Table Setter: Mariners’ core may be young, but veterans are playing big roles too
Jun 17, 2018, 11:45 PM
Mariners lefty Wade LeBlanc was the star of their 1-0 win over the Red Sox on Saturday. (AP)
(AP)
Be honest – at the start of the season, you didn’t think the Mariners would be 20 games above .500 after splitting a four-game series against the AL East-leading Red Sox in mid-June.
Nobody did.
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Now the Mariners are over halfway through the toughest stretch of their schedule, and they haven’t just survived but in fact have stayed hot through it all. They went 4-2 on their last road trip, including handing Houston its last loss before it reeled off 11 straight wins. Then the Mariners finished 5-2 on a tough homestand, sweeping the Angels and going 2-2 with a Boston team that cam to Seattle with the most wins in baseball.
While the Mariners have certainly benefited from the emergence of a new core of younger players in 2018, it was three veterans that played big roles in making sure the Red Sox didn’t leave town with a series win. For this week’s Table Setter, let’s take a closer look at what those three players have done as of late.
Denard Span
On May 25, Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto pulled off the first big trade of the baseball season. At the time, the acquisition of Rays closer Alex Colomé to assume a role setting up Edwin Díaz grabbed the most attention. Less heralded was the addition of veteran outfielder Denard Span, who at 34 years old wasn’t seeing much playing time for Tampa Bay and seemed to be nearing the twilight of his career.
Not so fast.
Since coming to Seattle, Span has proven to be an indispensable part of Scott Servais’ team. In a lot of ways he’s filled a similar role to that of Stan Javier, an outfielder who was a key part of the 2000 and 2001 playoff Mariners teams in the final two seasons of his career. Like Javier, Span is a good base runner, solid in the field and can provide a professional at-bat when needed. Most importantly, though, he’s been one of the more clutch hitters for the Mariners in the three-plus weeks since the trade. The Red Sox know that all to well after Span provided a two-run double as a pinch hitter that lifted the Mariners to a thrilling 7-6 win on Friday night.
The moment that sent @SafecoField into a frenzy.#TrueToTheBlue pic.twitter.com/TxKrQdlCn9
— Mariners (@Mariners) June 16, 2018
In 16 games with Seattle, Span is hitting .320 with an .882 OPS, two home runs, three doubles, five RBIs and seven runs scored. And his manager has certainly taken notice of what Span has brought to the team.
“He’s a huge addition to our ball club,” Servais said after Friday’s win. “I know everybody gets excited, you know, we brought in Alex Colomé – Denard Span is really a big part of that deal in the fact that he’s got so much experience to be able to handle those situations. We’re going to be in a bunch more of those situations here as we go through the rest of the season. His experience, his ability to slow it down in those moments, (it’s) not just good for our team, it’s good for everybody else to see how to handle those at-bats.
“The quality at-bat is always going to be there with Denard.”
Wade LeBlanc
The Jamie Moyer comparisons have been prevalent over the last month for Wade LeBlanc, but just because it’s turning into cliché doesn’t mean it’s becoming less true.
LeBlanc had a Moyer-esque performance in the big lights of a prime time national TV game against the Red Sox on Saturday, putting together the best outing of his career. The crafty lefty whose fastball tops out in the mid-80s went 7 2/3 scoreless innings, allowing just two hits, walking none, striking out nine and retiring 22 straight at one point.
At 33, LeBlanc all of the sudden looks like he’s entering a late-career prime like Moyer and another soft-tossing former Mariner – knuckleballer R.A. Dickey. LeBlanc was in the minors as recently as 2016, has made 14 major league starts in a season just twice and even began the year joining Seattle as a bullpen arm after not making the Yankees’ roster out of spring training. But since joining the Mariners’ rotation on May 3, LeBlanc has been frustrating hitters with his ability to paint the corners and change speeds (from slow to slower) to the tune of a 2.06 ERA.
The Mariners brought LeBlanc in this year as insurance – first for when they needed somebody to eat up innings in mop-up duty out of the bullpen, second for when a member of the rotation inevitably was injured and a hole needed to be filled. But with what LeBlanc has done over the past month and a half, he’s shown that he’s outgrown the ‘insurance’ part of his career.
Nelson Cruz
Nelson Cruz is a big-time major league hitter. This is no surprise. But it’s been important for the Mariners because as other key pieces of the lineup have started to cool off, Cruz has shaken off some early-season bumps and bruises and absolutely taken off.
The 442-foot blast he sent into orbit in Sunday’s 9-3 loss was impressive, but the most important hit of the weekend for Cruz was a simple RBI single off Boston knuckler Steven Wright that scored the only run in Saturday’s game. It was an instance when Seattle was running out of hitters to step up and provide some offense, and Ol’ Reliable took the initiative – not by hitting a ball a country mile, but finding a hole that gave Dee Gordon plenty of time to scoot home from second base.
The start of 2018 was a real struggle for Cruz, who had a strained quad right out of the gate, hit the DL due to a bizarre ankle injury suffered when he slipped on steps behind the Mariners’ dugout and missed additional time after being hit by pitches both on his foot and elbow. He’s finally had a break from the constant barrage of injury woes, though, allowing him to catch fire at the plate.
Since May 29, Cruz is hitting .323 with nine home runs and 18 RBIs. Now with 17 homers, he’s in good position to hit 39 or more homers for the fifth season in a row, and you have to think the .249 batting average will only continue to climb as the season wears on.
