1 run. I really think this was closer to a 75 win team that got lucky than an 85 win team that was that good (winning close games really isn’t a function of anything other than luck), so I wanted to take a look at the other AL teams in the expansion era that scored 640 runs or less. I did pro-rate the 1994 and 1995 seasons to 162 games to even things out for those seasons. I also expanded the list to include any teams who scored more than 640 runs but were within 30 of the Mariners totals. The list:

Year/Team	Runs Scored	Runs Allowed	Diff	Wins
2002 Tigers	575	864	-289	55
2003 Tigers	591	928	-337	43
1998 Devil Rays	620	751	-131	63
2009 Mariners	640	692	-52	85
2008 A’s	646	690	-44	75
1997 Blue Jays	654	694	-40	76
2002 Orioles	667	773	-106	67

Interesting that the M’s are the only team on that list to go better than .500. There are some historically bad teams and just looking at runs scored and runs allowed, the M’s best comp are the 2008 A’s, who are almost a dead on comp – the A’s scored 6 more runs than the M’s and gave up 2 fewer. The difference really was the A’s were essentially a .500 team in 1 run games at 25-24. Yes, a lot has been made about how good the M’s defense was last season and I don’t think the A’s were a particularly great fielding team, but is the defense really worth 10 wins over the run differential? I guess we will see how this plays out in 2010.

So all of this got me thinking, is there another M’s team that looks comparable? The closest I found was the 1990 M’s who managed a 75-87 record, scoring 640 runs and allowing 680. Digging down, there are an amazing number of similarities between 2009 and 1990 versions of the teams – They both had relatively young pitching staffs, they both played in stadiums that were slightly pitching friendly, neither team got any real production from their Catcher or Shortstops, they both had marginal starters with career years (Jarrod Washburn and Erik Hanson) and both teams had solid bullpens and above average starting pitching. They were both extremely good defensive teams.

Here are the stats comps:

Batting

AVG	OPS	OPS+	HR	BB
.258	.716	90	160	421	2009 M’s
.259	.706	97	107	596	1990 M’s

Pitching

ERA	ERA+	IP	WHIP	SO
3.87	112	1452.2	1.3035	1043	2009 M’s
3.72	106	1443.1	1.3339	1064	1990 M’s

The 2009 edition was a bit better pitching, which makes sense considering they were a bit better defensively and the 1990 team was a bit better offensively thanks to the huge difference in walks compared to their 2009 counterparts.

So what happened in 1991? The M’s went 83-79 for their first winning season in franchise history. The only significant change to the lineup was replacing a truly awful Jeffrey Leonard with Jay Buhner and Ken Griffey Jr becoming a superstar. The pitching staff was slightly better, despite significantly WORSE defense:

Field Runs Above Avg	Zone Field Runs Above Avg
50.4	55.4	1990
-28.7	-32.7	1991

I am a firm believer in advanced defensive metrics and I believe that you need a solid defensive team in the field, but I am really at a loss to explain how the 1990 and 1991 teams could be so different defensively and still gave up roughly the same number of runs.

I am skeptical about 2010 Mariners team. They downgraded their offense, so 640 runs in 2010 might be a stretch, they still have too many free swingers in the lineup, and I am not sure that the pitching (starting and relieving beyond Lee and Felix) will repeat their 2009 performances. My prediction – 77 to 80 wins for this team IF Felix and Lee are healthy and pitch a full season with the team.