Appreciating the Underappreciated

Appreciating the Underappreciated

 

 

If I were to ask you to name the team with the second best run differential in the majors, I would be willing to bet that there’s a good chance most couldn’t do it. Everyone knows the Oakland A’s are blowing the rest of the majors out of the water but that second team is somewhat trickier. If you guessed the Seattle Mariners then you my friend are very good at this game.

Now that you know the answer, the reasons why this is so could be coming into your head at a feverish pace. They have a rotation anchored by two of the best pitchers in baseball never mind the AL, they finally have a top tier middle of the order bat in Robinson Cano who has shown a penchant for driving in runs, and they have the best bullpen in baseball. All are very good reasons and all are definitely part of the equation. However, there’s one variable missing from the equation and that’s Kyle Seager.

Seager has always been a guy in the past that put up decent numbers considering half of his games were played at Safeco Field, but you always felt he could be so much better if he just got away from that cavernous pitcher’s paradise. This season not only is he having one of his better seasons, but he is producing at a far better clip at home than he is on the road.

Eleven of Seager’s twelve home runs have come at Safeco Field. 37 of his 54 RBIs have come at home. He is hitting .341 in the not so usually friendly confines of Safeco. He’s batting a Mendoza like .201 on the road but has five more doubles and four less walks away from Safeco. So how can a guy who is not a big power threat be hitting for power so phenomenally at a ballpark where power goes to die?

The answer I believe comes back to Cano. Seager has been steadily batting cleanup behind Cano for a while and every team that faces Seattle is not going to let Cano beat them. So while Cano is batting is .323 he only has 4 HRs and 43 RBIs. Those are very un-Cano like numbers as the All-Star Break approaches. However, he is having such an effect on this team and this lineup that Seager (the second best hitter on the team) is benefitting tremendously batting behind him.

Teams are much more willing to make a mistake with Seager than Cano but that should change real soon. He is a good enough hitter that if you force him to beat you he is going to do just that. The key for Seattle though is for their 1-2 hitters (currently Endy Chavez and James Jones) to keep getting on base and force teams to have to pitch to Cano and Seager. Lately that has been happening but with the Mariners we all know how quickly that can change.

Seattle does need a middle of the order right handed bat to help balance out the very lefty heavy order they currently have. Maybe that bat is Corey Hart when he is ready to return or maybe it’s acquired through a trade but with the best bullpen in the game, a very good rotation once Paxton and Walker return, and a potent combination of Cano and Seager this could be a very dangerous team down the stretch. Knowing full well how big a part pitching and defense play in winning a championship, the rest of baseball may have to travel the Yellow Brick Road through Emerald City to reach the Promised Land.