Top of the Town — In a long life of being around baseball I have never seen anything like what is going on with the Seattle Mariners. They have arguably the best starting pitching in all of baseball. But they arguably also have the worst hitting team in all of baseball. It’s getting so bad that they couldn’t hit their way out of a wet paper bag. It seemed that way Tuesday and today in Detroit. They got one run early and their pitchers kept things right there, 1-0, going into the late innings. Each day their relievers gave up two-run home runs and they lost 2-1. If I’m one of those starters I’m thinking what the hell am I doing here? I pitch my butt off, hold our opponents to zero runs for seven and eight innings and we lose. Book me a flight to anywhere except Seattle. The Mariners are first in all of MBL in batting average against at .224, ERA at 3.47 and WHIP (walks, hits and innings pitched) a 1.10, yet they are in free fall to now being three games behind the surging Astros in the West after leading the division for most of the season. The Mariners had10-game lead at one point. The biggest reason for the free-fall is they have the worst team batting average in MLB at .217. The MLB average is .244. The Mariners have struck out the most in all of baseball at 1243 times. I don’t know what has gone wrong with finding players who can hit on a consistent basis. It’s common knowledge that the Mariners are bad at hitting baseballs that spin. It’s a fact the Mariners are 0-12 when they score two runs or worse. I’ve never seen a team be so horrible with runners in scoring position. It’s like they make a concentrated effort to screw it up. Bases loaded with no outs, simple, strike out three times. Among the regulars, Randy Arozarena is the leader in the clubhouse at .308, but he’s only played in 15 games since being acquired. Victor Robles, who has provided a spark to the team, is next at .280 and Julio is batting 263, although he is injured at the moment. Then it skips down to
Josh Rojas at.234 and Luke Raley at .230 and from there takes a nosedive among the rest with Dylan Moore and JP Crawford, who is also out with an injury, at the bottom at .204 and Mitch Haniger hitting.207. My suggestion is to fire them all and start all over. Find some 6-foot-5 guys on the street that look like they can hit and go with them. You couldn’t do worse. The thing you can take from this mess is how to ruin a brilliant pitching staff is to find guys that can’t hit their way out of a wet paper bag. Oh well, the Seahawks are about ready to play football.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.