Mariners can’t waste World Series-caliber pitching.
Ask any baseball fan what they’d want on their World Series team, and they’ll tell you elite pitching. It won’t guarantee anything; last year’s winners, the Texas Rangers, were 18th in combined ERA (though that sharpened up thanks to a strong postseason run from starters Nathan Eovaldi and Jordan Montgomery). Having top-tier pitching in the regular season is a potent weapon, and there’s an opportunity to be seized for a Mariners team that’s third in ERA.
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The question is whether Seattle’s offense will let them take it (those 2023 Rangers? They finished the regular season fourth in home runs and third in OPS).
Scott Braun, host of Foul Territory, talked about Seattle’s current recipe: A phenomenal starting rotation combined with an offense that’s 25th in runs scored (138), 21st in slugging (.365), and leads the league with a 28.3% strikeout rate.
“I don’t think it’s good enough to be a World Series-winning offense,” Braun said Tuesday during a conversation on Seattle Sports’ Bump and Stacy. “I think they’ve had World Series pitching for at least the last year or two, and this season for sure. They have the best starting staff in baseball. I don’t even know if it’s close if you go one through five. So, this is the best time in franchise history to put together a
World Series title. We all know they didn’t do enough in the offseason. They had to kind of reshuffle and maybe add a little more contact to a lineup that actually has not produced; that’s been the biggest swing-and-miss lineup in baseball. Not good enough. Can it get better? Yeah, usually it’s actually easier to acquire impact bats at the trade deadline than it is pitching.”
