Seattle Mariners Rant Week: Looking Back at 2018 – Herb Nightingale

Losing Traction

I am sure most everyone felt the Mariners would make it through the season but no one expected they would go just under five hundred for the last three months. July started out badly, going 4-9 before the all-star break including 1-5 against the Colorado Rockies. On July 5th they were 24 games above five hundred and were in first place.

The Mariners won only 10 games in July while losing 13. In August they were 12-16 and then during September, they had a slight winning record, going 14-13. The only reason for the above .500 last month is that they beat the awful Texas Rangers, three out of four games on the final weekend of the season.

At the same time, the Oakland A’s went 42-23 after the all-star break. In July they were 17-8, August 18-9 and September 16-10. Pretty hard to beat for sure; the A’s scored 364 runs in the second while the Mariners scored 265. A difference of 99 runs; the A’s gave up 249 runs which were 16 less than the Mariners scored while they gave up 297 runs. So you see they gave up 32 more runs than they scored and the A’s scored 115 more runs than their opponents.

Due to the pressure of being in the playoffs race combined with the A’s surge, they stopped having fun at the same time. It didn’t help that Dee Gordon hurt his toe in May, which led to a poor performance the rest of the way. He was above .300 when he got hurt, then ended up with a .268 batting average. Gordon slumped so much the Mariners moved Mitch Haniger to the lead-spot where he batted around .333. Haniger is expected to be the lead-off hitter once again next year.