The Mariners have now run two different ball clubs out there in one year that absolutely proves to my satisfaction that having more than one hitting black hole has been the primary source of our team's offensive struggles, both with runners in scoring position (relative to overall) and with run scoring (compared to team OPS+). If you go and look at the last three years of Mariner clubs and project their OPS+ to runs scored, you'll find that they scored less than their OPS predicts each and every year. And were doing the same as of mid-June of this year.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the fourth year of this happening. We plugged two of our three black holes, with CF being the only eyesore left (Ackley is still not really hitting...even Zunino is not a black hole by catching standards...though he isn't great obviously). We called up Franklin and Miller, replacing Chavez and Ryan as primary starters and lengthening the line-up such that your problems no longer ended if you were a pitcher getting to the #6 spot in the batting order.
The result...suddenly the club is scoring the way it should for its OPS...hitting with RISP...and winning lots of baseball games. It's not just that they added offensive talent. It's that they removed offensive anchors too. I believe this proves my point about the need to account for the supermargin and sub-margin as non-linear factors in run scoring.
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