Are the Mariners the best team in the American League right now?
By Ask 100 Mariners fans this question, and 85 would say immediately say no, and other 15 would eventually say it when they stopped laughing. So I expect I’m not the only Mariners fan struggling to process this. As the team managed to succeed and stay into contention through September this year, missing the playoffs by a single game, I became vaguely aware that the team was not, in fact, significantly overperforming or getting particularly lucky, but were, in fact, a borderline playoff team in true talent. But it never really sunk in or felt true.
Initially I approached this data with a similar skepticism. Surely this is a story about the flaws of projection systems in general. But looking under the hood a bit, it doesn’t seem so unreasonable. The projections include some regression for Seager, Hernandez, and Cano, their three best players, as well as the bullpen as a group. The flawed prospects who underachieved in 2014, Zunino and Miller, are projected to continue to be flawed, making only modest improvements, mostly revolving around a correction for bad BABIP luck. Ackley is projected for a third consecutive modest step forward with the bat, to be cancelled out by regression on defense giving him no improvement at all. Austin Jackson is also projected for a modest bounceback from last season’s dismal showing, but given his age, talent, and three year track record, how could you not?
The most implausible sources of optimism, to my mind, are the playing time estimation for Saunders, the team’s fragile third best hitter and plus RF, as well as the IPs for Walker and Paxton. On the latter, though, it’s worth noting they’re not projected to be especially good, which will lessen the impact if they can’t stay healthy, assuming the team finds some passable inning-eaters on the cheap, which isn’t an implausible assumption.
As for DH, they’re projected to be just above replacement level, which would be a massive improvement over last year’s parade of horribles. I’m not buying the projections for non-prospect Romero; I’ve watched him try to hit at the major league level and I don’t see a sustained 300+ wOBA there, but based on the current roster they could get that by using whichever SS isn’t playing the field that day. And, of course, they’ll presumably add a bat that projects to be above replacement level, although after the Hart/Morales fiasco it’s hard to be too optimistic about this seemingly modest task. So…huh. I’m not ready to be optimistic, but it’s nice to have a reason to think my pessimism might be not be entirely rational. Via Jeff Sullivan.