Mariners manage to keep the glass half full

The Mariners managed to score just one single, solitary run through nine innings in three of their first four games this season.

The fact that this translated into a split of their four-game series with the Boston Red Sox is the result of three things:

Let’s get into all of that with a new feature here at TDA: Three Up, Three Down:

1)    Kirby’s command

George Kirby walked two of the first three batters he faced on Friday. One of those was awarded for a pitch-clock violation, but still, it was highly unusual as Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times pointed out. Kirby walked two batters in only four of his 31 outings last season. He never walked three. (Spoiler alert: He did not walk three batters on Friday, either).

After the pair of walks, Kirby retired 19 of the next 21 batters he faced and didn’t allow a run in the six innings he pitched. He struck out eight. Logan Gilbert was just as good on Saturday, and while he did allow a run, he also pitched through the seventh, striking out eight. He threw 91 pitches.

A front-of-the-rotation starting pitcher who can get batters to swing and miss is one of the most valuable things in modern baseball, and it very much appears the Mariners have (at least) two of those. Also, there has never been a baseball player who’s look more like a “nice guy” than George Kirby.

2)    Crawford’s clout

I love the way J.P. Crawford plays. I like his style, his confidence and it’s clear how much he means to his teammates.

Going into last season, however, I believed the Mariners might need to find a shortstop with more pop than Crawford given that Ty France doesn’t have the power usually associated with a corner infielder and second base was an absolute black hole.

So what did Crawford do? He hit 19 home runs, which was more than double the total he’d had in any major-league season prior to that. On Friday night, his solo homer in the sixth accounted for the only run of the game.

There’s a longer story here, which involves Driveline, a performance training center headquartered in Kent. When you start pecking around on the Internet, you can even find examples of the training. It’s pretty fascinating to watch.

The result is that Crawford has gone from being a good fielding shortstop who got on base at an acceptable rate to someone who ranks among the upper third of shortstops in the game last season. It should be noted that I have long since given up any thought that the Mariners might need another shortstop.

3)    Making close ones count

Seattle was outscored 14-10 in its four-game series with Boston yet managed to go 2-2 by doing what they always seem to do under Scott Servais: Win a disproportionate number of one-run games.

Seattle won 1-0 on Friday and 4-3 in 10 innings on Saturday. They lost 6-4 on Thursday, and 5-1 on Sunday.

This is Servais’s ninth season as manager and in that time, the Mariners are 216-167 (.564) in games decided by one run and 402-413 (.493) in games decided by more than. It’s the kind of thing that I would generally describe as “unsustainable” and yet the Mariners have sustained it.

1)     Jumping to conclusions about Polanco? Me? Never

I will not compare Jorge Polanco to Kolten Wong. Wong was – at his peak – a solid major-league player whose speed and versatility made him an important cog in a successful team. Polanco, on the other hand, has tremendous power for a middle infielder, but has had a hard time staying on the field. He has missed more than 80 games in three of the past six seasons.

I will say this, though: Polanco’s performance at the plate this weekend was reminiscent of Wong’s cadaverous showing last year. In 14 at-bats, Polanco had one hit. It was a single. He struck out seven times, the worst of which came in the ninth inning on Saturday when he was waaaaaaay out in front on all three swings he took against Greg Weissert.

Do I think Polanco is going to hit like a warmed-up version of Wong this season? No, I do not. Do I fear it? Yes. Absolutely.

2)    A whiff of familiarity

The Mariners struck out 44 times in the four games against Boston. Only Pittsburgh had more strikeouts over the past four days.

Not exactly what Seattle was hoping for after trading Eugenio Suarez and letting Teoscar Hernandez walk as a free agent.

This is something worth watching though I do feel compelled to point out that strikeouts are not the measure of futility that many people seem to think. Some of the most productive hitters in baseball also strike out a ton. This, I would argue, is more a reflection of the lengths to which modern hitters have gone in order to maximize home runs as opposed to any deterioration in skill among modern hitters. Players engineer their swings to optimize for homers. This approach results in more of a feast-or-famine reality. The value that comes from the home runs – both on the scoreboard and in contracts – more than offsets the cost of the strikeouts.

The primary issue that Seattle had this weekend wasn’t the number of strikeouts. It was that the Mariners only had two extra-base hits over the final three games of the series.

3)    Trouble with the curve

This weekend, I started “The New York Game,” a 500-page tome by Kevin Baker that is about “Baseball and the rise of a new city.” I have already learned a number of things, including the fact that people were decrying the erosion of “traditional” baseball back almost the moment the sport began.

Now, that is not the Pete O’Brien who played for the Mariners. That is the Pete O’Brien who played before the Civil War. The man said that in 1868!!!!!

The other thing I’ve discovered is that not everyone seemed to greet the introduction of the curve ball as an improvement. More specifically, a few years after the curveball was first introduced in 1867, the president of the esteemed Harvard University was concerned that a pitcher on his school’s team was using it.

I find myself utterly in agreement given the rate at which Mariners hitters swung – and missed – at off-speed pitches in the season-opening series. Ban the curve! How dare they throw a pitch whose deliberate purpose is to deceive.