Sporcle Friday: Best Mariners DH’s of all time

If you were hiding from the news yesterday (and to be honest, I couldn’t blame you), you may have missed the fact that the Mariners traded away Carlos Santana, ending his brief run as a Seattle Mariner. In return, they received various tidbits, the least tidbitty of which was Edwin Encarnación.

Unfortunately, it seems likely that Encarnación’s time as a Mariner is destined to be as brief as Santana’s. For a moment there, we could pretend like we had a real answer at designated hitter.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Daniel Vogelbach hater. I just don’t think he’s a lock for, well, any WAR at all. DH hasn’t been a slot in the lineup that the Mariners have really had to worry about for the past four years. Nelson Cruz tends to spoil a team. Well, we’re about to find out really quick just how spoiled we were.

To help mourn our new Nelson-sized hole in the lineup, lets look at some of the best (and worst) DH seasons in Mariners history. This list is every Mariner who played for at least 81 games, played at least 75% of those games at DH, and accrued more than 0 oWAR. For those that aren’t familiar, oWAR is the same as bWAR (the Baseball Reference version of the statistic), but defensive contributions are excluded entirely.