STARTERS

Click to enlarge. 2009 Mariners SP tRA for August 2009. Source StatCorner.com

After a terrible July in which the rotation posted a 6.31 tRA, they only got marginally better with a 5.94 mark in August.

DOUG FISTER: This is being covered a lot lately so I will keep it short and retro looking only. The 9.5% swinging strikes was fantastic and completely out of character and expectation for Doug Fister. We will all be watching in September to see if he can keep it up. If he cannot and it tumbles to average or slightly below it will be important to see if then he starts moving more out of the zone, which could hurt his walk rate. GRADE: B

LUCAS FRENCH: French has been one hand a slight disappointment since coming over from Detroit and on the other, a perfect match for our expectations. He has, as previously pointed out around here, been a near perfect match for Jarrod Washburn, which is great because French is ten years younger and ours cost-controlled for another six seasons. Even if he doesn't get any better than he is now, that's useful. I've been slightly disappointed however because his core numbers were better in Detroit than they have been in Seattle. He's not throwing enough strikes mainly. The home runs will regress themselves a bit and other than that, everything is decent to fine. Just throw more strikes, Luke. GRADE: C-

FELIX HERNANDEZ: Felix cooled off in August from his torrid June and July months. The missed bats were still there, but the ground balls fell a little bit again to 50% and the walks crept up a touch. It was still a solid month and one marked with long outings which were useful to keep strain off the bullpen, but a little fewer walks and little more ground balls would be reassuring. GRADE: B

RYAN ROWLAND-SMITH: We got to expand our two start sample size from last month and Rowland-Smith took a tiny step forward from where he was last season when he was at 64% (now at 65%!) and 7% swinging strikes (now at... 7%...!!). Okay, so it seems like RR-S is exactly the same pitcher as he's always been. However, there is one big difference. Last year, RR-S had one of the lowest strikeout rates for a pitcher with his pitch profile. He had enormous trouble putting hitters away. This season that has regressed, upping his strikeout rate a couple points and additionally lowering his walk rate a touch. GRADE: C+

IAN SNELL: Less than 60% strikes is bad. A 28% line drive rate is horrendous. A home run per five innings is terrible. More walks than strikeouts is craptacular. Ian Snell needs to get a lot better. GRADE: F

JASON VARGAS: Vargas had one start and it did not go well. GRADE: N/A

GRADE: C-

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RELIEVERS

2009 Mariners RP tRA for August 2009. Source StatCorner.com

The Mariners bullpen in August was legitimately decent and this time not just because they limited home runs on fly balls as their rate of one per 27 batters faced was only slightly better than one per 24 they allowed in July. No, instead they threw strikes (64.3%), missed bats (8.9%) and kept the ball on the ground (40.6%). As a result, they posted a 2.5 strikeout to free pass ratio for the month, a respectable number.

If it were not for Randy Messenger and Garrett Olson, not only would the entire unit look a lot better, but it would have amazingly consisted of just seven pitchers. As it is, just nine arms used in relief the entire month? That's low, especially when you exclude Doug Fister and his one inning of throw day relief at the end of a disaster game.

Welcome back good Shawn Kelley! You threw 71% strikes, a huge number and still missed double digit bats.

Welcome back good Mark Lowe! You threw 67.3% strikes, a good number for you and went back to missing a huge chunk of bats.

It doesn't look pretty on paper, or sound pretty on paper, or even look pretty in person, but David Aardsma, Mark Lowe, Shawn Kelley, Sean White and Chris Jakubauskas make up a decent pen. They give you two legit guys for strikeouts (Lowe, Aardsma), two guys for ground balls (White, Jak) and two guys to throw strikes (Kelley, Jak) and two guys (White, Jak) who can go long innings if needed. Toss in a lefty and a true mop up guy and you have your best guess at the 2010 bullpen when camp breaks.

GRADE: C

Record: 15-14, 68-64 overall
Position: 3rd, 11.0 games back of Anaheim
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DEFENSE

Source: FanGraphs. Standard caveats that this is only one measurement and a very small sample.

The Mariners didn't quite match the 22.3 UZR that they posted in July, but they still came right up to the 20 run mark in August, a feat almost more remarkable to have accomplished two months in succession.

ALL HAIL FRANKLIN GUTIERREZ!

Seriously, he's at about 4.5 WAR coming into September. Barring a collapse, he's going to be a five-win player. Adam Jones is at 2.0 WAR right now. Adam Jones plus Raul Ibanez are about 5.2. Gutierrez is amazing. Appreciate it more. You're not appreciating him hard enough!

Look! A number not in red next to our shortstop! I don't care all that much if Jack Wilson is going to get too much money next season, or that we might be able to replicate his value with Bill Hall and Jack Hannahan. Objectively, I'd rather keep Jack Wilson and be able to use Hannahan+Hall as either a 3B platoon or as dueling super subs giving our bench tremendous flexibility. Subjectively, wooooooooooo not yuni not yuni not yuni not yuni not yuni

Michael Saunders. He has range! He has... some difficulties at times, but the range is encouraging.

GRADE: A++

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HITTING

Click for full size. 2009 Mariners wOBA for August 2009. Source StatCorner.com

Griffey missed a good chunk of playing time this month, but still managed to smack out four home runs. He has not returned to 2007 form like some hoped, but he has avoided falling completely off a cliff and his willingness to platoon and stay off the field has kept him far from the worst case scenario that we imagined at the beginning of the season. He still isn't good, or useful in baseball terms, so if he wants to come back next year, I would likely only condone it if the role is as coach.

Wakamatsu said in his post game last night that Sweeney had been carrying this offense on his back. Um, no. He's a DH and he doesn't play often enough to do that, but he has been quite good thanks to seven extra base hits and six walks.

Russell Branyan's whiff rate rose above 40% :( Granted, that might have been tied to his increasingly painful back issue which sounds like it is going to sideline him for the remainder of the season. If so, I dearly hope he returns at a good price next season because he has been fun to watch and root for and hey, we have openings at DH and 1B!

Ichiro's contact rate plummeted, for him, this past month but it did nothing to damper his effectiveness. I will not believe that Ichiro can turn himself into a 25-homer guy when his speed goes until I see him do it, but if he does do it, I will be completely unsurprised.

Among our hitters this month, Mike Sweeney had the highest slugging percentage and Josh Wilson was second., the only two players to surpass the .500 mark. Oh and third was Jose Lopez, but he is at least a decent hitter.

There is no doubt in my mind that in a couple years when Dustin Ackley gets called up after just raking through the Minor Leagues, he will arrive in Seattle and promptly suck for three months. At least Michael Saunders does one thing and that's make the pitchers throw him strikes, as his swing% is the lowest of the whole team for August and his out of zone swing% is one of the lowest in baseball.

Kenji Johjima cannot catch a break.

All told the offense was about 6.5 runs below average after park adjustment. That's not good, of course, but for our offense, coupled with our defense, it comes out to our position players being about 14 runs above average, which is certainly decent to good overall.

GRADE: C

Record: 14-13, 53-50 overall
Position: 3rd, 9.0 games back of Anaheim
PECOTA Playoff Odds: 0.6% (-22%)
CoolStandings Odds: 1.6% (-13%) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DEFENSE

Source: FanGraphs. Standard caveats that this is only one measurement and a very small sample.

The Mariners defense was outstanding in April, when they racked up a +7.3 UZR. They slowed down to a +3.4 figure in May, leaving them at +10.7 total, a very good number. Their UZR for the month of June was 12.1 which was insane.

Well here comes something beyond insane, 22.3 UZR in July!! AHHH

As it was in June, a big part of that massive, throbbing UZR came from an absence of any drains with just three members in the red. And on that topic, yes, Chris Woodward is pretty mediocre. No, I am not worried about either Ichiro or Jack Wilson.

Left field was split between three members for the month. Together, they combined to post a 13.9 UZR. So much for missing Endy Chavez. Those three plus more awesome from Gutierrez and further proof that Jack Hannahan is useful piece to this team made up the bulk of the positives for the month.

GRADE: A+++

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HITTING

Click for full size. 2009 Mariners wOBA for July 2009. Source StatCorner.com

Griffey was Griffey, drawing some walks, not getting as many hits as he might have deserved given his line drive rate. His 3.1% home run per ball in air rate was quite poor and a big reason why Griffey came in with a negative bRAA. There are a lot of indicators here that would lean toward bad luck and some positive regression coming, but when you have an aging slugger, sometimes you have to factor in that he is teetering toward or over the edge of being an actual Major League player. Wait and see I suppose.

Russell Branyan saw his BABIP take another tumble in July, down to .158. The good news is that his swing and contact rates are still in line with his overall season numbers and his walk to strikeout rates were stable and the power was still present. The singles should come back to his now-regressed season line.

I have a fear that Chris Woodward, who sucks, is going to have a decent enough month of July while the Mariners fiddle about, and become the new Mike Morse, championed by those that ignore the tenets of statistical analysis. I guess there are worse things that could happen, like him sucking and the team tanking. Can we just find a real third baseman please?

Whew. Crisis averted!

Ichiro's power fell off this month, but other than that, a standard Ichiro month. Sure would be nice to see a couple home runs though. I had hopes of him reaching double digits this season. Rob Johnson certainly showed me, responding with a .373 wOBA for the month with parity in the walks and strikeouts for an .810 OPS. He even lined nearly 30% of his batted balls. Woweee, Rob. Who knew you had it in ya? His catching partner did not have a terrible month either, though Kenji did really lack for extra base hits, with just a lone double.

Another five home run month of Franklin Gutierrez who is starting to look like a potential 25-homer guy with legitimate Gold Glove defense in center field. His .413 wOBA topped the team in July. Jose Lopez tried to keep pace with four dingers himself. Lopez has really improved his contact rates, up to nearly 90% last month.

Michael Saunders has some adjusting left to do.

All together,a .249/.307/.381 combined line. Their .309 team wOBA (NB: not park adjusted) was worth -27.9 runs over average. Not a good month for the hitters at the plate and amazingly enough, it was so bad that it managed to cancel out their superb defensive efforts and then some. They get a D- instead of an outright F because of their cumulative 20.3 line drive rate suggests some bad luck with the .286 BABIP.

GRADE: D-

STARTERS

Click to enlarge. 2009 Mariners SP tRA for July 2009. Source StatCorner.com

After an average June, the Mariner rotation got absolutely destroyed in the month of July. It was one of the worst performances since Spinal Tap rocked out the United States Air Force. They compiled a 6.31 tRA, a gruesome figure that added up to a -21.7 runs above average mark for the month. On to the individual assessments.

ERIK BEDARD: We only got two starts out of Bedard in June. We doubled that to four in July, though none were able to last even six innings and only one even reached the fifth inning. The culprit was inefficiency, as it usually is with Bedard, but taken to the extreme this time. Bedard was hamstrung by low pitch counts as he attempted to work his way back from injury, but, and this is incredible, averaging 4.4 pitches per batter faced is no way to work. On the plus side, Bedard returned to missing bats with a much improved 12.7% rate. His ground ball rate was solid as well, but a 17% walk rate is unacceptable and just 17.1 innings over 339 pitches is a waste. GRADE: D

FELIX HERNANDEZ: Felix carried the rotation in the month of June with a 2.77 tRA and 8.6 runs above average. Well, he did his best to repeat those exact numbers in July with a 2.81 tRA and 8.3 runs above average. Felix's swinging strikes took another dip, but again, 9.7% is still excellent. The batted ball profile remained solid, but it might be time to accept that the version of Felix that issued ground balls like Jack Johnson issues bland and mellow vaguely rock songs is gone and probably not ever coming back. I guess I can settle with this version. Oh yeah, he cut his walks in half from June. GRADE: A

BRANDON MORROW: Yeah, the positive things that I said last month all decided to run away and leave just the negatives to stick around and taunt me at night, leaving me to wake up in a cold sweat craving, but unable to eat, sweets. In June, Morrow parked a ground ball rate over 50%. In July it went to 22% which was roughly a third of his fly ball plus line drive rates. His control got even worse, though he did regress the overall walk rate a bit. He also missed a few more bats, proving that his pitches are just slightly less apt to miss the hitter's bat as they are the catcher's intended target. In the end, the individual pitch results were raw but still promising, the batted balls were not. Morrow got spanked. GRADE: D-

GARRETT OLSON: I was worried about Olson's batted ball profile in June. It got worse in July, and the home runs came even more frequently. That would have been bad enough, but hey, why not walk a man per inning? Because it is bad for your team, Garrett, that is why not. GRADE:F

RYAN ROWLAND-SMITH: Yes! Our Aussie returns to the Majors. Just a two start sample size, so there is not much to say other than that Rowland-Smith looks so far exactly like the pitcher he was last year out of the rotation. Which is fine. GRADE: N/A

JASON VARGAS: Continue beholding Jason Vargas's changeup; a pitch that generated a swinging strike rate of 11% in July, up from 8.7% in June. Vargas lost his luck in avoiding issuing walks based on his strike profile and rather than his home run rate regressing to his fly ball rate, his fly ball rate regressed to his home run rate. Oops. GRADE: D+

JARROD WASHBURN: You traded him! Washburn posted a .245 BABIP in June to mask how poorly he actually pitched, but he really stepped it up in July riding his man-trust in Rob Johnson to a .192 BABIP and some nifty Detroit Tigers prospects and a legion of fans that think he's somehow pitching at the top of the league. Washburn's strike rate and swinging strike rate are already moving closer to his average numbers and his strikeout rate is following. Whatever, he is gone! For at least a few months! GRADE: B

GRADE: D

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RELIEVERS

2009 Mariners RP tRA for July 2009. Source StatCorner.com

The bullpen shook off the horrible May to return to being slightly above average in June, logging 1.1 runs over average. The issue, again is that they did it by limiting the home run (one per 60 batters faced this month) and May showed what happens when that non-skill regresses.

The bullpen shook off the slightly above average June to return to being bad in July, logging -5.9 runs over average. The issue, again is that the home runs stopped being caught at the wall and instead, to a tune of one per 24 batters faced this month, flew over the fence.

David Aardsma remained solid in July, though not near his dominant June. Actually, over half the bullpen turned in solid July's. Miguel Batista, Chris Jakubauskas and Shawn Kelley ruined the month as no three people have since the Kingsmen ruined Louie, Louie. A combined 12 home runs allowed from the trio over 174 batters faced, compared to the rest of the pen allowing three home runs over 192 batters.

Sean White lost some of his groundballiness, but did a decent job limiting walks and threw a remarkable amount of strikes for him. Mark Lowe missed bats and even threw strikes, punching out 12 over 12.2 innings. Roy Corcoran...was released. Even Garrett Olson looks much better out of the pen. There is a grab bag here for those predisposed to looking either at the positive or negative side of things.

GRADE: D+

The Mariner players' first half performances as things that can happen to you in the car.

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David Aardsma: somebody texts you a happy score update of a big game, the beginning of which you have to miss because your boss made you work late and you've had it with these stupid East Coast start times.

Wladimir Balentien: somebody texts you a sad score update of said game.

Miguel Batista: somebody texts you a score update of the game, but when you reach into your pocket to see if it's happy or sad, a police officer drives by, sees you, pulls you over, and writes you a ticket.

Erik Bedard: the air conditioner keeps shutting off every few minutes, and while it always manages to fix itself, you wish it would just turn on and stay on because it's a hundred degrees outside and you don't want to roll down the window.

Adrian Beltre: you use the same six-hour permit on your dashboard to park downtown four nights in a row. On the fifth night, you get caught and your car is towed.

Yuniesky Betancourt: the cop that pulled you over for texting while driving hands you the ticket then punches you in the face for being such a sad little fairy.

Russell Branyan: drive-in movie with the prom queen who didn't win because of her intellect. And the movie is Braveheart or something.

Ronny :(edeno: sometime during the night a cat climbs up and dies in your engine.

Endy Chavez: you clean your window, but the wiper fluid leaves some messy streaks and when you try to make those go away you run out of liquid.

Ken Griffey Jr: every time you turn on your vent or air conditioner, it introduces a little tolerable but annoying constant static to your iPod playback.

Franklin Gutierrez: you're driving down a desert freeway and you see a hitchhiker and even though you don't usually do things like this you decide to pull over and pick him up and the hitchhiker is Mitch Hedberg who's alive somehow and vows to repay you with hours of comedy.

Felix Hernandez: reaching for some change to pay for your drive-through coffee, you open up the container you keep under the seat and find $200 in cash that you got from an ATM, stored away, and forgot about.

Chris Jakubauskas: no matter how many times you adjust the rear-view mirror, it keeps slipping out of position and giving you a view of the back seat. But you just re-upholstered the back seat and it looks nice, so that's something.

Kenji Johjima: the switch to electronically move your seat forward and back is broken, so you have to move it yourself with that lever that's by the floor that got all sticky when you dropped that one soda.

Rob Johnson: the cupholder is too wide and too shallow, so every time you drive with a drink you have to lean forward a little and awkwardly position yourself so that you can hold it in place.

Shawn Kelley: you get into the car just in time to hear your favorite radio station kick off an hour block of BRMC.

Ryan Langerhans: during the hour block the DJ mentions that BRMC will be coming to town on Friday with Maximo Park as the opener.

Jose Lopez: leaving work to drive home, you notice that the gas light is on, but you decide, what the hell, I'm gonna go for it.

Mark Lowe: you're driving around with a friend and you mention to her "hey you know what song I heard this morning that's really annoying? Lights by Journey. I fucking hate that song" and your friend nods and twenty seconds later she starts to sing Lights by Journey.

Brandon Morrow: on a six-hour nighttime drive through the plains to meet up with friends at the cabin in the morning, the car's GPS breaks and you lose all sense of direction.

Garrett Olson: you drive home and nothing happens.

Carlos Silva: you're driving around a lonely stretch of highway when your car starts to smell funny, and it breaks down just as you're crossing the train tracks, and then the railroad barriers sound off and lower themselves, and then your doors jam and won't open, and OH MY GOD THERE'S A COBRA IN THE GLOVE COMPARTMENT

Ichiro Suzuki: you bring dinner home to have a pleasant in-house date night with your significant other and your car smells like fresh pizza and mozzarella sticks for a week.

Mike Sweeney: lost in an unfamiliar neighborhood, you pull over and get very bad directions from a very nice man.

Jason Vargas: In-n-Out accidentally gives you an extra double-double free of charge.

Jarrod Washburn: getting an oil change and buying new tires improves your car's performance by a couple mpg.

Sean White: already running late, you spill scalding hot coffee in your lap and drive all the way to work in blinding discomfort.

Assorted others: you're wasted but not fit to drive home so you recline the seat and fall asleep.

Part two of a two-part series. Awwww yeahhhh

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David Aardsma: A-. Aarsdma's been quite a find, helping to somewhat stabilize a bullpen that was sent into disarray by Brandon Morrow. The strikeouts are way up, and he's only had a couple meltdowns through three months. My only concern is that he allows a ton of fly balls, many of them deep. He's definitely benefited from a big park and an awesome defense. He hasn't pitched as well as his ERA.

Miguel Batista: D. It's interesting to me that people don't realize how bad he still is. That 2008 must've left quite the impression.

Erik Bedard: B. Pitched well a lot of the time he was on the mound, but he didn't spent enough time on the mound, and there's not much consistency start-to-start. While it's great that his shoulder MRI came up clean, in some ways mysterious discomfort is worse than the stuff you can explain. I feel about Erik the way aviophobes feel about an overseas vacation.

Felix Hernandez: A. Felix may be a 23 year old All Star with a million-dollar contract and a billion-dollar arm, but I bet he doesn't have an emergency survival blanket in his pocket. You may think you're some kind of hotshot, but come wintertime, we'll see which one of us gets to enjoy complete thermal protection from rain and snow.

Chris Jakubauskas: D+. A few months ago I mentioned how much I liked Jakubauskas' curveball. Recently Harry Pavlidis did some work at Beyond The Box Score showing that Jakubauskas' curve has the lowest swinging strike rate of any curve in the Majors. I will never understand why anyone takes me seriously anymore.

Shawn Kelley: C. Kelley generally did good work on the mound, but he missed a lot of time and his most recent appearances show that he's still not all the way right. I both love Shawn Kelley and wish that he weren't probably the second-most dependable arm in the bullpen.

Mark Lowe: C. Too many balls and far too much contact for a guy with his stuff. USE YOUR CHANGEUP IT WILL HELP YOU AGAINST THOSE SINISTER LEFTIES

Brandon Morrow: C-. The best pitching prospect in our system has 127 games of Major League experience.

Garrett Olson: D+. I like having Olson around, and he has a little decent upside as a 4/5 starter, but his stuff gives him so little margin for error that it's basically impossible for me to feel comfortable in any situation where he's on the mound. I think that's the biggest reason why his bases loaded Houdini act the other day was so incredible. He doesn't miss many bats and he too often struggles to find the strike zone. Hurry up, RRS. And don't take this the wrong way, but you should hurry up too, Brandon.

Carlos Silva: F. Every day for the past three weeks I've thought about posting "Today's Fun Fact: Carlos Silva is still a Mariner" but I couldn't bring myself to do it, so now I'm doing it here. Only $25m left on the books after this season! Silva is living(?) proof that the big league DL system is a farce. Yeah, yeah, he has some wear and tear. That's not why he's sitting. He's sitting because oh my god why why would you ever let him pitch

Jason Vargas: C+. The more I see of him, the more I fall in love with Vargas' changeup. Between that and his ordinary but left-handed breaking ball, he's a starter who's not likely to run a big platoon split. Considering he's not even getting expensive yet, he was one hell of a throw-in, a guy I barely even noticed when we made the trade. I'm worried about how well he'll hold up down the stretch after not throwing in 2008, but to date, he's been quite good for what he is.

Jarrod Washburn: B-. Last year's litmus test of baseball intelligence was Raul Ibanez's defense. This year's is Jarrod Washburn's value as a pitcher. Washburn has taken a step forward - listen to me, everybody, Washburn has taken a step forward - but he's still not very good, and people who want to offer him arbitration or sign him to an extension are pants-on-arms crazy. He's been neat for three months, though. You know what else is neat? This emergency survival blanket. The package says it can be used as a signaling device for air support, and I work right next to Miramar, but for some reason when I took it for a field test the pilots got all uppity.

Sean White: C-. He's last year's Roy Corcoran, only with like 25% less of the only thing that made last year's Roy Corcoran any good. Speaking of percentages, this emergency survival blanket retains 90% of body heat. Great for survival, and great for taking warm pies to a picnic! White probably deserves a D or a D+, but he's flukily avoided home runs, so whatever. I wonder if people back home refer to him as the pride of Pullman. That would suck for Pullman.

Assorted Others: Irrelevant. When Roy Corcoran's on, he covers the ground with his sinker, but nothing covers the ground quite like this emergency survival blanket.

These posts are always boring. You probably shouldn't even read them.

Note that all grades are subjective as I'm pretty much going off the top of my head and not applying any sort of scientific equation. Why? Because report cards like these are meaningless. Onward!

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Wladimir Balentien: F. People will argue that Wlad wasn't given enough of an opportunity, but the only thing he did to deserve one was be born in the mid-80s. Other than that, he sucked. Didn't walk, didn't make contact, didn't hit for power. For better or worse, he's finished here.

Adrian Beltre: C+. Called it quits just as he was getting hot at the plate. Didn't hit for nearly enough power, which caused our lineup great distress, but his defense was so damn good that he was an overall asset and I can't wait to get him back.

Yuniesky Betancourt: F. Some people used to say that Yuni had a lot of potential to go from being good to great. Other people used to say that he was already close to his ceiling and unlikely to improve much further. Yuni defied both groups by getting worse at everything, and for his transgressions he's been given a sentence in the baseball equivalent of Pelican Bay.

Russell Branyan: A. So much more than we expected. If you're wondering why we're not hearing more from fans and the media about how the Mariners missed out by not re-signing Raul Ibanez, look no further than Russ.

Ronny :(edeno: F.On the plus side, the list of things Ronny hasn't done to hurt the team is longer than the list of things he has.

Endy Chavez: B-. Hit like expected, played defense like expected, lost a battle to Yuni's considerable mass as expected. Turns out there is such thing as too much range after all.

Ken Griffey Jr.: C-. The walks are nice, but it'd be great if he would hit a little bit. I'm giving him some bonus tickle points. I didn't think much of it at first, but then yesterday I saw a rattlesnake curled up in my backyard and I wanted to know if it was sleeping or dead but I couldn't muster the courage to poke it or even throw a rock near it to see if it would move, so Junior's more brave than I gave him credit for. On the other hand, my girlfriend poked the snake with a baseball bat and then took pictures of it from two feet away, so maybe Griffey's normal and I'm just a pussy.

Franklin Gutierrez: A. I can't decide if I want to buy home, away, or alternate.

Kenji Johjima: D. Listen up, Kenji. You either need to start hitting or collapse completely. I'm sick of this debate.

Rob Johnson: D. You too. Do the opposite of whatever Kenji does.

Ryan Langerhans: B. He hasn't been here too long, but already we've seen the walks, the gap power, the defense, and the strikeouts. The upside of Endy getting hurt is that we wound up with a better and younger player in his stead. Saunders is playing well again, so I don't know how much more Langerhans we're going to get to see, but he's a way better player than he's been given credit for.

Jose Lopez: B-. The defense is subpar, but if you regress his BABIP to something more reasonable, it turns out he's pretty decent. Not my favorite player, but he's done a good job of answering questions regarding the sustainability of his 2008-level offense.

Ichiro Suzuki: A. A for Amazing!

Mike Sweeney: D-. I'm convinced that Sweeney cares more about this team than the coaches do. I'm always suspicious of people who make such a good first impression. What are you hiding, Mike?

Assorted Others: Irrelevant. I love that Josh Wilson is getting a Major League paycheck to run sometimes. I remember there was an article in SI a few years back where Todd Pratt said he had the easiest job in baseball. Suck it, Todd.

STARTERS

Click to enlarge. 2009 Mariners SP tRA for June 2009. Source StatCorner.com

After a rough May, the rotation rebounded a touch to post an almost exactly average month. The rotation's 4.87 collective tRA was worth -0.1 runs against average. 

ERIK BEDARD: We only got two starts out of Bedard in June and he has been on the shelf since. GRADE: C-

FELIX HERNANDEZ: Felix is the reason the rotation came out looking average. He flat out dominated for the month of June. Felix did not maintain his crazy good May in terms of missing nearly 14% of bats, but his not quite 11% rate is still superb. The strikeout rate did rise a bit, up from 21.8% in May to 23% in June. Another couple points were added to his ground ball rate and allowing just a single home run all month really helps out the tRA. GRADE: A

BRANDON MORROW: Yeah, why not have him re-convert into a starter at the Major League level? The good news is that starting Morrow can still miss bats. The control is shaky, but that is hardly a surprise and it was not crippling. What was a surprise was the ground balls. It is almost like Morrow decided to try and become Felix this time around. His .391 BABIP has him looking a lot worse to most people than he has actually pitched. Make no mistake, Morrow still has the stuff to be a high ceiling pitcher. The question is going to be his health. In a sense, Morrow is like a four years ago Erik Bedard, except less awesome at all the non-baseball things. And while I still think he would be better off spending a couple month in Tacoma refining his regimen and command, with each start we might have to concede that Brandon Morrow might not need it. GRADE: B

GARRETT OLSON: Olson might be a useful back end starter after a little more work, but right now his batted ball profile is a real liability out of the rotation. Everything else is decent enough. He is not great at missing bats, but he threw enough strikes to not get himself into too many jams. If he can either miss bats more like he did out of the pen or at least return to an even split of ground and fly balls then he can pitch like a legit 4. Until then he is hopefully just place holding for Erik Bedard. GRADE: D

JASON VARGAS: Behold Jason Vargas's changeup. A pitch that generate a swinging strike rate of 8.7% for the month of June. Vargas got lucky avoiding issuing walks based on his strike profile, but he also got a bit unlucky on the long ball given a decent batted ball profile. Nothing spectacular here, but who is looking for spectacular with Jason Vargas? He pitched like an average American League starter! That is fantastic. GRADE: C

JARROD WASHBURN: I told you to trade him, morons. Thank god he had a .245 BABIP in June to mask how poorly he actually pitched. Move him, move him as soon as you get anything of value, including salary relief, in return. It is not all grim news in Washburn land. His swinging strike rate rose again, up another half a point in June so he might get a few more strikeouts back in July. GRADE: D+

GRADE: C+

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RELIEVERS

2009 Mariners RP tRA for June 2009. Source StatCorner.com

The bullpen shook off the horrible May to return to being slightly above average in June, logging 1.1 runs over average. The issue, again is that they did it by limiting the home run (one per 60 batters faced this month) and May showed what happens when that non-skill regresses.

The story of June clearly was David Aardsma taking it to another level. Sure, he still has shaky command, but the man has a beast of a fastball and a slider that he bust off when Rob Johnson gets a little ache in his pointer finger. David Aardsma faced 40 batters in June and struck out 20 of them, against just four walks and no home runs, or runs of any kind.

The bullpen benefited from a .244 BABIP in June, further reinforcing to everyone who looks solely at ERA that the bullpen is a strength. That is not true, but at least they stopped being a huge weakness and a solid 43% ground ball rate offered some hope for further home run not seeing them in the coming months.

GRADE: C+