Jerry Dipoto Lengthened the Mariners’ Roster and Opened the Window of Contention

The top of the Mariners’ roster is as good as it’s been in years. This is hardly surprising; not having been especially close to a playoff spot in 14 years tends to mean your players aren’t very good. This sort of analysis is why I am paid the big bucks. While the performance of the stars has pushed the Mariners into a wild card lead and within spitting distance of the Astros, Jerry Dipoto’s work on the back of the roster is what will—if he can keep it up—hold the Mariners’ window open long enough for the farm system to rejuvenate (before you scroll to the comments, yes, there are several unspoken premises there you may disagree with; I understand.)

I’m going to use fWAR, the blunderbuss of analytical tools here, but I’ll include at least a few finer-tuned pieces of information in the tables to come so that you can see under the hood. For any successful team, you need the star production that we have this year; Mitch Haniger, Jean Segura, Marco Gonzales, and James Paxton have been that core of stars for the Mariners even before you get to Nelson Cruz or Kyle Seager or Robinson Canó. Thankfully for us, those first four have a combined sixteen years of club control—and they’re all still (for now) on the right side of thirty. It’s the unsexy back end players, though, that have really kept this year’s Mariners squad afloat. Those back end players are what did the previous regime in, and they—combined with the club control on our talented players—are what can keep the Mariners alive for seasons to come.

There’s a lot to like here at the top, as I said, but almost as much to like at the bottom. The negative value 2018 Mariners haven’t hurt the team much—Ryon Healy’s value is dragged down severely by his defensive metrics (of which I am a skeptic) and his baserunning (seriously, stop weighting GIDPs so much in fWAR, fangraphs), and of the four pitchers to be on pace for more than -0.4 fWAR (a baseline you’ll understand shortly), they are gone (Tacoma), gone (DFA), gone (Tacoma), and hurt (with no real spot on the roster upon return). This is about to get dark, so I apologize, but now let’s do the same thing for the 2015 Mariners.

I first came across this little factoid a week ago and I still can’t believe it. The 2015 Mariners had ten—TEN!—position players generate -0.4 fWAR or worse. (This is why I chose that benchmark.) Throw in four pitchers—combining for over 130 IP—at the same mark and it’s a lot easier, suddenly, to see how 2015 was such a disaster and Jack Zduriencik lost his job. Every team needs stars, but the back end of a roster is where you can prop your team up and keep it afloat—giving it the puncher’s chance at the playoffs, so long as you have enough talent as the engine.

I have tortured the mobile readers of this article with tables long enough, so I will avoid dropping four more tables in here, but there are two more seasons in recent years that further illustrate this. The 2017 Mariners used 40 pitchers and 22 position players. A remarkably balanced offense saw eight players from 1.7 fWAR (though none over 3.8) and seven above-league average hitters (and Ben Gamel’s 99 wRC+). At the back end, though, five players dropped below that -0.4 fWAR mark. Not as strong of an effort as 2018 (again, as with the pitching, the biggest poor performers to date are Mike Marjama and Ichiro Suzuki, who are both obviously no longer playing), but not awful.

Flip to the pitching tab for that season, though, and you see something that is maybe enough of a miracle to open Jerry Dipoto’s cause for canonization: despite using 40 pitchers in a single season, exactly one of those pitchers was worth -0.4 fWAR or worse (thank you for your service, Sam Gaviglio.) Indeed, of the 14 pitchers to generate negative value, they did so in a very reasonable way, totaling a mere -2.7 fWAR. Compare this to the 2015 squad, whose negative pitchers totaled -3.8 fWAR.

Even Jack Zduriencik’s best team doesn’t compare terribly well when you look at the back end. The pitching wasn’t bad at all, with only Erasmo Ramírez dropping under the -0.4 fWAR mark, but the hitting was a disaster on the back end, with four players at -0.6 fWAR or worse and a total from negative players of -4.5 fWAR. Indeed, ask any Mariners fan about their negative memories of that season and surely one of the first two names you hear through gritted teeth will be Austin Jackson (boy, I was excited about that trade) or Kendrys Morales.

Two and a half years and one extension into his tenure in Seattle, Dipoto’s methods are still polarizing; as with any executive, non-Luhnow/Epstein category, there is ample room for criticism. While there have been some clunkers (whither Chris Taylor?), the future looks a lot brighter in Seattle for the next 4-5 seasons that most of us thought two years ago. That’s for a variety of reasons—the Jean Segura/Mitch Haniger trade means we finally have a franchise-altering trade in a good way—but don’t discount Dipoto’s ability to assemble a competent bottom third of the 25-man roster as one of the bigger factors.

Trader Jerry jokes aside, the pace of transactions has slowed drastically since 2016, as he swapped older and expiring assets in favor of youth and control. Youth still needs to produce—we’ll see how the Healy situation resolves in August and this offseason—but by adding competent back end players and years of control, Dipoto has bought himself time to build a farm system back from ashes; the next thing for us to hope he hits on is his progressive player development strategy. If he does, things may well be sunny in Seattle for years to come.