Commentary: Mariners need more from offseason additions to stay atop AL West all summer
SEATTLE – The premise of this column doesn’t exactly reflect the joy of another walk-off, another comeback, another clutch moment to give the Mariners their fourth straight win.
Shortstop J.P. Crawford got the water bath Wednesday when his 10th-inning, one-out sacrifice fly gave the M’s a 2-1 victory over the Astros. It’s been a hell of a run for a squad that was 6-10 to start the season.
Still, two months into the season, there are two things Mariners fans can say.
1. Their team is in first place in the American League West, which is rather amazing considering the M’s (31-27) entered Wednesday’s game next-to-last in MLB in runs scored. The majority of the wins they’ve collected have been the result of top-tier pitching, timely hitting and the one-run pixie dust that has been abundant over the past few years.
2. The team’s increasingly infamous penny-pinching is showing up in the stat sheet. Primarily in the form of three players: Jorge Polanco, Mitch Garver and Mitch Haniger.
These three were supposed to be the offseason acquisitions that bolstered a lineup that parted ways with Eugenio Suarez, Jarred Kelenic and Teoscar Hernandez. The trio was meant to offset that perceived salary dump when they were finally healthy enough to play.
Although Polanco was placed on the 10-day injury list with a hamstring strain earlier this week, injuries haven’t been much of an issue for these three. But production has.
We’ll start with Polanco.
The second baseman hasn’t played more than 104 games in a season since 2021 – when he had the best year of his career. It was then that he hit a career-high 33 home runs to go along with a .503 slugging percentage – giving him a WAR of 4.9. This is All-Star-level production for a guy who is now 30 years old. But the .195 batting average he has put up this year? A WAR of -0.1? That’s not typically someone you miss when he goes on the injured list.
Next is Garver, who seemed like a promising solution to the Mariners’ (relatively) long-standing designated-hitter problem. Garver has spent most of his career as a catcher with recurring spots at DH. And given the 19 home runs he hit in 87 games last season for Texas, plus the fact that, by his own admission, he always gets hurt when he catches, putting him in a hit-only position seemed appropriate.
It just hasn’t worked. Garver came into Wednesday’s game hitting .171 with five home runs in 152 at-bats. His WAR was -0.5. As a result, Mariners manager Scott Servais decided to start him at catcher Wednesday. The logic was that Garver was in his own head too much in the batter’s box – that making him focus on his task behind the plate might take his mind off his hitting struggles. Well, Wednesday, he went 0 for 2 with two strikeouts.
Then there is Haniger. It’s true that things might start to be turning around for the former All-Star. Wednesday was his third straight game with a hit, and that’s coming off a rally-starting double Tuesday that helped the Mariners beat the Astros 4-2. Servais would add that his numbers over the past week and a half don’t reflect how well he has swung the bat.
“I actually think his at-bats here over the last 10 days or so have been very good. He’s had very little to show for it,” Servais said. “People are always going to look at the batting average and the big numbers. If you kind of look, peel back the curtain a little bit, he is hitting the ball hard. He has not been very lucky at all.”
Still, before Wednesday, – when he went 1 for 3 with a walk – he had a career-low .628 OPS and a WAR of -0.8. The latter was the worst on the team.
If you’re keeping score, that’s an -0.8 for Haniger, an -0.5 for Garver and a -0.1 for Polanco. We’ll call that a WAR of attrition, and it doesn’t reflect too well on Mariners brass. They inked Garver to a two-year, $24 million deal. They traded away standout reliever Justin Topa, among other players, to get Polanco. They gave up 2021 Cy Young Award Winner Robbie Ray – who, yes, has yet to play this year due to injury – for Haniger. And that whale of a free agent has yet to be signed.
Perhaps it seems a little ill-timed for this column to run when the Mariners are three games ahead of Texas in the division and won four in a row before Thursday’s 4-0 loss to Houston. But given that those same Mariners had just four hits through the first nine innings on Wednesday and sit tied for 28th in the majors in runs, it’s relevant.
With their pitching, this team has real potential to make a deep playoff run. If those offensive additions don’t start to add value, however, more disappointment awaits.