SEATTLE — Remember when the Seattle Mariners were losing a lot of baseball games? When the team appeared broken after a thrilling run that nearly ended in a 2021 playoff berth? When that same team was hemorrhaging runs and getting below-average production from its new acquisitions?
(I do.)
Never mind. Because the Mariners are apparently baseball magicians, able to conjure a ridiculous stretch of winning seemingly out of thin air.
At one point the Mariners were under .500 by 10 games on June 19, following a 4-0 loss to the Los Angeles Angels.
Now the Mariners are nine games over .500 heading into the second half of the season. The team's 22-3 record – and 14 straight wins – places them firmly in the American League playoff race, ahead of pre-season contenders like Toronto and Boston.
How did we get here?
It's a long story, but we'll start here.
A star is born
The baseball world is buzzing over the newest star in the making, a 21-year-old wunderkind that happens to patrol centerfield every day for the Seattle Mariners.
Julio Rodríguez was already in elite company heading into festivities, joining just 14 position players under the age of 22 named All-Stars in their rookie season. That list is littered with current and future Hall of Famers like Albert Pujols, Bryce Harper, Mike Trout, Tim Raines, Johnny Bench and Rod Carew.
Then he did everyone one better and capped a memorable debut with a runner-up finish in the Home Run Derby on Monday.
Rodríguez went bomb-for-bomb with Juan Soto, arguably the best hitter in Major League Baseball (MLB), becoming the first-ever player to hit multiple 30-HR rounds in a single derby. The burgeoning superstar already surpassed Ken Griffey Jr.'s (59) all-time mark in the Home Run Derby before the final even kicked off.
Rodríguez finished his first derby with 81 home runs. Soto, the eventual winner, had 53 home runs.
“I’m here to have fun man," he told KING 5. "I feel like every time I step on the field, I’m just here to have fun and have a great time.”
His All-Star weekend cemented what Mariners fans following the team day-to-day already know.
Rodríguez is a special baseball player.
Despite batting just .136 in the first 12 games of his career, Rodríguez didn't succumb to the pressure of being a franchise cornerstone like Jarred Kelenic.
He didn't panic. He didn't press. He simply trusted his talent to adjust to the major league level.
In fact, he's been even better than even the most optimistic expectations entering the season. During the Mariners' 22-3 stretch, he's hitting .300 with a 1.000 on-base-plus-slugging percentage (OPS). Over a full season, that OPS would be higher than Aaron Judge, the No. 1 favorite for MVP in the American League this season.
For more context: Rodríguez is the only player in league history to have 15 or more homers, 15 or more doubles and 20 or more stolen bases in the first 81 games of his career. These are eerily similar numbers to Mariners legend Ken Griffey Jr. (Winks at the camera.)
Not bad for a guy who took an entire month to hit the first home run of his MLB career.
With the help of Robbie Ray (and some friends)
In a story published on May 27, with the unfortunate headline "What happened to the Seattle Mariners? Are they broken or can they be fixed?" Seattle was 24th in earned run average and allowed 61 home runs, which was the worst mark in baseball at the time of publishing.
All-Star snub Logan Gilbert was the only Mariner with a positive adjusted earned run average (ERA+), an advanced metric that adjusts earned run average for the team's ballpark and other factors.
Now Gilbert has some help. Robbie Ray and Marco Gonzales have improved their form to the point where they've improved from net-negatives to positive contributors on the pitching end.
For his first two months as a Mariner, Ray had regressed considerably across the board. The 2021 AL CY Young winner was throwing fewer strikeouts and allowing more walks, a simple recipe for pitching disaster. His earned run average (ERA) and his walks and hits per innings pitched (WHIP) were indicative of a bottom-tier starting pitcher and not the top-of-the-line ace that he was believed to be.
Something clicked, coincidentally coinciding with the Mariners' torrid months-long stretch. Ray has been better than his 2021 campaign in his last seven starts. The 30-year-old has a 1.36 ERA, 0.76 WHIP and batters are hitting just .151 against the lefty. His strikeouts have crept up to his MLB-best rate and his walks have dropped to what would be a career-low (2.1 walks per nine innings).
Ray isn't just above-average again. He's been undeniably one of the best pitchers in the entire league since mid-June.
Gonzales, who struggled to begin the year, has been steady with a 3.29 ERA in his last six starts too. (Though his strikeout and walk rates indicate he's been a little fortunate in the run department.)
Pair that with Gilbert, a steady presence within the rotation, and the Mariners have several quality starting pitchers to get them deep through games.
Over the last 25 games, the Mariners have allowed 2.64 runs per game, besting the Dodgers' MLB-best mark of 3.3 runs per game.
But enough words and sentences. The chart below is the greatest illustration of how dominant the Mariners' pitching staff has been in July. (The Mariners are the little blue dot in the bottom left of the chart. If you don't speak baseball nerd, the chart means they've been waaaaay better than anyone else.)
Note: Secret Base, part of the SB Nation network, focuses on longform sports and other offbeat stories.
Unsung heroes
It's impossible to win 14 straight baseball games without rotation players doing their part.
The Mariners did not stop winning even when the team lost outfielder Jesse Winker, shortstop J.P. Crawford and Rodríguez due to suspension after a bases-clearing brawl in June. Kyle Lewis, Mitch Haniger and Ty France were out at varying points during this stretch too, but Seattle trudged along with utility players plugging the gaps, short-term minor-league callups and aging veterans to remain the hottest team in baseball.
Third baseman Eugenio Suarez has a .816 OPS during the last 25 games. Cal Raleigh has a .786 OPS. Adam Frazier, who still has poor hitting numbers for the season, is hitting .300 in the past three weeks.
36-year-old Carlos Santana was traded to the Mariners on June 28 and already has four home runs, including two game-winners.
Winker, expected to be a reliable middle-of-the-order power bat, has gotten on base 40.4% of the time in his last 26 games. He was producing career-low marks at the beginning of his Mariners tenure.
These contributions have even masked a down stretch for France, the team's leader in OPS this season.
It's why the Mariners have scored 121 runs in the last 25 games, good for nearly five runs a game. (The Yankees have scored an MLB-best 5.4 runs per game this season). They are hitting for more power – 34 home runs and 82 extra-base hits – and getting on base more often in the last month.
To be this good without the top-end talent or payroll of bigger market clubs?
Unheard of.
Baseball magic
There are no metrics or statistics necessary for this next part because sometimes numbers don't explain the entire story.
Like last year, the Mariners have something undeniably, unspeakably unique about this team that transcends logic.
Baseball teams aren't supposed to win 14 consecutive games, especially teams that were flat-out terrible for two entire months.
Baseball teams aren't supposed to be 14 games better than their expected win-loss record for an entire year, narrowing eeking out close victories time and time again when the math indicates these kinds of wins are inherently random.
Baseball teams are supposed to follow a logical path, more or less, in a game guided by numbers, logic and the law of averages.
A 162-game season begets a sense of order, a sense of the process winning (eventually) over results. It's part of the beauty and monotony that make baseball a unique professional sport.
Somehow, the 2022 Seattle Mariners have shown there is still some magic to be found hidden underneath the exhausting rigors of baseball.