What ESPN’s Passan says has ‘hindered’ Mariners’ major league offense

The Seattle Mariners were hot at the plate to begin this season, but they’ve been anything but since early May.

As the bats have gone cold, Seattle has fallen to a 33-32 record on the year after going 13-20 since May 4. The M’s led the AL West for the majority of the first two months, but entered Tuesday three games back of the Houston Astros (36-29) for the division lead.

Seattle Mariners place Bryce Miller on IL, recall Logan Evans

At the same time, the Mariners feature perhaps the best group of prospects in baseball. Seattle has an MLB-high nine players ranked in the top 100 prospects by MLB Pipeline, including seven position players.

ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan made sense of the dichotomy between the highly-ranked hitters in the Mariners’ farm system and the team’s offensive performance in the big leagues when he joined Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk for his usual Tuesday conversation.

“Every team has its own different stew of what it weighs when it comes to the pro side. You know, some teams are more scouting-heavy, some teams are more analytics-heavy,” Passan said. “I would say the Mariners probably fall more into the analytics camp than other organizations do, but they’re not extremely so on that side like some organizations. Like, the Brewers are almost an entirely model-dependent team. The Mariners, they’re not quite there, but they rely heavily on their model.

“And clearly, when a model is working it – as it has in drafting (for the Mariners), and when certain techniques are working as they have in player development – you try to spread those out a little bit, right? You try to see what other areas of the organization (where) the tenets that you use can be replicated.”

It that is the case with the Mariners, it appears what has worked in developing hitters isn’t fully translating to the MLB club.

“They have not figured out how to do that on the pro side quite as effectively as they have on the amateur side yet, and that has hindered them,” Passan said.

Passan also pointed to the Mariners’ approach to free agency, where they have relied on signing hitters to short deals instead of the lucrative, long-term contracts that premier hitters command. He used backup catcher/designated hitter Mitch Garver (.198 average, one home run in 39 games this season) as a specific example.

“It comes down to this: It’s not just that performance is paid for in free agency. I think consistency is what you’re paying for,” Passan said. “And when you’re bringing in guys on one-year deals or two-year deals at a max – looking at Mitch Garver for example, he’s a guy on a two-year deal. Mitch Garver had been extraordinarily inconsistent throughout his career. He had shown signs where sometimes he looks like a great player, as he did in his walk year (in 2023 with Texas), and some years he just looks completely lost.

“And the reason that Mitch Garver got two years as opposed to three or four or some of the longer terms is because of that lack of consistency. So every time you’re signing guys to these short-term deals, they’re getting short-term deals for a reason, right? And that reason almost always goes back to they just haven’t been able to consistently produce.”

ESPN MLB insider Jeff Passan joins Brock and Salk at 8:30 a.m. each Tuesday during the baseball season. Catch Brock and Salk live from 6-10 a.m. weekdays on Seattle Sports.

More on the Seattle Mariners

• Hyphen: Why Mariners’ George Kirby suddenly looked dominant
• Canzone’s HR in return against former team caps wild rally
• What Rowland-Smith likes about Mariners’ promotion of Canzone
• M’s prospect makes diving catch to help preserve AquaSox no-hitter
• Salk: Sliding Seattle Mariners feel the loss of Luke Raley

Related

Salk: Leonard Williams sets his path to being a Seahawks ROH memberBrock & Salk: Leonard Williams deal ‘great news’ for SeahawksBaldinger: How Seahawks’ defense can continue to evolvePassan: What stood out about Mariners rookie pitcher Kade AndersonWhy you should still buy the Mariners as a playoff teamBrock on Seahawks: Stock up, stock down after 2nd preseason game