Among the curiosities from the early part of the 2011 season is the Mariners’ sudden inability to catch the ball.
The offense, such as it were, has been better than expected — improving from utterly pathetic to merely awful. And the pitching has been OK, ranking sixth in the league in ERA.
But the fielding, the thing that was supposed to be the Mariners’ calling card under general manager Jack Zduriencik, has been atrocious.
Not that you would know that by looking at fielding percentage. The Mariners are seventh in the league with a .984 fielding percentage — right at the AL average.
But fielding percentage, as aficionados have understood for years, is a poor measure of fielding ability. It tells you how often a player or a team makes an error, but it doesn’t tell you how many batted balls they were unable to reach.
A player might make few errors, resulting in a good fielding percentage, but that doesn’t help his team if he’s allowing grounders to skip through the infield or fly balls to land in the gap.
Because of that, people who study such things have come up with various advanced metrics for measuring fielding.
And these metrics reveal Seattle’s shortcomings in the field this year.
Consider:
• Seattle ranks last in the AL with a Defensive Efficiency Rating of .684. DER measures how often a team turns a ball in play into an out.
Last season, the Mariners’ DER of .705 ranked fourth in the American League.
• Seattle ranks last in the AL — by a country mile — in something called Total Zone Fielding Runs Above Average, which isn’t nearly as confusing as it sounds.
This metric considers which fielder’s zone each batted ball was hit into, and then assesses how many plays he did or didn’t make when compared with the average fielder at his position. According to baseball-reference.com, Seattle fielders are an aggregate 20 runs below average.
In 2010, the Mariners were a league-leading 41 runs better than average in this statistic. In 2009, they were a whopping 91 runs above average, which also led the league.
This year’s performance isn’t what we have been promised by the Zduriencik regime, which built a team predicated on defense — at the cost of compiling one of the worst offenses in baseball history last year.
Thus far this season, the Mariners have two regulars in the same position as last year: Ichiro Suzuki in right field, and Milton Bradley in left. Bradley was released this week, leaving one regular from last year, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing when you’re coming off a 61-101 season.
But here are the fielding runs above average for this year’s regulars, including Bradley:
C — Miguel Olivo -4
1B — Justin Smoak -3
2B — Jack Wilson +3
3B — Chone Figgins +6
SS — Brendan Ryan -2
LF — Milton Bradley -4
CF — Michael Saunders -3
RF — Ichiro -4
And that’s not including Ryan Langerhans, who is a woeful minus-6 while playing part-time as the fourth outfielder.
This may simply be an early season anomaly. For his career, Ichiro is a well-above-average fielder, as is Langerhans.
So, what has gone wrong? Why are the Mariners treating batted balls like they were live hand grenades?
The biggest difference is the injury that has sidelined center fielder Franklin Gutierrez, who was 11 runs better than average last year and a supernatural 29 runs better than average in 2009.
The loss of Gutierrez — along with advancing age — also probably has reduced Ichiro’s effectiveness as a fielder. Gutierrez likely corralled more than his share of fly balls that were in Ichiro’s zone.
Gutierrez won a Gold Glove last year, his first. And it’s apparent that if he can return at full strength, the Mariners might start catching some baseballs again.
