FanPost

Ranking Mariners SS Using WAR

The forth in this series takes a look at Mariners SS. The previous posts have some info about how I am going about this (Catcher, 1B, 2B). I also have added polls to the Catcher, 1B and 2B posts so go back and vote on these if you want to. I'll make this post extra concise because this one is fairly obvious and it is about to be Friday evening. On to the data...

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As with the past posts, the top chart has data for the players over their whole career and the bottom one has their value at the time they were Mariners. (click on chart to enlarge)

It doesn't take long to look at these tables and figure out Alex Rodriquez is and was really good. He had an 11 win season as a Mariner which is amazing. Absolutely amazing. He is in the top 20 all time for a positional player ranked by WAR and he is still playing. Realistically if he keeps playing for a few more years he could pass guys like Gehrig, Ted Williams and Micky Mantle and we got to see this guy have his career year as a Mariner. Whatever you feel about ARod now, it was awesome when he was on our team.

Omar scores well over his whole career and he ranks #2 as a Mariner on the list but there is a huge gap between him and Alex. I really thought Omar's career was almost done when he joined the Indians and I remember thinking it was a good time to get rid of him. Couldn't have been more wrong. He probably won't make the HoF but if you are going to induct amazing defensive SS, he should be able to get in.

The bottom of the list has no surprises with Medoza and Fermin at the bottom of the list. Not too much to say about these guys besides they couldn't hit much and weren't actually that good in the field which adds up to bad no matter how you look at it.

Overall the Mariners have gotten 54 WAR from the SS position for an average of 1.6 WAR per season. Alex Rodriguez's contribution works out to be 68% of the M's total WAR production from the position. Without him the M's would have averaged ~ 1/2 a WAR per season.

Best M's SS of All Time: Alex Rodriguez

Worst M's SS of All Time: Mario Mendoza