Last Tuesday evening I was holed up at home when the Seattle Mariners lost their fifth straight game of their opening homestand, falling 8-0 to the Texas Rangers at Safeco Field. Shortly after the game ended the grim news surfaced that it was the first time in the Mariners’ 39-year franchise history that they lost their first five home games of the season.
In the midst of the gloom my sister-in-law, who was visiting that night, remarked that maybe it was a good thing. After all, the Mariners had gone all those years where they didn’t lose their first five home games, and usually the season ended up in the tank. Maybe losing the first five home games will have the opposite effect and lead to end-of-season glory.
Perhaps I’m interpreting this wrong, but I find it concerning that Mariners fans have apparently already reached the bargaining stage, which is the third of the five stages in the Kubler-Ross model for grief. Seattle was just eight games into its 162-game season, and already the denial and anger stages had flown by.
OK, maybe invoking the Kubler-Ross model is a tad extreme. But there’s no doubt something funky has been going on at Safeco Field in recent times.
Ever since Safeco Field opened in 1999 it was clear it was a ballpark that heavily favored pitchers. According to calculations by ESPN.com, Safeco has cost teams runs in every season of its existence. Five times Safeco was one of the two toughest hitter’s parks in the majors.
But Safeco being a pitcher’s park didn’t prevent the Mariners from deriving a home-field advantage. Quite the contrary. According to numbers compiled by Baseball-Reference.com, the average home-field advantage in Major League Baseball the past decade has been roughly seven games per season. Every season between 2004 and 2011 the Mariners’ record at home was more than seven games better than it was on the road. Safeco was aiding Seattle more than the average home ballpark.
However, the worm began turning in 2013. That year the Mariners finished with only one more win at home than they had on the road. The next two years Seattle had reverse numbers, finishing with better records on the road than at home — in 2014 the Mariners were 41-40 at Safeco and 46-35 on the road, in 2015 they were 36-45 at home and 40-41 on the road.
Add in this season’s rough start and it seems Safeco Field has gotten in everyone’s heads.
It’s in the heads of the players. The Mariners’ offensive splits at home the past three seasons (.242 batting average/.305 on-base percentage/.386 slugging percentage) are almost identical to their numbers on the road (.244/.306/.397). Yet Seattle scored 112 runs fewer at Safeco. Not to mention that it’s been neigh impossible to get a free-agent right-handed power hitter to set foot in Seattle since the infamous Adrian Beltre power outage of 2005-09.
It’s in the heads of the staff. Prior to Wednesday’s game I went to ask first-year Mariners manager Scott Servais about his observations on the way Safeco Field impacted the game, now that he had seen a string of games first-hand. But the moment the word “Safeco” escaped my lips the question was cut off. “It hasn’t been very fun, has it?” Servais said with a laugh. “It hasn’t been very fun, that’s my observation, if I’m being real honest.”
If both the players and the staff are wary about the ballpark, can the fans be blamed for feeling concern as well?
The irony is that this Mariners roster was constructed with Safeco Field in mind. New general manager Jerry Dipoto spent the offseason making a flurry of moves, and oftentimes the justification for making those moves was to better take advantage of the conditions at Safeco. Outfielders capable of covering more ground (Leonys Martin, Norichika Aoki) were brought in to aid the defense. Left-handed power (Adam Lind) was imported to minimize the impact of the cavernous left-center gap. It’s a small sample size, but so far the reconstruction hasn’t done its intended job.
Once Servais got around to actually talking about the effects of Safeco Field on the game, he was asked if it was a fair ballpark:
“Fair? Great question,” Servais said. “I don’t know if it’s fair for me to comment on that yet. I need to see a few more games in here. I said early on we’re going to play a lot of close games just because the ballpark kind of dictates itself that way, with the runs coming at a premium. [Tuesday] night we got scored on a little bit too much, but it’s probably too early to comment whether it’s fair.”
It seems the ballpark is still on the Mariners’ minds.
The Mariners finally ended their Safeco misery Wednesday afternoon when Dae-Ho Lee’s 10th-inning, pinch-hit, walk-off, two-run homer gave Seattle its first win at home in six tries, beating the Texas Rangers 4-2. It’s curious that a player who doesn’t fit the Safeco profile — right-handed power hitter with little defensive value — was responsible for ending the skid. Maybe that fact will help get Safeco Field out of the team’s heads.
The Mariners won’t be back to Safeco for a while. They left Thursday for New York to take on the Yankees and don’t return again until April 25 when they host the Houston Astros. Maybe during their extended time on the road they’ll figure something out to that will help them overcome their woes at home.
Check out Nick Patterson’s Seattle Sidelines blog at http://www.heraldnet.com/seattlesidelines, and follow him on Twitter at @NickHPatterson.
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