Inconvenient Truth about next month's trade deadline

[Sports Hernia]

Kelenic’s current OPS is better than any current Mariner in the starting line up.
They got nothing for him.
Let that sink in.

[bpj]

Kelenic’s current OPS is better than any current Mariner in the starting line up.
They got nothing for him.
Let that sink in.

Nothing but salary relief.

Which, to this management group, is better than adding talent.

[Captain 97]

The key component is that we could have afforded the Soto package but Jerry had no balls and has shown to make crappy trades when we needed help or sat on his hands and did nothing. He should have started making trades 2 weeks ago. This team will only go as far as the pitching takes them. It is so pitching heavy and I love the 5 we have but frickin support them more consistently.

This right here.
The proper time to address this offense was in the offseason. Everybody knew it and they did the same old mediocre moves that they always make.

[OLdvanDawg]

T-mobile/Safeco has been around for more than 20 years and there were some years where they actually had some semblance of an offense. It comes down to coaching and building an offense for the field. They’ve done a very good job getting the right starting pitching for the ball park but need to get more players that make contact.

I saw a video on the Mariners history and Joey Cora was batting .416 bunting in 1995, and he played in the Kingdome. It comes down to contact.

[GL_Storm]

A few thoughts:

1) The current era is the most difficult it's ever been for hitters, and that's magnified by whatever factors hold down offense at T-Mobile Park.

2) There are very few pure contact hitters in today's game, so I'm not sure where this idea of building a team around contact hitters comes from. Who are those hitters?

3) You can make the argument, given how strong pitching is right now, that the current crop of major league hitters that are surviving in the current environment are the best the game has ever seen.

4) Another likely consequence of the current difficult environment for hitters, which I think we're seeing with Julio and some other players, like Polanco, Garver, and Haniger, as well as hitters on other teams, is that broad swings in performance are becoming more common. I think the reason for this is that there is less margin for error for hitters than there's ever been. This makes it more difficult for hitters to adjust to how the league pitches to them, and will cause longer, more prolonged slumps when a hitter is off mechanically or in his approach.

[Big_Maple]

A few thoughts:

1) The current era is the most difficult it's ever been for hitters, and that's magnified by whatever factors hold down offense at T-Mobile Park.

2) There are very few pure contact hitters in today's game, so I'm not sure where this idea of building a team around contact hitters comes from. Who are those hitters?

3) You can make the argument, given how strong pitching is right now, that the current crop of major league hitters that are surviving in the current environment are the best the game has ever seen.

4) Another likely consequence of the current difficult environment for hitters, which I think we're seeing with Julio and some other players, like Polanco, Garver, and Haniger, as well as hitters on other teams, is that broad swings in performance are becoming more common. I think the reason for this is that there is less margin for error for hitters than there's ever been. This makes it more difficult for hitters to adjust to how the league pitches to them, and will cause longer, more prolonged slumps when a hitter is off mechanically or in his approach.

Love this post. Thanks, GL. It actually gave me a little pause, and put things in perspective.

It is increasingly hard to do the hardest thing in sports - square up a baseball with consistency. Pitchers are getting better. There are data and metrics out the wazoo. This is likely why we see so much inconsistency between most batters - with few exceptions (like Judge or Ohtani), guys that are exceptional one season may flail the next. Looks at Jesse Goddamm Winker - he batted .305, then .219 and .199 and then back up to .256

I'd likely poop my britches if someone threw a baseball at me at 98 mph.

[Vogelbomb]

We have more than enough talent in house. It's about getting literally everybody to raise their game several levels at this point. I've never seen such a colossal suck fest

[bpj]

Canzone has gone from being worth 1.3 fWAR prior to his injury, all the way down to 0.4 fWAR since he came back..