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Spec's article up, "Since April 23, The. Best. Record. In. Baseball"

Which coincides with --- > Kyle Seager jumping into the ring with Robinson Cano, and Hisashi Iwakuma doing the same alongside Felix.

There has a been a sense, since late April, that the Mariners are well capable of "going to war" as Sweet Lou puts it.

The dynamics aren't complicated, in my view; with the 1-2 Cy Young pitchers and Rodney, and a cast of willing arms, the M's indeed have a championship pitching staff.  And now that there are two guys "who can drive in runs," the lineup can at least fight to support them.  

The result is that the Mariners don't have to back down; they don't have to put on "snake eyes" against Max Scherzer, and then find out (crestfallingly) that they were posers from the start.  They have enough ammo now.

....

The Mariners have scored +70 more runs than they've allowed.  From a Pythag standpoint that's a 95-win pace, if you weight the recent months at all.  Yeah, the Mariners are good right now.

On April 23, Kyle Seager had two base hits.  He added 2 more the next game, and the next game, and the next game.  He is hitting .317/.376/.575 since then, with Lloyd McClendon assuring us that Seager is only giving us a little taste.  You suppose if Joe DiMaggio is the 3rd floor, then Mickey Mantle is the 6th floor?

Since April 23, Seager has changed the M's "win probability" by 7.2 games over average.  That's not hypothetical, like WAR is when it "normalizes" everything to average outcomes; +7.2 WPE means that compared to a good, average/solid hitter, Seager has in fact changed the base/out situations into the Mariners' favor by an extra 7 wins.  Since late April!

Defensively, Seager is (a) also way plus, and (b) playing a glove position.  Without any exaggeration, at all, Seager has played at a +15 to +20 WAR pace the last 2.5 months.

Players do that.  Like our good buddy at Fangraphs sez, there are always "hot" players who figure to drop off.   Question is, when one guy takes a blow, who then steps up off the bench to do more, instead of everybody doing less, starting now, all at once?  No one man can do it all, for 162 games.

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Candidates

Had you noticed that Brad Miller is .286/.343/.469 since late May?   It's funny; one lightning bolt into the 12th row of RF and you remember that, whatever his growing pains, Brad Miller has special juice in his bat.  And in his game.

Taijuan Walker.  There is some "non-zero probability" (heh, I just love the affected pseudo-scientific lingo) that baseball's best pitching prospect will provide better returns than did Brandon Maurer SP (6.51 ERA) or Erasmo Ramirez (4.58).

James Paxton.  Three words.  "Best 6-start debut ever."  Okay, that's 4.5 words or something, and it's not true, although it's accurate.

Mike Zunino.  Has raised his slugging percentage to .464 (over the last month) as we head into summer.  One of your all-time great 89:11 EYE ratios.  HEH!

No, it's an odd sight; Zunino is a rare exception to the EYE ratio thingy.  He is nowhere near as "soft" in the zone as a superficial look at his EYE would tell you.  Juan Gonzalez had a 102:27 EYE as a rookie; more to the point, the catcher Ivan Rodriguez had a 86:19 EYE ratio his sixth year in the majors.  As McClendon put it, Zunino is dangerous.   He'll miss three pitches, but then he'll cover one.

Besides all that, you do realize that there are .220 hitters who help the team.  I read it in a 1980's Abstract.  Batting average has it limits, we've heard.

I love the catcher in KC, but do think I would (gingerly) plump for Mike Zunino over any other AL catcher at the moment.  Job One is to get the pitchers into a groove.

Michael Saunders.  You guys like him (even) better than I do.  Pass on.  But he's more than capable of giving the M's a month of Kyle Seager-age.

Morrison/Smoak jobshare.  The 9-to-make-5 comes into its own.

James Jones.  Is improving visibly.  He's already got a 2-phase, hitched approach to change curves; he apparently wants to be Willie McGee.  We wouldn't complain.

Sports are a funny thing, aren't they?