The Best Mariners Team Ever: A Comparison to 2014

One time, the Seattle Mariners were amazing!

In 2001, the Mariners won 116 games in the regular season.  They did not win the World Series, because winning a World Series requires talent + luck.  The Mariners did not have luck when they needed it (the American League Championship Series).  But they did have talent!  They were easily the most talented team in Major League Baseball in 2001, because:

(a) they totaled 62.7 WAR, over 11 WAR higher than the next-highest team, and

(b) they totaled 116 regular season wins, 14 wins higher than the next-highest team.  

It is indisputable that, heading into the playoffs, the team with the best chance to win the 2001 World Series was the Seattle Mariners, and any argument to the contrary ignores facts and circumvents logic.  The fact that the 2001 Mariners did not win the World Series is explained by random variation – nothing else.  I would write an entire blog post on this, but this point is already obvious.

WAR is cool because it allows to to compare teams across different seasons, and who play in different leagues and different ballparks.  So, for example, last year’s World Series-winning Red Sox were worth 58.3 WAR.  At 62.7 WAR, the 2001 Mariners were significantly better than the 2013 Red Sox.

So, this 2001 Mariners team is clearly the standard-bearer for future Mariners teams.  What can we learn from this remarkable team?

Well, first, to be truly outstanding once again, a future Mariners team does not need to look exactly like the 2001 team.  There are an infinite number of ways to get to 116 wins (or thereabouts).  But, we can look at the 2001 team, compare it to the 2014 team, and see where the largest differences exist.  Maybe this tells us something.

Okay, so how do we know what the 2014 team will look like?  There have definitely been a lot of changes since the end of the 2013 season, so we cannot just look at the end-of-season, realized data from 2013. 

Recently, the ZIPS projections came out for the 2014 Seattle Mariners.  What is a ZIPS projection?  It's one of the most-respected and proven baseball projection systems available: click here for more info.

Below is a table of the 2014 ZIPS-projected Mariners, as compared to the 2001 team (actual results). For these purposes, I selected the top 13 position players by WAR and top 12 pitchers by IP, for each team.  I am omitting athletes beyond these 25, because they are not consequential for the analysis.

There are some amazing things to be learned from this:

• The position players in 2001 were vastly superior than they are likely to be in 2014, but less than 50% of the difference comes from hitting.  Instead, defense and baserunning explain the majority of the difference in the position players.
• Overall, 2001 positional players were worth 44.7 WAR, versus 26.2 WAR for 2014, a difference of 18.5 wins.
• The defensive component of this alone was a whopping 106 runs, or 10.6 wins.  (10 runs saved/created on defense is approximately equal to one win. Click here for more info on that.) 
• The 2001 team stole 171 bases, while the 2014 team is only forecast for 103.  This is an indication that the baserunning in 2001 was much better than it will be in 2014.
• The 2014 Mariners are actually forecasted to hit more HR than the 2001 team did (175 versus 167)
• The 2001 Mariners' OBP blows away the 2014 team's.
• 2001 Mark McLemore would have been the 3rd best position player on this 2014 team!  (He was sixth-best in 2001.)
• The three best position players in 2001 were worth an incredible 19.3 WAR.  Today's top 3 position players will be closer to 12.6 WAR.
• Ichiro was the man in 2001!  He struck out in less than 8% of plate appearances!
• Evan with superstars Felix Hernandez and Hisashi Iwakuma, the pitching in 2001 was much better than 2014 pitching is projected to be (19.2 WAR versus 10.0 WAR)... and, it's mostly because of the bullpen. 
• Rhodes, Sasaki and Nelson were worth a whopping 5.2 WAR, while the entire 2014 bullpen is expected to be basically replacement-level (zero WAR).  5.2 WAR out of your bullpen - let alone just 3 pitchers - is incredible.

What's the single-biggest takeaway?  To me, it's amazing that the same top management that created a miracle of an offense in 2001 - players with high-OBP, high-AVG, elite defense and baserunning - has somehow decided that HR's are the most important element of a hitter, and stocked their lineup with players of this profile in recent years. 

The Mariners were #2 in HR last year, in all of MLB!  Yet these same position players were one of the worst in MLB, because they had low OBP and horrendous defense.

HRs are loosely correlated with wins, but when you sacrifice other aspects - like K%, BB% and ISO - for the sake of HR, you damage the offense.

The Mariners need to return to their philosophy of 2001.  They know exactly how to form a winner.  Now, do it again.  Chances are, it will result in a World Series victory next time.