The Mariners are seeing a lot of pitches, but it’s not helping them at the plate

The Mariners need to start making better contact, or any contact, earlier in the count

Coming into play on Sunday, the Mariners led baseball in pitches seen per plate appearance, edging out the Yankees, who they’ve been running neck-and-neck with over the past couple weeks. The big difference: Yankees hitters are averaging about 30 more points across the board on batting average, OBP, and slugging. While the Yankees are putting the strikes they see into play at slightly above league average (around 27%), the Mariners rank dead last in MLB in putting their strikes seen into play, at just 24%. Part of that problem is of course their well-documented contact issues; they’re towards the bottom of the league at making contact, just above the Rockies and A’s. But those contact issues stem from making undesirable contact in the first place: the Mariners are fouling off over 28% of all the strikes they see, putting them into unfavorable counts.

“We’re getting pitches to hit, but if we don’t put them in play, which then extends the at-bat and you get into a lot of two-strike counts,” said Scott Servais. “And it’s tough to hit with two strikes in this league. You don’t make your money that way.”

Last Monday’s game against Minnesota illustrated the problems the Mariners have in these deep counts. They worked six full counts against Twins starter Simeon Woods Richardson, but consistently fouled off pitches left on the plate to get themselves into two-strike counts, and then failed to execute in full counts: for those six full counts, four resulted in strikeouts, with one groundout and one walk. They put just 11 balls in play against Woods Richardson, with 16 fouls. Here’s an example of one such at-bat against Woods Richardson, where Mitch Haniger, in a 1-1 count, fouled off a changeup on the plate; Haniger would lay off the next two pitches to work the count full, but wind up swinging through a fastball at the top of the zone for a strikeout.

If you’re looking for a reason for optimism, when they do make contact and put the ball in play, the Mariners remain one of baseball’s best teams at hitting the ball hard, ranking just under the Braves, Orioles, and Dodgers for hard-hit rate. They also faced some extremely tough pitching with Minnesota; in the series against Oakland, they squared up plenty of balls, even in Saturday’s loss, with several hard-hit balls going for outs. Sunday, that batted-ball luck finally reversed against Oakland starter Alex Wood, and the Mariners helped that luck along by making better contact earlier in the counts, and more contact in general, especially off Wood’s changeup, a pitch that has elicited a lot of swing and miss from this crew over the season.

Postgame, Mitch Garver said he finally felt like he was on time with the changeup for the first time this season. Julio Rodríguez, whose improvements in timing at the plate Scott Servais had praised all series, also came alive in Sunday’s game, squaring up balls that went out of the reach of defenders.

Oakland’s pitching isn’t at the level of what the Mariners will see this series with the Royals, and next up is a punishingly long three-city road trip where the Mariners will have to face the top teams in a strong AL East in the Yankees and Orioles. In order to stay atop their precarious position in the AL West, they’ll have to combine their ability to wear out pitchers with long at-bats with continuing to square up pitches on the plate when they see them.