We’ve reached June and the Seattle Mariners are alone in first place in the American League West.
That’s right, the franchise with the longest postseason drought in all of American professional sports finds itself looking down on the defending World Series champions, the Houston Astros, who are one game behind the Mariners in the AL West.
Sunday’s 2-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays at Safeco Field improved Seattle’s record to 37-22. That’s good for a .627 winning percentage. For perspective, the Mariners have only finished the season with a better record once in franchise history, that being when they tied the major-league record with 116 wins in 2001 (.716). Right now Seattle is on pace to win 102 games.
Seattle has accomplished this despite coming into the season with muted expectations. Despite losing the team’s most dependable source of offense, second baseman Robinson Cano, to an 80-game suspension for testing positive for a banned substance. Despite the team’s longtime ace pitcher, Felix Hernandez, providing minimal contribution.
How is this happening?
There’s a simple explanation: Seattle has been nails in the close games.
Sunday’s victory was just the latest example of the Mariners’ finding a way to win the close ones. Seattle has played 27 one-run games this season, which is the most by any team in the majors. The Mariners are 18-9 in those contests (.667 winning percentage), which is better than the team’s overall winning percentage and behind just the New York Yankees (10-3), Milwaukee Brewers (15-5), Atlanta Braves (10-4) and Boston Red Sox (12-5) in terms of winning percentage in one-run games. Add in Seattle’s majors-best 6-0 record in extra inning contests and it’s been some kind of clutch season for the Mariners so far.
The result is that Seattle has a better record than its runs scored and runs allowed suggests the team should have. The Mariners have scored 255 runs and allowed 238, which using the Pythagorean calculation results in an expected winning percentage of .534. That equals a 31-28 record, meaning Seattle is six games better than it should be based solely on the run data, the biggest positive discrepancy in the majors.
Let’s compare that to the team the Mariners are competing with at the top of the division, the Astros. Houston is third in the majors in runs scored with 301 and first in the majors (by far) in runs allowed with 179. The Pythagorean calculation says the Astros should be 44-17, but Houston is just 37-24, the minus-7 being by far the worst discrepancy in the majors. This is punctuated by Houston being 4-12 in one-run games, the second-worst record in the majors.
So the question is this: Is the ability to win close games a matter of skill or a mater of luck? Is there some characteristic of these two teams that makes them prone to being good or bad in close games, or will this normalize over the course of the season?
This week’s Seattle Sidelines poll is essentially asking you to take a stab at answering that question. Since Seattle and Houston are almost equal in the standings, the team that has the best record the remainder of the season will (probably) win the AL West. So which team, the scrappy Mariners or the powerhouse Astros, has the better chance of winning the division? Have your say here:
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