Mariners are scoring now, with 4 names playing big roles

Sep 26, 2024, 11:43 AM | Updated: 1:11 pm

Justin Turner of the Seattle Mariners celebrates a home with teammate Julio Rodríguez. (Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images)

(Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images)

Mariners Insider, Seattle Sports

When the Mariners landed back in Seattle on Wednesday night, there was no mistaking the fact that fall has arrived.

The preferred plan would have been spending the remainder of the week getting ready for the postseason, but instead Thursday and possibly the weekend was to be spent watching a scoreboard and hoping for the near impossible to happen (it didn’t).

The Mariners have been eliminated from postseason contention

It is the perfect baseball idle time for the “what ifs” and misses of the season to flood the mind, along with the words we heard from people around baseball throughout the year: “If only they can get to the postseason, that pitching…”

Truth be told, the followup should have been: “Yeah, but they still need to score.”

Little comfort now that they are scoring runs.

Why have Mariners been AL’s best offense this month? Passan weighs in

That perhaps will be a bitter but important consolation prize to a season that should have been much more. It will all be dissected and discussed in the coming offseason, but it’s worth asking now if some answers centered largely around additions and one arrival have been found.

The arrival: Julio Rodríguez.

Since his return from the injured list on Aug. 11, the Mariners outfield ranks third in baseball with both a 4.6 WAR and 139 wRC+, with Rodríguez, Victor Robles, Randy Arozarena and Luke Raley accounting for nearly 85% of those numbers. Dramatic improvement from the first half when the Mariners had the 20th-ranked outfield (3.2 WAR, 96 wRC+), with those four taking only 60% of the plate appearances.

The emergence of Robles, who is slashing .327/.395/.464 for an .859 OPS as a Mariner, has been a difference maker. As has to a lesser extent Arozarena, whose .234/.359/.380 slash (.740 OPS) in 52 games with the Mariners is below his career averages but better than those he replaces.

Then there is what can’t be fully measured: the contribution from Justin Turner. The 39-year-old first baseman came through with a big add-on run in the Game 1 win against the Astros on Monday in Houston, and he got the Mariners on the board Wednesday, extending his current MLB-leading on-base streak to 20 games with a two-run single in the sixth inning off Yusei Kikuchi.

Slashing .263/.360/.397 (.758 OPS) with a 124 wRC+ since his arrival that ranks fourth on the team, Turner has provided the team with what was needed both on and, most importantly for this group, off the field.

“He’s been huge,” catcher Cal Raleigh said of Turner on Monday in Houston. “He’s not just a great player, he’s kind of a great coach too. Having a guy like that who’s experienced, he’s been around, has really helped this group and kind of helped us mature and grow and learn you don’t have to be the hero, swing for the fences all the time. You have to figure out how to play the game, move runners, square the ball up. Sometimes you gotta use a different club as the golf saying goes. He’s huge. You see how he goes about his business. He’s not always swinging for fences. He fouls pitches off. He approaches guys in a good way and takes his hits. And I think he’s kind of rubbing off on some of the younger guys.”

Turner has been the example in the lineup to point to that the Mariners simply did not have before the trade with Toronto to bring him in. Other players, coaches and two managers have spoke to the immediate impact he has had in the clubhouse, dugout and batting cages. In short, he sounds a lot like the kind of player Raleigh was asking for when he spoke to the media at the end of last season. Whether or not Turner decides to play another season and if the Mariners see him as a fit moving forward remains to be seen, but his addition has been important to this group.

This is a far different team than the one that broke camp in Peoria six months ago with big but fair expectations. Those expectations – a division title – should be the same next year. There is a lot that needs to happen this offseason, but thanks to a few in-season additions, it appears some boxes have already been checked off the list.