POLL: How do you evaluate the Seattle Mariners’ season?
Published 9:48 am Monday, October 2, 2017
The Seattle Mariners’ 2017 season quietly came to an end Sunday. The Mariners were eliminated from playoff contention a week before the season ended, then played their last six games on the road, so there was little fanfare surrounding the season’s conclusion.
Seattle finished the season 78-84 and tied for third place in the American League West, 23 games behind division champion Houston. For all the trials and tribulations of the Mariners’ season, they pretty much hovered around .500 from start to finish. This marked the 16th straight season in which Seattle missed out on the postseason.
Offensively the Mariners had a decent season, finishing with 750 runs for 4.63 per game, which was right about league average. It was just 18 runs fewer than last season, when Seattle had its highest-scoring season in a decade. Veteran sluggers Nelson Cruz (.288/.375/.549 triple slash, 39 homers) and Robinson Cano (.280/.338/.453, 23 homers) continued to hold off Father Time, remaining healthy and productive in the middle of the order. Meanwhile, younger newcomers Jean Segura (.300/.349/.427, 11 homers, 22 steals) and Mitch Haniger (.282/.352/.491, 16 homers in 96 games) provided hope for the future of Seattle’s offense.
The story was different on the pitching side as the Mariners allowed 772 runs (4.46 per game), which while still slightly above league average, was the most Seattle allowed since 2008. The main problem came in the rotation, which was devastated by injuries. Seattle’s expected rotation of Felix Hernandez, Hisashi Iwakuma, Drew Smyly, James Paxton and Yovani Gallardo combined to start just just 68 of the Mariners’ 162 games, with Iwakuma limited to just six starts and Smyly never throwing a single pitch. That left Seattle relying on the likes of Ariel Miranda, Sam Gaviglio and Christian Bergman to shoulder the load through much of the summer, which wasn’t a formula for winning, and the Mariners wound up using a major-league high 40 different pitchers over the course of the campaign.
So how do you evaluate the Mariners’ season? Give your grade here:
