Seattle Mariners Have Reasons For Hanging Onto Their Starting Pitchers

Seattle Mariners Have Reasons For Hanging Onto Their Starting Pitchers

Blog Article

Mariners starting pitchers led the major leagues in ERA, WHIP, walks per nine innings and hits per nine innings last season. Yet Seattle missed the postseason for the 22nd time in 23 seasons as it finished with an 85-77 record.

That outstanding rotation got little help from the offense. The Mariners were 22nd in scoring and 29th in batting average among the 30 MLB teams.

The logical solution would have been to trade some of the starting pitching for hitting in the offseason, especially with ownership providing the front office with a tight budget that precluded the pursuit of pricy free agents.

However, the Mariners decided not to do that and return basically the same lineup as last season. The only significant newcomer is journeyman infielder Donovan Solano.The Mariners, though, aren’t apologizing for not trading a starter,

“We have five unbelievably talented starters and then we have depth behind them,” general manager Justin Hollander said. “That depth can get challenged and it’s not like we’ve solved the pitching health problem in the game. The baseball gods will teach you a really hard lesson if you think you have too much pitching.

“We have a lot of high-end talent in that area of our team. Other teams will ask if we’ll talk about trading any of our starting pitchers. The answer on almost anything is ‘sure, we’ll talk about things.’ But the starting pitching is the core of our team, and you become emotionally connected to those guys, so it’s hard to strip it away. And if you trade one of the pitchers then you’re filling one hole but you’re creating another big hole. It’s not as easy trading a starting pitcher as it might seem.”

The Mariners’ rotation is not only talented but cost effective as four of the five pitchers are 27 or younger and has less than four years of major-league service time – Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo.

The only high-priced pitcher is 32-year-old Luis Castillo, who has three years and $72.45 million remaining on his five-year, $108-million contract.