At the start of last week (assuming you count Monday as the start. I do), I wrote two pieces for FanGraphs about relative pitcher strikeouts. They covered the worst and the best such rates in baseball history. They ended up not having anything to do with the Mariners so I didn't bother linking them here. So here's to rectifying that by creating a Mariners spin off! Will it be as short lived as the original series?

You can go read the original FanGraphs pieces for the back story if you want but the gist of the idea is that I wanted to examine pitcher seasons totally within the context of the rest of the baseball league for each season. Perhaps most noticeably, strikeouts have risen over time so what seems pedestrian to us now was actually dominance back in those terrible years of history.

What came out of the all-encompassing look was finding out that Ted Wingfield existed and that Dazzy Vance really deserves to be more of a household name among households that routinely discuss the greats in baseball history. He probably does not need to be mentioned amongst families that don't because that would just get weird.

I decided to get a little more advanced for the Mariner section because I love you all. I cleaned all of your gutters and bathroom tile just the way you like them to be cleaned. I have also included z-scores (since I canvassed the entire population of pitchers) in my charts and used that to decide what I think are the worst and best relative strikeout seasons in Mariner history. It's a slightly different definition from what I did with FanGraphs, and I'm not claiming it's a better one, but I like different.

The six most Mariner Mariners' seasons (min: 500 batters faced).

Poor Ryan :( I went to six solely so that I could include Carlos Silva here. You were terrible, Carlos. You were bad at pitching, unpleasant to watch and reportedly a bad teammate.

Glenn Abbott was the guy who I thought would top this list and it still gets me that Abbott was the Opening Day starter in 1979, but Bill Swift's 1988 season edged him out if you go by z-score. Abbott still has the lower relative strikeout rate, so I'm comfortable giving the title of worst strikeout season to either of them.

And because it maximizes the point, here are the seven most outlying (biggest z score) strikeout seasons in Mariner history.

Oh, Randy.

You might not be intuitively familiar with statistics (you should learn, even at a beginners level, it's a vastly helpful knowledge tool) and thus might not grasp how unlikely a z score over four is. With a normal distribution — of which these seasons closely approximate — a z-score of three represents the 99.9th percentile. Take that and add another standard deviation on top. A score of four or more (in either magnitude) is very rare. Randy Johnson was a special pitcher.

Bill Swift ended his career as a Seattle Mariner in 1998. I have absolutely no memory of that happening. As a 36-year-old, he made 26 starts on the team that traded Randy Johnson and relied on Ken Cloude to make 30 starts. I vividly remember watching Randy that season and I desperately hoped he would stay. I draw a complete blank on Bill Swift. Perhaps because his season was rather bad, but he did pitch nearly 145 innings so maybe I just didn't see those games. Any of them. Or maybe that was the year aliens landed in my town and I kept getting my mind blanked by Tommy Lee Jones. Anyways, more important than potential alien invasions is that Swift's final year was not a good one. He struck out 77 and walked or hit 59 over just near 145 innings.

Bill Swift began his career as a Mariner as well. Technically, I don't remember that either since it happened before I was born. Swift was a Mariner because in 1984 the Mariners drafted him second overall. That is fact number two about Bill Swift that I would not have gotten correct had you quizzed me. Really, Bill Swift was a number two overall draft pick? Wow.

Of course there's no saying who the Mariners should have selected instead. The Mets took Shawn Abner first that year and he never amounted to much. I don't know the scouting consensus pre-draft or even if such knowledge is findable on the web archives somewhere. I do know that Mark McGwire and a few other choice talents were taken later in the draft. Three more of them will play a minor part later in this story.

Swift, a college senior (he'd been drafted by the Twins in the second round a year prior) spent almost no time in the Minors before entering the Seattle rotation. He wasn't amazing with the strikeouts and walks, but despite the Kingdome's reputation for surrendering home runs, Swift did well avoiding them. We don't have a breakdown of batted balls back when Swift debuted, but starting in 1988 we do and for the next four years as a Mariner, Swift did post crazy good ground ball rates.

However, his ERA was quite outsized and starting in 1989, Swift was moved more and more to the bullpen until by 1991, his final season as a Mariner, Swift made zero starts. By now his strikeouts had risen and his walks decreased and Swift was a bona fide good reliever.

nBB = unintentional walks + batters hit by pitch

And then in the winter after the 1991 season, the Mariners traded Swift to San Francisco in a five player deal that brought back Kevin Mitchell. Kevin Mitchell had recently been really good, winning the 1989 MVP with a legitimately outstanding season. Candlestick Park had a neutral home run park factor for right-handers and Mitchell knocked 47 out of the park in '89, followed by 35 and 27 the next two years. That appears to signal a downward trend, but Mitchell's home run rate shows some drop off, but less than his raw totals indicate.

1989: 47 home runs, 640 plate appearances, 7.3% HR
1990: 35 HR, 589 PA, 5.9%
1991: 27 HR, 423 PA, 6.4%

As a Mariner, Mitchell hit well enough, but the awesome home run power turned into less impressive doubles power. He hit just nine home runs in 402 trips to the plate (2.2%) and played only 99 games for Seattle that season as injury problems continued. The team traded Mitchell to Cincinnati for Norm Charlton (1984 draft pick) and Mitchell became another example (foreshadowing) of a player getting better after leaving the Mariners. With Cincinnati in 1993-4, Mitchell still didn't play full time but over those two seasons got 733 plate appearances and posted a 1.048 OPS (172 OPS+). In 1993 Charlton pitched 34.2 innings. He didn't pitch in 1994 and wasn't a Mariner anyways. Don't worry, he'd come back twice more.

While all that transpired up north, the San Francisco Giants returned Bill Swift to the starting rotation and he kept right on with his newfangled getting hitters out way. He led the National League in ERA in his first season with the Giants. In the next, Swift made 34 starts, hurled 232.2 innings and had a 3:1 strikeout to walk ratio. He finished second in the Cy Young voting to Greg Maddux (1984 draft pick) and ahead of third place Tom Glavine (1984 draft pick).

Swift left the Giants after the 1994 strike season and signed with the Rockies. He never found success or health there though, working just 189 innings over three seasons. That set the stage for his farewell tour with Seattle in 1998 which ended his career as it began, as a Mariner starter with an inflated ERA.

I was getting prepared to start writing this, and then Matthew told me from the next room over that the Sounders just made a huge and hugely controversial trade. So it's not like this post is going to be read by anybody anyway, since Seattle-area sports fans are all reading about that. But I'm still going to get this out there, because my whole life people have told me that I shouldn't bottle things up, since that just leads to an explosion. You shouldn't ever bottle anything up. Except so, so many delicious things.

A link was passed along to me today, to a post on a blog called Plunk Everyone. Within the post, the author went team-by-team and identified the ten all-time players (each) who had the highest winning percentages when they were in the starting lineup. The example given in the intro is that the Diamondbacks won 58 percent of their games when Tony Womack was in the starting lineup. That example immediately tells you that what follows is more interesting than meaningful, but there's room for things to be both interesting and meaningful. I think the Mariners' list is both interesting and meaningful. The Mariners' list:

1. Mike Cameron, 61.3%
2. John Olerud, 58.7%
3. Bret Boone, 54.6%
4. Dan Wilson, 53.3%
5. Edgar Martinez, 51.6%
6. Alex Rodriguez, 51.2%
7. Jay Buhner, 49.1%
8. Ken Griffey Jr., 49.1%
9. Ichiro, 48.8%
10. Richie Sexson, 47.2%

I definitely wasn't expecting to see Richie Sexson pop up, but then it's not like 47.2% is anything to be proud of. More significant is the guy at the very top. The Mariners have had a higher winning percentage with Mike Cameron in the starting lineup than they have with any other player in the starting lineup in franchise history (given a 500-start minimum).

Setting the start minimum at 500 admittedly keeps the player pool pretty small. And a huge part of Cameron's record is that he was a Mariner at the right time, since those 2000-2003 teams were something else. But then Cameron was also a huge part of those 2000-2003 teams. According to Baseball-Reference, his four-year WAR was 19.0. According to FanGraphs, his four-year WAR was 19.7. Players with similar WARs over the same span of time: Jorge Posada, Larry Walker, Bret Boone and Shawn Green. I am very much aware of the limitations of WAR, but this is just to illustrate the point that Mike Cameron was fuckin awesome.

And then his contract ran out and the Mariners didn't offer him arbitration. He was 30 years old, coming off a season in which he was worth about five wins at a $7 million salary, and the Mariners didn't offer him arbitration. They just let him go. They signed Raul Ibanez for three years, and they just let Cammy go, without so much as a compensation pick. You can try to read the explanation here, but I should warn you that it's very stupid. We had a good idea that it was stupid at the time. We have a better idea that it was stupid now. So stupid. The Mike Cameron situation isn't why the Mariners went from being very good to very bad, but it was a contributor.

Mike Cameron: awesome Seattle Mariner, and current owner of a Seattle Mariners franchise record. It's a shame the way it wound up, but at least we got to have Cammy for a while, and at least for his sake he got out before shit turned rotten. I suppose it's all in how you look at it.

February 15 is a lot of things. It is today. On other days, it is not today. It is the day Giuseppe Zangara tried to assassinate FDR and shot Chicago's mayor instead. It is the day Sabena Flight 548 crashed in Belgium. It is the day Richard Feynman died. It is the day Conor Oberst was born. It is the day Johnny Cueto was born. It is the day Luis Ugueto was born. Luis Ugueto was born on this day, back in 1979. Today he is 33 years old for the first time in his life.

You might remember Luis Ugueto as Luis Ugueto. You might remember Luis Ugueto as the "Rule 5 kid." You might not remember Luis Ugueto at all. Luis Ugueto was a Seattle Mariner in 2002, and for a time in 2003.

Luis Ugueto was known as the Rule 5 kid because he was a kid taken in the Rule 5 draft. He was not taken by the Mariners, but the Mariners arranged for him to be taken by the Pirates, who then traded him to the Mariners for some money. This kind of thing happens a lot around the Rule 5 draft. I guess it's good that something happens around the Rule 5 draft.

Ugueto was a young infielder. The Mariners liked him because they had just traded infielder Ramon Vazquez to the Padres in the Ben Davis deal. Well, the Mariners liked him because their scouts liked him, but the Mariners liked him and acquired him because of the Vazquez thing. The Mariners wanted some versatility and legs. They figured Ugueto could provide versatility and legs. The year before, Ugueto played shortstop and second base and stole 22 bases. He also slugged .342 in single-A.

Ugueto went to Arizona, survived camp, and stuck with the team. He stuck with the team almost all year long, save for a DL stint in August. Rule 5 selections frequently end up on the DL for one reason or another, but Ugueto was listed as healthy for quite some time. He returned in September. He was not the Mariners' primary backup infielder - that was Desi Relaford. But Ugueto had a job on the bench.

He started three times. He batted 25 times. He mostly pinch-ran, as the roster had Dan Wilson, John Olerud, Edgar Martinez and Ruben Sierra on it. In his first appearance, he pinch-ran for Sierra and scored the tying run in the bottom of the ninth. In his first at bat, he struck out against Kenny Rogers. In his second at bat, he got his first hit, against Ben Weber. He homered off Lou Pote in July. The homer brought the Mariners to within 12 runs.

Though the Mariners were committed to Ugueto, he was a weird fit on the bench, and a lot of people didn't think he was worth keeping around. This was an organization, mind you, that had Willie Bloomquist at the ready. Objectively, Ugueto probably did the 2002 Mariners more harm than good. But the 2002 Mariners finished six games out of the Wild Card so it's not like Ugueto and his roster spot were the difference between playoffs and no playoffs. Just for fun, if Ugueto was the difference between playoffs and no playoffs, we would've been spared the Angels' world championship.

Because Ugueto lasted the season, he remained with the Mariners. He spent most of 2003 in double-A, where he didn't hit. He made 12 Major League appearances. He spent all of 2004 in triple-A, where he hit a little more. Then the Mariners dropped him and he signed with the Royals. Then he was suspended twice for violating baseball's steroid policy and he was dropped by the Royals. He played in Taiwan. He signed with the Twins. He was dropped by the Twins. He played in Italy. He wound up in the indy leagues. He hasn't appeared in the Majors since September 23, 2003, when he pinch-ran for Carlos Guillen, stole a base, and scored the tying run in the ninth against the Angels.

Luis Ugueto is 33. He spent part of last year on the same team as Jose Canseco and Tony Phillips. He's a former infield prospect who made it without really truly making it. He's a Venezuelan whose ability to play baseball allowed him to travel the world. Luis Ugueto has lived a life.

For those of you who read my post about the most extreme pitches hit for home runs during the 2011 season, this post is obviously inspired by that one. Earlier today I already put together and published the Mariners' version of the home run post. This is a joke about how the Mariners didn't hit any home runs. Here I want to examine something more Mariners-appropriate. I decided something more Mariners-appropriate would be bad swings.

Below you will find the five worst pitches at which a Mariners batter swung last year. For our purposes, the five worst pitches are the five pitches the furthest away from the center of the strike zone. I guess you could argue that these aren't actually the five worst swings, since there could've been just horrible swings at regular pitches. Maybe a guy fell down. But I would argue that the worst swings are the swings with the lowest chance of succeeding. Swings at pitches way out of the strike zone are probably the swings with the lowest chance of succeeding.

"This is pretty negative, Jeff," you might say. So were the 2011 Seattle Mariners. Did you watch the Mariners? Did you continue to watch the Mariners long after they faded away from relevance? I did. I watched them through to the bitter fuckin end. I'm entitled to treat their 2011 season however I want, and at the moment this is how I want.

You might assume that a countdown of the 2011 Mariners' five worst swings would be 100% Carlos Peguero. You'd be wrong. It's only 40% Carlos Peguero, which is twice as high as anybody else. It's 0% Miguel Olivo. You wouldn't believe how many times this made me re-check the data.

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I'm going to tell you a little story. It is a little story about how much I love Baseball-Reference. Not long ago, I was screwing around on Baseball-Reference. Ms. Jeff and I had plans. I got a call from Ms. Jeff, saying she would be later than anticipated. I was happy, because I got to screw around on Baseball-Reference for longer. That is how much I love Baseball-Reference.

Baseball-Reference has this tool. It actually has a zillion tools, but it has this one particular tool that allows you to look at all the trades ever made between two teams. You can play around with it here. I'd seen it before, but not for a while, and I was re-introduced to it today. It is an excellent tool, and pasted below is a table in descending order of how often the Mariners have traded with each other team since they came into existence. I believe it only tracks Major League trades, but we only really care about Major League trades. Off we go!

It's hardly a surprise to see the Padres at the top. There was a phase where it felt like the Mariners only ever traded with the Padres, and they made a new trade every month. The Padres are tied with the Indians, which is a little more of a surprise, but still not a big surprise. One of those trades brought the Mariners Jason Davis. Remember Jason Davis? I do, now.

Thanks to this exercise, I learned about the following pair of transactions:

June 27, 1993
Mariners trade Jeff Darwin and Henry Cotto to Marlins for Dave Magadan

November 9, 1993
Mariners trade Dave Magadan to Marlins for Jeff Darwin and cash

And that's how you turn Henry Cotto into cash.

The Diamondbacks are at the bottom. One reason that the Diamondbacks are at the bottom is because they just haven't been around that long. But then, the Mariners have swung five trades with the Rays. The last move the Mariners made with the Diamondbacks was dealing Ryan Langerhans for cash considerations. Before that, the only other move the Mariners have made with the Diamondbacks was dealing Greg Colbrunn and cash for Quinton McCracken. The Mariners gave up a first-round draft pick to sign Greg Colbrunn. Greg Colbrunn was a 33-year-old bench bat. The Mariners signed him when they already had John Olerud and Edgar Martinez.

Finally, the team the Mariners have gone the longest without trading with is the Angels. The Mariners have made a trade with every other team at least once since 2006. The haven't made a trade with the Angels since March 25, 1996, when they acquired Ricky Jordan for cash considerations. Jordan was a roster casualty in spring training. He was sent to the Mariners by general manager Bill Bavasi. He would bat 31 times with the Mariners, providing seven hits and a walk. He would never play in the Majors again.

When misfortune strikes the young, people have a tendency to assume the future. "He was going to be a superstar." "She was going to be a senator!" "They were going to be the best musicians Missouri's ever seen." The future is never knowable at any point, and I think most people understand that, but when one path gets blocked, all of a sudden people act like they're damn sure of what would've gone down. According to people, people are high achievers. Or at least, unfortunate people are would-be high achievers.

It's usually not true. I guess I can't prove that. Odds are, it's usually not true. Not every promising young person goes on to become an accomplished older person. So not every promising young person who suffers through life-changing misfortune would've gone on to become an accomplished older person otherwise. Some of them would've become average. Some of them would've become less.

It's almost certainly true in the case of Ryan Anderson. There are prospects who flame out, and then when you look back, you realize, well, I guess they weren't that good. Ryan Anderson was that good. Ryan Anderson was an outrageous prospect, well on his way to having an outrageous career.

Anderson was stopped by injuries. Devastating injuries, involving his shoulder. He's not unique in that regard. Shoulder injuries have ruined countless careers throughout baseball history, and they'll continue to do so in the future, albeit less and less often. What makes Anderson stand out is what he managed to do before the injuries became such a significant part of his life.

#23. #7. #9. #8. #14. The Mariners drafted Anderson in the first round in 1997. They drafted him a few picks after Lance Berkman, and one pick before Adam Kennedy. Those numbers represent where Anderson stood on Baseball America's lists of the top 100 prospects for the next five years. He shot to the top. He was ranked #14 overall before the 2002 season even though he hadn't thrown a pitch in a year and a half.

Maybe you prefer this list: #1, #1, #1, #1, #1. Those numbers represent where Anderson stood on Baseball America's lists of the Mariners' top prospects for the next five years. Ryan Anderson. He had a little hype.

And he deserved it. You probably remember that he was obnoxiously tall, checking in at 6'10. "Little Unit", and everything. You probably remember that he was a lefty with a high-90s fastball. What you might not remember are his numbers. The numbers he put up in the minors are staggering.

Anderson debuted with single-A Wisconsin at the age of 18. In 111.1 innings, he posted a K/9 of 12.3. That was second to A.J. Burnett's 14.1 among starters, but the next-closest competitor came in at 10.7. Burnett, by the way, was 21. Anderson was among the youngest players in the league.

The next year, Anderson moved up to double-A New Haven. In 134 innings, he posted a K/9 of 10.9. That was the best strikeout rate by a starter in the league. The next-closest competitor came in at 9.9. Anderson was the second-youngest pitcher in the league.

The next year, Anderson moved up to triple-A Tacoma. In 104 innings, he posted a K/9 of 12.6. That was the best strikeout rate by a starter in the league. The next-closest competitor came in at 9.9. Anderson was the second-youngest pitcher in the league.

Sure, Anderson's walks were a little elevated. Not surprising for a guy who got into so many deep counts. And there were concerns about his maturity and cockiness. But then again, he was a kid. He was a kid with unbelievable talent. Of course he'd have some growing up to do. Between three levels in his first three years, getting all the way up to triple-A, Anderson threw 349.1 innings over 66 starts and struck out 460 batters. That's flabbergasting. I can't remember the last time I used the word "flabbergasting". But Anderson's strikeout numbers flabbergast.

And then it was over. Anderson dominated in Tacoma, and then he got hurt, and hurt, and hurt. He had a very brief fling with the Brewers in 2005. It didn't go anywhere. In Anderson's last professional season of significance, he was a 20-year-old in triple-A with a league-leading strikeout rate. Poof.

I don't bring this all up to torture you. You don't need to be tortured. I don't bring this up as a cautionary tale for trying to build around young pitchers. You know it's risky to build around young pitchers. I bring this up because I happened across this article earlier in the morning from AZCentral.com. Quote:

"The Japanese want the vegetables to taste like vegetables, and along with appreciating the taste, they understand the health benefits of making vegetables such an important part of the cuisine," said Sushi Roku sous chef Ryan Anderson.

The story of Ryan Anderson leaving baseball's frustrations behind for a career in cooking is an old one. The man's still at it. It's a weird sensation to read his name in this context. He could've been so much. He could've been the best pitcher in the game. He's a sous chef. I didn't even know a sous chef was a thing until just a couple years ago. He's good at it, I'm guessing. He's happy at it, I'm guessing.

Ryan Anderson. It's not tragic. That isn't the word. He quit doing one thing his body couldn't do in order to do something else that it can. But, those numbers. Ryan Anderson, today, is 32 years old. He's the same age as Colby Lewis and Rick Ankiel. It's great for Ryan Anderson that he found something he's good at, but baseball's worse off without the career he could've and should've had.

When we offer up pitcher comparisons, it's typically not in a flattering light. Often we use it to show how two pitchers with differing won-loss records and/or ERAs have actually pitched very similarly and just been beneficiaries of different luck or defenses. The recent Randy Johnson and Felix Hernandez post was different and this comparison continues that more positive, initially, mood. Consider the following two pitching lines combined over a five season sample and park-adjusted.

Those are pretty similar, no? Pitcher A has the better strikeout and walk rates — by a hair — while Pitcher B has the better ground ball rate and seems to have better durability, but it's a bit of an unfair comparison because Pitcher A's (clue!) sample encompasses the 1994 and 1995 strike-shortened seasons. Four numbers do not tell a complete enough story of a pitcher to make a relative judgment, even if they are what I believe to be the four most important numbers. Characteristics like age, quality of opponents, fastball speed and such are necessary factors to consider as well. In that realm Pitcher B wins so please do not confuse this comparison with a claim that the two are equally good or desirable. I use it instead to highlight key performance similarities and because Pitcher B — Felix 2007-11 — is familiar to us while Pitcher A — at least this part of his career — is more forgotten. Have a guess as to the identity of Pitcher A?

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