Jason's new fav player

[bpj]

[quoteWe'll see what Donovans numbers look like after his park actually gets adjusted. I suspect it will be brutal like it is on just about every player that comes to Seattle

Yeah, park affect, it's brutal on just about every player they bring in. But you feel it be more brutal on Donovan? That was basically my concern with Luis Arráez.
[/quote]

That's a really fair point. Not much separates Donovan and Arraez other than believing one is what he is, with some backwards regression to be expected, and the other is a guy who put up pretty decent numbers in San Diego and Florida's cavernous park that I believe transfer to T-Mobile well

Brendan Ryan did it in St. Louis. (Oops, Donovan)

I wasnt a fan of giving up the prospects when what I felt was a better player was available in free agency.

Arraez is Ichiro minus the speed.

Donovan is JP Crawford minus the dreads.

[Donn Beach]

Here's a Fangraphs look at the trade, pretty glowing. Thinks he's a good fit for T-Mobile. Doesn't seem to agree with my anti doubles theory. Donovan doesn't hit for a lot of power but he has excellent bat control and makes a remarkable amount of solid contact. We shall see but I don't see why he'd lose that moving to T-Mobile

Donovan isn’t a household name like many of the best Cardinals of recent years, but that has far more to do with the team’s middling success of late than any lack of talent. His combination of versatility and offensive firepower calls to mind Ben Zobrist, and unlike almost every other flexible defender who gets compared to Zobrist, this one actually makes sense. Zobrist ran a 121 wRC+ during his seven-year peak. Donovan’s career mark is 119, the same as his 2025 total. He’s under team control for two more years at a reasonable rate, too: $5.8 million this year, with his last trip through arbitration set for 2027.

“A plus bat who can play defense everywhere” generally isn’t a good title to have applied to you. That’s because most of the hitters who receive that label either aren’t plus bats, don’t play good defense, or both. But as I mentioned, that’s not Donovan, and we might as well examine each of those two skills, as he’s the entire reason this trade happened, the best player going to any of the three clubs by a mile.

On offense, Donovan plays like a rough approximation of Steven Kwan. His standout skill is the kind of batting eye/contact combo you’d draw up in a lab. If you throw him something outside of the strike zone, he’s probably not going to swing at it. He chased just 25% of the bad pitches he saw in 2025, a 70th-percentile mark league wide and coincidentally the worst mark of his career. When he did swing, he made contact at a 95th-percentile clip, with a swinging strike rate less than half the big league average. That means that he takes a fair number of walks even though pitchers have no interest in giving him a free pass.

Like I said, that’s basically Steven Kwan. The difference is that Donovan swings the bat six ticks faster on average. He posts league average exit velocities thanks to a respectably fast bat and an absolute mountain of bat control, with his squared-up rate in the 96th percentile. Let’s put it this way: Donovan has a career 42.4% hard-hit rate. Kwan has a career rate of 20%, while Luis Arraez checks in at 26%. That combination means that Donovan’s line drives skip past outfielders and to the wall a lot more frequently than his less-powerful brethren. His career .130 ISO isn’t exactly gaudy – the league average hovers around .160 – but it’s spectacular in the context of the rest of his offensive skills.

Even better for the Mariners, Donovan looks to me like a solid fit for their park. T-Mobile is brutal for hitters, but it’s less punishing for lefties, particularly lefties who get a lot of value from singles and doubles. It’s not even so cavernous that he can’t hit homers there; Busch Stadium is tougher for lefty home run hitters. The biggest thing that makes T-Mobile a pitcher’s park is how much more frequently hitters strike out there. I truly can’t tell you exactly why that is — theories abound — but knowing that’s the problem, I don’t hate a guy who just doesn’t strike out as a solution.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/another-fin ... team-swap/

[bpj]

Here's a Fangraphs look at the trade, pretty glowing. Thinks he's a good fit for T-Mobile. Doesn't seem to agree with my anti doubles theory. Donovan doesn't hit for a lot of power but he has excellent bat control and makes a remarkable amount of solid contact. We shall see but I don't see why he'd lose that moving to T-Mobile

Donovan isn’t a household name like many of the best Cardinals of recent years, but that has far more to do with the team’s middling success of late than any lack of talent. His combination of versatility and offensive firepower calls to mind Ben Zobrist, and unlike almost every other flexible defender who gets compared to Zobrist, this one actually makes sense. Zobrist ran a 121 wRC+ during his seven-year peak. Donovan’s career mark is 119, the same as his 2025 total. He’s under team control for two more years at a reasonable rate, too: $5.8 million this year, with his last trip through arbitration set for 2027.

“A plus bat who can play defense everywhere” generally isn’t a good title to have applied to you. That’s because most of the hitters who receive that label either aren’t plus bats, don’t play good defense, or both. But as I mentioned, that’s not Donovan, and we might as well examine each of those two skills, as he’s the entire reason this trade happened, the best player going to any of the three clubs by a mile.

On offense, Donovan plays like a rough approximation of Steven Kwan. His standout skill is the kind of batting eye/contact combo you’d draw up in a lab. If you throw him something outside of the strike zone, he’s probably not going to swing at it. He chased just 25% of the bad pitches he saw in 2025, a 70th-percentile mark league wide and coincidentally the worst mark of his career. When he did swing, he made contact at a 95th-percentile clip, with a swinging strike rate less than half the big league average. That means that he takes a fair number of walks even though pitchers have no interest in giving him a free pass.

Like I said, that’s basically Steven Kwan. The difference is that Donovan swings the bat six ticks faster on average. He posts league average exit velocities thanks to a respectably fast bat and an absolute mountain of bat control, with his squared-up rate in the 96th percentile. Let’s put it this way: Donovan has a career 42.4% hard-hit rate. Kwan has a career rate of 20%, while Luis Arraez checks in at 26%. That combination means that Donovan’s line drives skip past outfielders and to the wall a lot more frequently than his less-powerful brethren. His career .130 ISO isn’t exactly gaudy – the league average hovers around .160 – but it’s spectacular in the context of the rest of his offensive skills.

Even better for the Mariners, Donovan looks to me like a solid fit for their park. T-Mobile is brutal for hitters, but it’s less punishing for lefties, particularly lefties who get a lot of value from singles and doubles. It’s not even so cavernous that he can’t hit homers there; Busch Stadium is tougher for lefty home run hitters. The biggest thing that makes T-Mobile a pitcher’s park is how much more frequently hitters strike out there. I truly can’t tell you exactly why that is — theories abound — but knowing that’s the problem, I don’t hate a guy who just doesn’t strike out as a solution.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/another-fin ... team-swap/

Unfortunately, that highlights two areas I've pointed out before don't play well in T-Mobile.

1) slow grass, balls hit it and do NOT roll to the gaps, and the ball gets cut off by an outfielder and thrown in for a long single

2) Singles and doubles hitters are hurt more than homerun hitters by T-Mobile.

https://marinertalk.com/viewtopic.php?f ... 30#p149293

I would definitely challenge the statement that lefties who hit singles and doubles are less affected in T-Mobile. Ichiro's about the only one I've seen like that and his hits were just speed.

Guess we'll see, but T-Mobile isn't going to help either of those scenarios for a hitter imo.

If you wanted a guy that doesn't strike out much...

[Donn Beach]

Yeah, that's what I was getting at, though I'd attribute the air I think more than the grass. Balls seem to hang in the air a little longer. I'd look at that hard contact, he's not hitting dribblers that die in the grass or the air hopefully

It’s interesting, one of the Mariners’ offensive issues for a while now has been doubles. They just do not hit many doubles at all,” Goldsmith said. “The Mariners have been at the very bottom in terms of overall doubles for years now at this point.”

It was an astute point by Goldsmith. The Mariners finished with just 228 doubles in 2024, worse than all but three other teams in baseball, and marking the third time out of the last four seasons that Seattle ranked in the bottom six of MLB in doubles. In each of those three years, Seattle finished in the bottom three in doubles hit at home, including twice where the Mariners were dead last.

“We’ve talked to some people who study these kinds of things – park effects – and there is a strong belief that the gaps, the alleyways in right-center and left-center here at T-Mobile, just eat doubles alive,” Goldsmith continued. “… (The belief is) the ball kind of hangs here just long enough, more than other ballparks on average, and that keeps those fly balls up and allows an outfielder to cover some ground and make the catch.”

Interesting, moving the walls back would be a way to improve things. Outfielders having a larger field to cover. That's really what makes Coors so hitter friendly, the huge fields.
https://sports.mynorthwest.com/mlb/seat ... ck/1787848

[bpj]

These are the 2025 Mariners hits separated by Home and Away:

Home:
HR: 104
1B: 379
2B: 114
3B: 3

Away:
HR: 134
1B: 485
2B: 120
3B: 6


Difference ((Away-Home)/Home)
HR: ((134-104)/104) = -28.8%
1B: ((485-379)/379) = -28.1%
2B: ((120-114)/114) = -5.3%
3B: ((6-3)/3) = probably meaningless

Based on Mariners hitters only, 2025 was much harder on singles and homeruns in T-Mobile. Maybe the doubles guys are the sweet spot now.

Doesn't really scream "balls are hanging in the air waiting to get caught" to me, but I guess it's open to interpretation.

[bpj]

Here are Mariners numbers from 2023-2025:


Home:
HR: 284
1B: 1126
2B: 348
3B: 13

Away:
HR: 349
1B: 1334
2B: 397
3B: 21


Difference ((Away-Home)/Home)
HR: ((349-284)/284) = -22.9% fewer HR's at Home
1B: ((1334-1126)/1126) = -18.5%
2B: ((397-348)/348) = -14.1%
3B: ((21-13)/13) = -61.5%

According to the Mariners hitters numbers, it is a homerun suppressing park. It just suppresses everything else also. Air, grass, combination of it all. I dont know. But T-Mobile sucks.

Maybe someone could explain how the air could affect singles, then I'll fall in line that it's the air.

I know grass can slow the ball down enough for a defender to handle it. But air... I dunno man..

[Donn Beach]

I don't think it's about some silver bullet that answers all the issues with T-Mobile. It's a kitchen sink of stuff. The mariners hit the 3rd most home runs in the majors last season and the second fewest doubles, that's just weird.

[Donn Beach]

The .statcast stuff is pretty straightforward terms of the ball not traveling as far at T-Mobile

Last year, hard-hit balls pulled in the air in Seattle carried 5.3 feet less than average, the second-weakest carry of any park – and nearly 24 feet less than the +18.4 feet that Coors Field supplied. According to Weather Applied Metrics data, over the last two seasons, there were 55 non-homers in Seattle that with a high degree of confidence would have gone over the fence in calm conditions, second-most lost dingers to Kansas City's 65.

It was a lesson Cal Raleigh learned last summer, when this rocket to center seemed to die softly into Mickey Moniak’s glove. The wind that day cost it a whopping 28 feet of carry.

Though really the most significant issue could be strikeouts. You could look at the pitchers eye, stadium glare with the roof open, and air currents could affect a pitch

[D-train]

I haven't watched any of the Spring Training games. Does anyone have a sense of how Donovan's arm is playing at 3B?

Great. He can actually throw over there on the fly and doesn't have to one hop his throws. H has played SS too which requires an even better arm.

[D-train]

Check this out. T Mobile has by FAR the most Ks of any stadium. Maybe part of the reason there are less singles and doubles is because there are so many more Ks.