I <3 the Mariners, Part 1; or, How did they get so much better?!?

Yesterday, I wrote about what a shame it is that Franklin Gutierrez didn’t win a Rawlings™ Gold Glove.  Today, I explain how MUCH of a mistake that was.

I became a closet Mariner fan this year.  What can I say?  I’m a sucker for a good story.  And trust me, the 2009 Mariners have a good story.  They were terrible in 2008.  Like 101-losses terrible.  Ichiro’s way cool and all, and Felix Hernandez should be a great pitcher for a long time, but…they were BAD in ’08.  And then, they made no moves that were seen as major last offseason, besides losing Raul Ibañez and gaining a new GM and manager.  And yet, they improved dramatically.  Why?  Russell Branyan, Ichiro, and the continued ascension of the King are a good place to start, but they aren’t the only reasons.

To frame this discussion a little more clearly, here are the 2008 and 2009 Mariners regular lineup/pitching staff:

	2008	2009
C	Johjima	Johnson/Johjima
1B	Sexson/Cairo	Branyan
2B	Lopez	Lopez
3B	Beltre	Beltre
SS	Betancourt	Betancourt/Cedeño/Jo. Wilson/Jack Wilson
LF	Ibañez	Kitchen Sink
CF	Suzuki/Reed/Balentien	Gutierrez
RF	Suzuki/Balentien	Ichiro
DH	Vidro	Griffey/Sweeney
SP	Hernandez	Hernandez
SP	Silva	Washburn
SP	Washburn	Bedard/Rowland-Smith
SP	Dickey/Rowland-Smith	Vargas/Snell/Olson/Fister/Morrow
CL	Putz	Aardsma

Only Beltre, Lopez, Ibañez, and Ichiro were pluses with the bat in ’08, and Ibanez was a disaster in the field.  The team improved 24 games, so some of those gains must have come on offense, right?  Well, yes, there were improvements with the bat.  What was lost from Ibañez was made up for by the Branyan acquisition.  Branyan was a little bit better, but Ibañez also got a significant 200 more plate appearances, making that comparison roughly even out.  The surprising offense from Franklin Gutierrez in CF balanced out a drop-off by Adrian Beltre, and Jose Lopez traded a little bit of batting average for a little bit more power in 2009, but was much the same in overall value.  Ichiro recovered from a down year by Ichiro standards, but somehow the Mariners found a way to get less production from their shortstops, trotting out Yuniesky Betancourt, Ronny Cedeño, and Josh and Jack Wilson for more than 100 PAs each at the position.  Catcher production was slightly improved in ’09, but not much.  Pretty much all gains by offensive position players were offset by drop-offs in production by other positions.

There was one offensive position at which the Mariners improved that had nothing to do with their defense: designated hitter.  Seen as a largely sentimental move, bringing back Ken Griffey Jr. to serve as DH worked out pretty well.  His 95 OPS+ is actually pretty bad for a paid only to hit, but when platooning with Mike Sweeney (106 OPS+) and compared to the unspeakably awful DHing of Jose Vidro last year (65 OPS+, 8th worst of all-time for players who spent at least half their time DHing, min. 300 PAs), the Griffey signing worked out well from a baseball and fan PR perspective.

Felix Hernandez had a 1168 OPS+ in 2008.  This year, that number dropped 1225 points.  Good thing the pitchers don’t hit too often in the junior circuit: the Mariners couldn’t have that kind of unpredictable performance from one of their lineup regulars.

Overall, any changes on offense for the team were a wash, as evidenced by comparing the team OPS+ from ’08 (89) to ’09 (90).  Clearly, to improve 24 games without a big improvement on offense, the pitching must have gotten measurably better!  And it did, kind of.  The team ERA went down nearly a full run from 2008 to 2009, but how?  Their pitching staff was comprised of largely the same parts, but significantly more injured.  Closer JJ Putz was traded as part of the deal for Gutierrez, but was capably replaced by David Aardsma.   The 2009 Mariners had a grand total of TWO pitchers with more than 100 IP (6 the year before).  Granted, injuries forced the Mariners to replace Carlos Silva’s 153 putrid innings, which had to be a good thing…but it’s not like he was replaced by Zack Greinke.  Behind King Felix and Jarrod Washburn the Mariners used a “rotation-by-committee” with 10 pitchers making between 6 and 15 starts.  Those 10 were mostly younger pitchers, but not really any top prospects.

This still isn’t making any sense.  Taking a lot of unheralded pitchers and adding them to two established starters should not add up to the best adjusted ERA in the American League.  Ok, Felix Hernandez showed a little bit of his crazy goodness, but a 23 year-old uberprospect whose nickname is King Felix should be expected to improve.  He’s really good at baseball.  Jarrod Washburn’s performance was not totally out of line with his career performance, but 2009 was his best since 2005.  But the rest of the staff could hardly have been predicted to have this kind of performance based on their past or potential.  Let’s take a look at some team stats for answers, shall we?

	K/9	HR/9	BB/9	H/9	WHIP	FIP	BaBIP
2008	6.4	1.0	3.9	9.7	1.512	4.59	0.309
2009	6.5	1.1	3.3	8.4	1.303	4.39	0.274

So what do we learn from those numbers?  The staff K/9 rates and HR/9 rates remained pretty much the same, but the walk rate went down somewhat and the hit rate dropped dramatically.  For those of you unfamiliar with FIP, it attempts to focus on elements in a pitcher’s control (BBs, Ks, and HRs) and is scaled to a Runs Allowed scale (rather than ERA) in order to help have a better understanding of a pitcher’s skill independent of their fielders.  It’s not perfect, but can be used in conjunction with tRA to get a better picture of a pitcher’s actually performance that is largely independent of the defense behind him.  The slight improvement in FIP performance can largely be attributed to the team’s overall reduced walk rate, but not a whole lot else changed with the aggregate defense independent pitching statistics.

However, there were some numbers that are affected by defense that drastically improved in 2009 over 2008: H/9 and WHIP.  The Mariners allowed a hit and a third fewer per 9 IP in ’09 than in ’08.  And, despite the decreased BB/9 rate in ’09, the 2/10ths of a point drop in WHIP is much more due to a drop in hits.  Finally, the team BaBIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play) went from a probably slightly unlucky .309 to a ridiculously good .274.  BaBIP is said to fluctuate for pitchers and it does for individual pitchers with an aggregate average of .300 across MLB…but for an entire team to be so far below the MLB average, something else must be up, right?

As discussed before, much of the Mariners roster remained the same from ’08 to ’09.  Recap of defensive improvements: abominable Ibanez out in LF, average to good defenders in; bad Sexson/average Miguel Cairo out at 1B, average+ Branyan in; below average Balientien/very good Ichiro out in RF, full-time very good Ichiro in RF; and finally, very good Ichiro in CF out, unbelievably spectacular Gutierrez in CF.   Let’s see how the changes made did affect that defense:

	2008	2009
DefEff	0.679	0.71
UZR	-20.9	85.5

Umm, whoa.  3% more batted balls against the Mariners in 2009 were converted into outs by their defense than in ’08.  But, really whoa: the Mariners defense suddenly saved 106 runs more than it had the year before, translating to roughly 10.5 wins in improvement.  So, to recap: no major improvements on offense, superficial improvements in the pitching staff, and one HUGE upgrade in center field = 24 more wins.

Allow me a little bit of hyperbole here, but because of effects he had at other positions around the diamond and just being unbelievably awesome in the field, is non-Rawlings™ Gold Glove winner Franklin Gutierrez the single biggest reason the Mariners won 24 more games in 2009 than they did in 2008?

In Part 2, I’ll explain a few other factors I didn’t touch upon, as well as an in-depth look at where the Mariners should and might go from here.  Teaser: the outlook is not as sunny.