I think you are just DEEPLY understating the importance of team defense. I emphasize that not to yell at you or sound arrogant...just to try to get you to focus on what we are saying. This team...much like the 2003 Mariners and the 2001 Mariners was blessed with severely skewed team defense. We were like 11th in K rate, 8th in walk rate and near the bottom of the league in park adjusted home run rate, M's Watcher. The very definition of average-at-best pitching. A proper analysis of pitching skill must begin with the necessary first step of recognizing that not only are league and park a context...but so is team defense. Most of the time you don't see massive swings like this because the Mariners' 2009 defensive performance was OUTLIER good. Like...once in-a-decade good. But Seattle's team FIP was 4.39 this year (league average is right around there) compared to their team ERA of 3.87 (we led all of baseball in E-F at -0.52). That means our team defense was saving half a run PER GAME. That's a LOT of runs saved by a defense...84 of them to be exact. You cannot ignore this when you make an evaluation of where we stand in team run prevention going forward.