Monday Morning Mariber is a collection of thoughts on the Mariners week that was, with a focus on the weekend games. As we walk through this season of baseball and life hand-in-hand both the column and the Mariners are emerging from a period of great darkness, with perhaps a little light on the other side.

A Season of Plenty

One of the interesting things about being 40 is how much you remember. I now have close to three and a half decades of living all rattling around in my skull at any given moment. This bountiful feast offers me rich and luxurious options from which to choose, should I be so inclined to learn anything from experience and/or avoid past mistakes. It is therefore a profound and, in my personal opinion, deeply impressive testament to willful ignorance, stubborn white male pride, and arrogance that under no circumstances do I choose to ever remember just how long a major league baseball season truly is.

The 2022 Mariners have, in no small part because I have brought plenty of preseason expectations and pre-written narratives to the table, felt like a written book for over a month. A mediocre franchise with mediocre leadership and frugal ownership, the Mariners spent May and the first few days of June playing exactly like the moderately-interesting-but-inevitably-outclassed roster I expected them to be. If April was RETURN OF THE KING (2003) May-September felt doomed to be that movie’s final hour; merely tying bow after bow upon an already wrapped package.

This weekend, however, a funny thing happened on the way to confirming my priors: The Seattle Mariners won a series from the Texas Rangers. They did not look particularly good. In a 4-2 week Seattle really only played a complete game once, in Tuesday’s 10-0 victory. All other games, for good or ill existed firmly in the 2021 Mariners Bullshit Zone, a magical land where victory or defeat is decided upon who most fervently prayed that morning, or who walked under the fewest ladders. 

A thing I always, always, always forget is that no matter what, the moments I remember from any given baseball season are almost never before July. A baseball team is a living document, a crowd-funded project released annually in beta form before being patched and re-patched over a six month slow rollout based upon community feedback, performance data, and budgetary constraints. The hope is that the final product is good enough, soon enough, to make some real headway. 

The Mariners are far from a finished product. They played the first third of the season like a 70-win team. But the patching has already begun. Diego Castillo is back to form, Taylor Trammell offers hope for an unexpected breakout, Logan Gilbert and George Kirby are the two best starting pitchers this team has developed since Felix Hernandez. They are rounding into whatever form they will eventually take, and all desire and instinct to write their tombstone in early June by people like myself reveals an arrogance and impatience best acknowledged and left behind.

The 2022 Mariners aren’t dead. They’ve barely started living and, to circle back to our old pal Tolkein, that is an encouraging thought.

Three Up

Oh, Right, a Relief Ace

Like practically all baseball trades, the Mariners acquisition of Diego Castillo was neither an obvious win or loss at the time it was made. As much as theorists will insist that trades should be judged only upon their merits at the time they were made we inevitably re-visit old transactions using the knowledge of how players perform in their new homes. That to say the Diego Castillo trade has looked, in industry terms, like a pretty big bummer until recently. Castillo has lacked command, often creating and submersing himself into his own firestorm through walks and sharply stroked line drives.

Recently Castillo has flipped the script. Ol’ Salt Ryan Divish has the breakdown. The weapon of choice has been the slider, thrown with viscous and discourteous precision in any count. I would break this down for you in depth but I’m pressed for time so instead I’m going to refer you to Diego Castillo Mariner Highlights on YouTube, a very real channel that is exactly what its name implies.

The Mariners’ roster is far too average to make a legitimate run without a good bullpen, and the bullpen is far too thin to be good without Diego Castillo near top form. Let’s hope it keeps up.

I Am Sorry We Are Fresh Out of Bad Vibes

It’s a shame that the Mariners were forced to absorb Jesse Winker in order to get Cincinnati to let the Mariners replace team legend Kyle Seager with Eugenio Suarez, but at least Suarez is holding up his end of the bargain. Suarez is an absolutely classic streaky power hitter; the kind of bat that feels incapable of doing anything but hitting the ball hard when he’s going well, and will go weeks at a time without ever seemingly putting a ball in play.

Suarez, who comes across like Danny Rojas from Ted Lasso cosplaying as Cruella DeVille, has seen his ever present joy transfer into his bat the past week, and it has done so at extremely opportune times. In yesterday’s 6-5 win over Texas Suarez practically was the Mariners offense, with three hits, a home run, and four desperately needed runs batted in. 

The boom/bust skill set is always going to feel very tenuous to me, and when I’m feeling grumpy I’m annoyed at the way people seem to use Geno’s good play as an excuse to grind a small-minded axe against Kyle Seager, but he’s been extremely valuable to this year’s team. His defense is better than expected, he leads the team in home runs, and he’s now second on the team in fWAR. The vibes, as previously advertised, are good.

Redemption Thy Name is Tay Tay

Much (and I do mean much) has been discoursed over the Mariners and their Great Outfield Log Jam of 2022. It turns out that expecting a player with one healthy season since 2018 to stay healthy, and another player who just got done playing poorly in 2021 to play well in 2022 was a plan fraught with a few risks. Impossible to foresee but then that’s just life for you I guess. Enter Taylor Trammell.

It’s pretty incredible that Trammell is even playing baseball at the moment, as he suffered what appeared to be a brutal non-contact knee injury with Tacoma in April. Pressed into big league service when Steven Q. Souza Jr. committed the Taylor Motter sin of being impossibly bad and deeply unpopular, Taylor has absolutely stung the baseball over a small sample size of games.

The numbers (197 wRC+, .333/.406/.630) are fun, but clearly unsustainable. What’s interesting with Trammell is the pedigree of a former Top 100 prospect, combined with relative youth (he’s still just 24), and the presence of very real tools. Trammell has a good eye at the plate, can run well, and absolutely has enough power to punish mistakes. His big bugaboo in his brief 2021 MLB tour was a 42% K-rate, and through his admittedly short 2022 season that has dropped in half. 

Taylor Trammell striking out at a league-average rate is a useful baseball player, I am almost certain of it. Combine all that with an absolutely 80-grade personality and I’ll be dreaming of a Julio/Kelenic/Taylor Trammell outfield of the future and you cannot stop me.

Three Down

Behold, the Tortured Waif

Please, my Adam Frazier, he is very sick. The Mariners, ahem, All-Star 2B is on a hell of a nosedive recently, going 0-for June thus far, and meriting some of the least flattering comparisons possible in all of Mariner fandom. 

I’m not sure what to think of Frazier. He’s had a fine career up to this point. Versatile defensive players with league average offense are a valuable commodity, and there have been plenty of far more physically impressive players that have fallen far short of Frazier’s career 11.2 fWAR. However the low-power, average-OBP skillset does not age well without elite defense to support it, and Frazier did not play well in the second half of last year (83 wRC+). 

He’s been much more that player thus far in 2022 than the All-Star Mariner fans like to cite him as when talking about the narrative of last offseason. He’s not a black hole, but he sure would look a lot more useful and valuable in an Abraham Toro role with a true stud at 2B. Ah, well, nevertheless. We won’t be treading down that dark path after a 4-2 week.

Ding Dong Romo’s Dead

Look I won’t say that Sergio Romo’s excellent and highly enjoyable baseball career is nearing its twilight, but I want to point out he has five full seasons under his belt where he allowed fewer home runs than the four he gave up just this week. I am in absolute awe of the man’s ability to get out major leaguers with 105 DadStuff+, but the clock only ticks one way, and every career has the same final stop. I hope this isn’t it for him, but the stink of 2012 Jamie Moyer is starting to waft from his appearances. 

Not Normally A Rip Players Guy But Jeez

Look here, I love baseball players. They are often big dumb 12 year-olds with millions of dollars  they have no idea what to do with, and political opinions learned from YouTube videos spouted by people whose body makeup is 50/50 beard and pectoral muscle, but I love them anyway. That said, sometimes a baseball player is bad, and we have to say so.

I have nothing personal against Luis Torrens. He seems like a perfectly basebally baseball player. He had some fun moments last year, and I can understand why both the team and fans wanted to see what he could do this year. That said, when you’re not really a catcher who is catching you need to hit, and Torrens is absolutely not hitting. He as a 57 (!) wRC+ plus. His slugging is .226! His Savant Page is all blue. Blue, in this case, is very bad!

It’s all bad! Bad bad bad bad bad bad bad. You can’t keep playing players this bad when you are trying to make the playoffs for the first time in 21 years. That’s why you’re bad and continue to be bad! Because of the bad players! Luis Torrens is bad! Please find a better player than Luis Torrens and replace Luis Torrens with said player, thus making you less bad. Thank you.

The Weekly “Mariners Tweet that Made Me Laugh Most Embarrassingly in Front of My Family” Award

*****

The Angels have lost 11 games in a row! Did you know that? That’s hilarious. I haven’t been watching them but I’m willing to bet they’ve played significantly better in some of those games than the Mariners did in most of theirs this week, a week in which the Mariners went 4-2. That’s too bad! What bad luck for the Angels, an otherwise very likable team whose owner absolutely isn’t a hellish goblin! They’re now only 2.5 games ahead of the Mariners, almost single-handedly resuscitating Seattle’s moribund playoff chances. Wow! Sad!

We are two (2) weeks from the end of school folks. Go forth, and fear no darkness. Goms.

You can follow Nathan on Twitter at @nathan_h_b. Additionally he appears on the Ian Furness show on Mollywhop Mondays on KJR 93.3 FM every Monday at 1:10 PM with Chris Crawford and Kevin Shockey. Please be nice, he is doing his best.