Atlanta Braves Opponents Season in Review: Seattle Mariners
It's time to talk about the Seattle Mariners, who figure to once again be an intriguing team that very much has a chance to forge its own destiny in the immediate future. Our Atlanta Braves won't have to wait too long to face off against the Mariners, as they'll be travelling to the Pacific Northwest for a three-game midweek series to close out April and start off the month of May. Before then, let's take a look at how the Mariners are shaping up this season.
Where were they in 2023?
The Mariners were part of a three-horse race with the Houston Astros and the Texas Rangers for two postseason spots coming out of the AL West in 2023. The main reason why they ended up being in a position to potentially go from once having the longest postseason drought in pro sports to suddenly having a streak of two consecutive postseason appearances was due to a dominant run throughout the summer. They entered into that month six games behind in the division after having gone 17-9 in July and finished it in a virtual tie with the Astros for the AL West lead after finishing August with a franchise-best 21-6 record.
Unfortunately, things were nowhere near as successful in the key month of September where they went 11-17. Despite having a middling run in the final month, the Mariners still had a solid shot at making the Postseason as they entered a pivotal stretch where they played the Rangers seven times and the Astros three times from September 22 until the final day of the season on October 1.
Sadly for Seattle, they picked the worst possible time to go on a four-game losing streak as they started that stretch by getting swept in Arlington and then losing the series opener to the Astros. They dropped that series in Houston and while they did take three out of four against the Rangers to end the season, it was too little, too late. The Astros won the divisional battle, the Rangers won the World Series war and the Mariners were on the outside looking in after coming up two wins short. Such is baseball life! It was a sad end to a roller-coaster season that saw Seattle start the year with playoff odds at 40 percent, generally slowly shed them through the first half of the year, skyrocket from 30 percent to 90 percent in the two weeks that ended August, and then crater over the next month.
The Mariners probably deserved better, in the end. They finished sixth in position player fWAR and third in pitching fWAR. They finished seventh in BaseRuns and ninth in run differential, but underplayed the records predicted by those marks by four wins, finishing with 88 on the year. For some teams, those would all be reasons to trust the process and hold steady on the metaphorical wheel going forward, but Jerry Dipoto and his Front Office staff clearly had other plans...
What did they do in the offseason?
Well, the Atlanta Braves certainly got familiar with the Mariners this offseason. The Braves had a production hole in left field and tried to address it by bringing in Jarred Kelenic from Seattle. As far as the Mariners were concerned, this was the clearest sign to that point that Seattle was going to be busy trying to keep payroll in 2024 at or around the same level that it was at during the 2023 season, given that the move came after they traded Eugenio Suarez to the Diamondbacks and added Luis Urías from the Red Sox.
Dipoto kept on being busy in the offseason, as is his wont, as he signed Mitch Garver to a two-year deal to serve as his new DH, and then brought Mitch Haniger back into the fold after his one season with the Giants ended up being a bit of a disaster. The trade that sent Robbie Ray to the Bay and brought Haniger back from San Francisco also brought in Anthony DeSclafani, who later ended up getting flipped in what ended up being the biggest deal of the offseason for the Mariners.
It ended up costing Seattle Justin Topa, Darren Bowen, Gabriel Gonzalez, DeSclafani and $8 million in order to take Jorge Polanco off of Minnesota's hands. It may have been a bit of a steep cost for a player of Polanco's but the Mariners got what they needed and now their roster looks to be both capably deep and versatile as well.
The Mariners currently project to have a top-10 roster. The preliminary forecast has them at 86 wins, which is the fifth-most in MLB, with playoff odds of 64 percent. Sure, they’re not the favorites in their division, but this is a very solid roster, even after all the seemingly-lateral moves. Their corner players and DH could use some improvement, but the up the middle talent is great, and they project to have one of MLB’s best rotations as well.
Where are they hoping to go?
As you can imagine, it probably stung the Mariners and their fans right down to the bone to not just see the Rangers and Astros eventually end up playing in the ALCS (with the Rangers eventually winning both that and the World Series) but to know that they only finished two games behind them. It's clear that the goal for Seattle is to get back into the Postseason and eventually become one of those teams that the baseball gods decides to shower with fortune.
The good news for the Mariners is that they've stayed right around the same level in terms of talent and expectations heading into the upcoming season. As this article from our friends over at Lookout Landing put it, the addition of Jorge Polanco should help stabilize Seattle's lineup and give them a somewhat formidable top of the order that includes their young star Julio Rodríguez, Cal Raleigh, J.P. Crawford and Polanco himself. If Mitches Garver and Haniger can stay healthy, then they should also be able to add some solid production with their bats as well. There isn't a ton going on outside of those guys, but at the same time, there's enough depth with the likes of Julio Urías, Josh Rojas, and Dylan Moore, to name a few, to where it would take a severe injury bug to slow them down at the plate. They don't have a spectacular lineup but it should be enough to get them to where they want to go.
Meanwhile, their starting rotation is projected to be one of the best in baseball, as the three-headed dragon of Luis Castillo, George Kirby, and Logan Gilbert should have Seattle feeling good about their chances on most days. Even after that, Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo are two very nice arms to have at the back end of any given rotation and they'll more-than-likely be serving in that role for Seattle once the season starts. The starters will have to live up to the lofty expectations since the bullpen doesn't figure to be particularly deep. Andrés Muñoz is the main man, both Matt Brash and noted Braves trade packagee Gabe Speier project to be quite good, and if Gregory Santos is healthy, then he should be a major contributor coming out of the pen as well.
Overall, it wouldn't be shocking if the Mariners stayed in the 88-92 win range that they've been in for the past few seasons. However, they'll be trying to make sure that they're on the higher end of that range instead of the lower end, given their sordid history with suffering outsize consequences from missing a few marginal wins even in the expanded postseason era.
Braves 2023 head-to-head
Seattle visited Atlanta for a weekend series in late May, and fortunately for the Braves, they were able to get a tiny bit of a revenge for the absolutely zany series that took place at T-Mobile Park in September 2022.
The first game in last year’s series was a tight affair where runs were at a premium for most of the game. Atlanta was down 2-1 heading into the bottom of the seventh following a top-half where two RBI singles from Eugenio Suárez and Teoscar Hernández ended what was a great night on the mound for Bryce Elder and pushed Seattle into the lead. The Braves responded immediately and picked up two RBI singles of their own from Marcell Ozuna and Orlando Arcia to get back into the lead and then they broke the game open in the bottom of the eighth when Matt Olson led off the frame with a bomb over the bricks in right field and then Ozuna put the game out of reach for Seattle with a two-run single that made it 6-2 for the Braves.
While Matt Olson may have started the middle game by picking up exactly where he left off in the first game by hitting a two-run dinger in the first inning, the Mariners were the ones who eventually had the last laugh on that Saturday night. Michael Tonkin entered that game in the top of the third with one out and a 2-0 lead and left it in the top of the fifth with one out and a 5-2 deficit. Eugenio Suárez delivered the dagger in the seventh with a two-run no-doubter to dead center that made it 7-2 in favor of Seattle and it eventually ended 7-3 after Austin Riley put another run on the board with a sacrifice fly.
The final game of the series was notable since this was quite easily Jared Shuster's best start of the season. Shuster went six innings and only gave up one run and one hit the entire time he was out there, which was a homer from current Braves player Jarred Kelenic to tie the game at one run apiece. Hopefully there's plenty of this in the future for Kelenic and the Braves.
The Braves got a rally going in the third inning and pushed across the go-ahead run thanks to an RBI single from Eddie Rosario. Travis d'Arnaud then led off the sixth with a leadoff dinger that ended up being the winning run after José Caballero smacked one deep into the road bullpen in left to make it a one-run game. Fortunately, Raisel Iglesias came on for the ninth inning and locked things down to give the Braves the series win.
