Matty sez,

The Yankees tracked this batted ball information with much more detail than ESPN does...and, without giving away precisely what they look at, I think it is safe to say that I had access to several years worth of high quality batted ball info...and found, to my grim LACK of surprise, that the Mariners had been the unluckiest team in baseball EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR. since record keeping began for this sort of thing (2008).

Every year, they had regular players near the top of the unlucky list when comparing their actual offense to the offense you expected.

In 2013, it was Ackley, Smoak, Seager, Montero (short sample) and Bay (yep...he was a good hitter in 2013 according to our guesses).

In 2012, it was Ackley again, Smoak (to a lesser degree), Montero, Carp, and Casper Wells leading the unlucky pile.

In 2011 it was Seager, Smoak, Olivo and (believe it or not) Ryan.

I assure you...even in 2010, the Mariners were both horrible and ridiculous unlucky.

They're not just bad because theyb lack talent...they're bad because they are one of the "dumbest" teams in professional sports. Not in the sense that they lack intelligent people in their employ...but in the sense that they are constantly being annihilated by their opposition on the matter of advance scouting and adjusting to how other teams try to defeat them.

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Magic Ping-Pong Ball Lotto Machine Effect

Safeco?  Matty responds by pointing out that the Mariner pitchers, in Safeco, did not benefit from the same systematic luck.   That pretty well puts "paid" to using Safeco as a major component of the answer.  It wasn't Safeco, as such, that caused the M's "unlucky outs" except perhaps in this relative context.

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Occam's Razor:  Lousy Defensive Positioning (outfielders playing in, and shifting not done extremely enough)

The simplest explanation to me -- Occam's Razor -- is that Safeco should have been causing blizzards of "unlucky outs" but that the defense was not positioned to exploit these.

That would have made the M's hitters look bad -- via Safeco -- and the M's pitchers look normal (via failing to sieze their rightful Safeco unlucky outs.

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Occam's Razor is hypnotic in its appeal to college sophomores, but it is not the absolute that scientists like to tell laymen that it is.  Occam's Razor is the appropriate first hypothesis, nothing more, nothing less.  You do with it what you do with hypothesis:  you test, you observe the feedback, you modify it, prove it wrong or fail to find any contradictions with it.

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In this case, the fact that the Mariners used to position their OF's way too shallow?  That factoid jibes perfectly with the "out-scouted defense" hypothesis.  Other teams simply had better defensive positioning, "stole" more outs from hard-hit balls, and we played lackluster defense.

If true, that would account for a lot of things.

We wouldn't be done yet.  That was a first pass.  Moving the OF's back is one good thing, but it's not exactly a hitter-specific positioning.

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Matty singles out Smoak, Ackley, Seager (lately, since his slide) and Montero as consistent un-luckiers. He does so through his Yankee data; we /cosign, with gusto, through our 3rd-deck seats.

Smoak and Seager, for much of their time having problems, were trying to hit the ball through a shift.  That will guarantee a high percentage of "unlucky" outs, if by that you mean a hard-hit ball turned into an out.

Still, Smoak had a lot of OUTFIELD unlucky outs.  They don't shift the OF's that much.  The shift doesn't seem to account for more than about 50% of his hard-hit outs.

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I would focus on Seager's bad luck, since it started lately, and may have started with the shift.

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Dr's R/X

The sooner teams realize that the Shift is a "Broken Defense" -- in the sense that Blastoise "broke" the Pokemon game -- the better.

It's the same as 9 guys in the box in football -- and the offense refuses to pass.  Put the 10th guy up there.  Exploit it!

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Lefties' wheelhouse swings make it naturally tough for them to stay on top of a ball to LF.  Their centrifugal swings have advantages, of course, especially low-in.  And everybody is aware ... everybody but Justin Smoak is aware that a high-away pitch to a LH is a pitcher's pitch. 

But the shift means that the pitcher can venture into more and more of the plate from that high-away position.

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Meanwhile, the first guys who develop the ability to pepper-swing a line drive the other way -- or simply punch-bunt it -- will have a huge advantage.  Right now, Kyle Seager has been the first one to do so.  

This MUST become a staple part of EVERY lefty's game, or you'll simply be able to shift him out of business.  With more and more specialized shifts, and pitching designed around it.

I'd estimate two years, after industry-wide buy-in, before lefties commonly slap the ball on one hop the other way.  Like Ichiro did.  Then they won't get giggled at in the dugout, either.  (The modern shift pretty much began with Ken Griffey Jr., who used to giggle at the defense when he did that to them.)

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As to the 2014 team ... the OF numbers are better.  Than WE were in 2014.  But presumably not as good as they should be.  Michael Saunders is a huge exception; he's tearing it up in RF.

Zduriencik is of course old-school; Simmons and Vuckovich are.  The M's have lots of guys on their payroll, not even to talk about scouts, who are 1980's guys.  But perhaps a lot of the Mariners' "Good Ole Boys" are more hostile to saber than would be the case in more progressive org's?  

Maybe the M's fall "betwixt and between," with few departments talking to each other except that they're all talking to Zduriencik?

If so, the scouts would be there, would be great 80's scouts, but would inferior because not armed with Yankee scouts' data.  Do you think out scouts are hustling to keep up with F/X data?

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Dr. D's visceral impression, from the 3rd deck:  The M's are better than they were, but still routinely out-scouted.  40 years on, they should be a mainstream baseball team.  The reason they're not, is the corporate structure.  Hardcore on-field play is a priority to our shot-callers, but less of a priority than it is for other teams' shot-callers.  It shows in the scouting.

My two cents,

Dr D