43 in 45: The Seattle Mariners

Do you really want to know where they were April 29th?

The Mariners have just played 43 games in 45 days, which included two stretches of 30 games in 31 days. It’s bananas. They essentially played a quarter of the season on roughly zero rest while taking seven flights of at least 1,000 miles. Having played more games than any other team between May 3 and June 16, this period really could have sunk our sailors. But instead, they rose to the challenge, and we may well look back on this as the run when the Mariners built their first division title in 23 years.

Let’s start with the basics. Their record during this time was 26-17, which is a .605 winning percentage, done on a +10 run differential. That’s a precarious sign moving forward, but those wins are banked. You can’t take them back.

They set out on May 3 with a 17-15 record, up just half a game on Texas and five games on Houston. Thanks in part to taking five of seven from the Astros and sweeping the Rangers at the end, they’re now up 8.5 on Texas and 9 on Houston, the largest lead of any division in baseball. It’s also the Mariners’ largest division lead since the end of the 2001 season, back when the AL West only had four teams. According to FanGraphs, their playoff odds rose from 61.8% to 87%, and they nearly doubled their odds of winning the division.

The workhorses here were the rotation, and pitcher health played a major role in the team’s success. The Big Five of Luis Castillo, George Kirby, Logan Gilbert, Bryce Miller, and Bryan Woo started 40 of the 43 games, combining for a 3.25 ERA with 203 strikeouts.

But after a typical Mariners April, the offense picked it up too, going from a team wRC+ of 92 through May 2 to a league-average 100 since then. If we talked about May and June the way we talked about April, I don’t think the narrative would be quite so panicky. After a much-maligned early season, Ty France ran a 134 wRC+ over this stretch, and Mitch Garver turned in a 113. The roster’s most important player saw improvement too; though he’s not back to MVP form, Julio was at a 110 wRC+ since May 10, while going 9 for 11 in stolen-base attempts. About midway through, he may have turned a corner, launching home runs in back-to-back games in our nation’s capital. Since then, he’s accrued the 11th most fWAR in baseball, with a wRC+ of 150 and running a pace for a 37-52 season. It doesn’t work that way, of course, but it’s been nice to see.

The low point came after losing four in a row, including the first two games to the Washington Nationals. But the Mariners promptly ran off four wins in a row to balance it out, one of three four-game winning streaks. This first one included three against the Astros that concluded with a walk-off from J.P. Crawford. That was the first of three walk-offs in the stretch, with others from Cal Raleigh and Mitch Haniger. That’s that Meetch, espresso.

That winning streak also saw the MLB debut of Ryan Bliss, who’d later be joined by Tyler Locklear. We do love a debut around here, and what a time for theirs. What a thing to get to be a part of.

Luke Raley has been having a moment, worming his way into our hearts, both here and nationally.

There was a season-ending injury for Sam Haggerty, as well as one for Jonny Farmelo down in Modesto, pausing what had been a meteoric rise for the young center fielder. The Nuts carried on without him, winning the First Half Championship in the Cal League, and putting three of their players in Baseball America’s updated top-100 list, joined by Locklear, Harry Ford, Cole Young, and Logan Evans.

The Mariners soldiered on too, despite IL stints for Jorge Polanco, Bryan Woo, Ty France, J.P. Crawford, Dominic Canzone, and Gabe Speier during the stretch. And while he stayed off the IL, Cal Raleigh was clearly not right in the middle there, with repeated signs of work having been done on his traps and neck. He still managed to steal two bases.

And similarly there was a non-IL injury scare for Andrés Muñoz, who I’m naming as the MVP of this stretch. The bullpen has been in dire need of reinforcements, though at least no position player pitched. But Muñoz was absolute nails, going seven for seven in save opportunities and adding another three holds. He struck out nearly 40% of the batters he faced, while walking fewer than 5%. That K%-BB% is the fourth-best in MLB among pitchers who’ve thrown at least 10 innings since May 3. And he did it with an 89th-percentile ground-ball rate and surrendering just a single dinger. (Honestly, that home run was so impressive, it barely counts against Muñoz.) How do you go 26-17 with a +10 run differential? Andrés Muñoz is how.

The 45-day period was bookended by the Mariners winning a series in Houston and sweeping the Rangers. Castillo, Kirby, and Gilbert were remarkable in that final series. They combined for 20 innings, surrendering just three runs, with 22 strikeouts to just nine hits and three walks.

And now, beginning with today’s, the Mariners have as many off days as any team except the Padres. They get two more than the Astros and three more than the Rangers. And they do it with the second easiest strength of schedule in front of them of any team in baseball. In each of the past three seasons, the Mariners have entered mid-June in a big, big hole they had to climb out of. This year, they’re on top and they did it under harder circumstances than ever.