Since April 15th we've hit .240/.312/.411, which doesn't sound all that great at first, but offense has been pretty down so far this year- over the same stretch the league as a whole is hitting .237/.307/.381, and our pitching staff has allowed a brilliant .188/.255/.316 slash line.

We're still striking out a ton (28.0% over that stretch, the second highest team is a tie between the Rockies and Red Sox at 25.9%), but we're also 4th in homers and 5th in BABIP, so we're doing enough damage when we make contact to put up a decent batting line overall.

We're a bit worse in runs, at 4.25 Runs/Game (11th), because 112 wRC+ assumes a neutral environment and we're in a really pitcher-friendly one, but that's a perfectly fine scoring output when we're allowing just 3.07 Runs/Game (3rd best, only the Dodgers and Braves have been better). Our Run Differential is a pretty good +33, translating to a .644 Pythagorean win expectation (nearly matched by our actual .643 win percentage, 18-10) which is... once again, 6th, behind the Dodgers, Phillies, Yankees, Orioles, and Braves.

(#6org will live on forever)

The improvement has been pretty much team-wide, too:

(In this table I left out Samad Taylor, who has no games after April 15th, and Jonathan Clase, Sam Haggerty, and Leo Rivas, who have no games before- none of them has very many PA's, in any case)

Of those 13, 6 had huge improvements, adding at least 70 to their wRC+ (though in Zavala's case in particular, the sample size is absolutely tiny), with Canzone also having an improvement by this split but he went on the IL on the 14th and just came back yesterday so kinda hard to draw any real conclusions from him. Ty France, Dylan Moore, and Josh Rojas hit more marginally better, Jorge Polanco marginally worse, and then there's Mitch Haniger and Luis Urias who are the glaring exceptions to the teamwide trend, having crushed it the first couple of weeks but have largely been bad since then.

Why did we start so bad and get better? Hard to say for sure. Might have been early bad weather, might have just been random chance, but looking back, it looks like we just faced a big slate of tough pitching in those first couple of weeks- in our 6 road games against the Jays and Brewers, we were closer to an average offensive team (90 wRC+) and scored 25 runs across those games (exactly matching our recent 4.25 Runs/Game average), but in the 9 home games? .193/.274/.272 (70 wRC+), with 24 Runs (2.67 Runs/Game). Which is terrible, but in all fairness, those 9 games were against the Red Sox (3.53 Runs Allowed/Game, with a MLB-leading 2.74 ERA), Guardians (3.66 Runs Allowed/Game), and Cubs, who are closer to average overall (4.25 Runs Allowed/Game), but they started both Shota Imanaga and Javier Assad against us, who are currently 1st and 3rd among qualified starters in ERA, at 0.96 and 1.49, respectively. (But on the other hand, we also failed to score a single run off the Cubs' middling bullpen in 11 innings of that 3-game series so... there's also some just us sucking in there)

So I was doing what all cool guys do on a Wednesday night: scrolling through the minor league rosters and stats to see how the first month and a half went. I knew how stacked Single-A Modesto is this year and wanted to check out their pitching, because despite not having many standout names, their pitching has been surprisingly dominant. That's when I learned about my new favorite prospect:

Will Schomberg

Here's the boring basic stuff:

Schomberg is a pitcher; a righty who has been a rock in Modesto's starting rotation this season. He's a bit undersized for a starter at 5'10", and based solely on the occasional highlight videos on MiLB.com, he's a fastball-slider guy. He doesn't appear on any top prospect lists, but he's off to a better start than just about any other starter in the farm system.

Now for the cool stuff:

Schomberg was an undrafted free agent last season. It's pretty common to talk about undrafted guys in the NFL as relevant pieces, but pretty rare in baseball with its 20-round amateur draft. Schomberg was a serviceable reliever at Davidson until his senior year, where he broke out as a starter. He became the team's ace with 13 starts, a 3.97 ERA (4th in the conference), and put up the second-highest career K/9 in Davidson's history at 10.15. He earned a spot on the Atlantic 10 First team.

Despite that, he fell through all 20 rounds in 2023's amateur draft and signed with the Mariners as an undrafted free agent. He appeared in 3 unremarkable games at rookie ball in 2023, but was put in a rotation spot at Modesto the start this season.

Schomberg has taken that opportunity and has made the most of it so far. In 34 innings over 7 starts, he's put up a 2.12 ERA, 1.00 WHIP, 3.19 FIP, 41 strikeouts to 15 walks, and an opponent's BA of just .161. Earlier this month, he won our Minor League Pitcher of the Week honors, after throwing a 6 inning, 0 runs, 1 BB, 10 strikeout game.

He's probably on his way to winning the pitcher of the month, too. His stat line in May looks like this: 3 GS, 16 IP, 0 ER, 5 H, 2 BB, 21 SO.

He is absolutely shoving at Single-A. At 23 years old, it won't be long before he's promoted to Everett. Even though he's a bit older than his competition, it's super impressive for an undrafted guy to be dominating like this. He'll probably never be on those top prospect lists because of his age, but I don't care. Schomberg has been one of the coolest stories to come out of the first part of this season.

2 series against probably the best teams in the al east in their parks also...

Top 30 Prospect Performance

Low-A Modesto

AA Arkansas

AAA Tacoma

Unranked Excellence

Final Scores

San Jose defeats Modesto 16-5

Everett defeats Eugene 5-4

NW Arkansas defeats Arkansas 3-0

Tacoma defeats Salt Lake 5-4

Highlights

Jonatan Clase's RBI triple.

Lazaro Montes' hustle double.

Standings

Prospect Performances Index | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 |

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https://twitter.com/DKramer_/status/1790954877470077436

Hey guys!

I was just wondering what would be a good game to take my family to at T-Mobile?

I don’t know too much about baseball but I thought it would be a good experience to go with my family. It would be cool if it was a competitive match up that’s exciting.

Let me know!

Thank you.

Patrick Wisdom has mashed ever since he started getting major league playing time in 2021.

He’s kind of a late bloomer who bounced around a little bit (including being signed and released by the M’s in 2019-20) before settling into a role with the Cubs in 2021 as a 29-year-old. Now, however, he doesn’t really have a role on the Cubs and struggles to get at bats. In limited action this year he’s batting .303 with 3 HR and over a 1.000 OPS albeit in a modest 13 games.

His 162-game average counting stats over his last 3 seasons completed are great, with 37 HR and 83 RBI...but with a ton of strikeouts. The strikeouts are obviously mortifying, Carlos-Peguero-tier bad, but I still think he could bring some value as he was a .772 OPS over the aforementioned span. He could DH, and play corner infield and outfield to give us some flexibility on defense if someone goes down.

I see this as a realistic type of move Jerry could make, depending on how much the Cubs value him as a bench piece.

Let me know what you guys think, if you like it, hate it, etc…and what other fairly realistic possibilities you see happening.

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Discord: Seattle Sports

Line Score - Game Over

Box Score

Scoring Plays

Highlights

Decisions

Game ended at 4:09 PM.

Royals (26-18) @ Mariners (23-20)

First Pitch: 1:10 PM at T-Mobile Park

Line Score - Game Over

Box Score

Scoring Plays

Highlights

Decisions

Game ended at 4:09 PM.

Remember to sort by new to keep up!

Top 30 Prospect Performance

Arizona Complex League

Low-A Modesto

High-A Everett

AA Arkansas

AAA Tacoma

Unranked Excellence

Final Scores

ACL Mariners defeat Rangers 14-1

Modesto defeats San Jose 7-3

Everett defeats Eugene 3-2

Arkansas defeats NW Arkansas 5-4

Tacoma defeats Salt Lake 8-5

Highlights

Tyler Locklear's three-run bomb.

Blake Hunt's solo shot.

Cole Young walks it off.

Colt Emerson mashes a double.

Standings

Prospect Performances Index | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 |

Welcome to /r/Mariners Daily Thread! Please use this thread to discuss events from today, or anything else you'd like.

Comments are automatically sorted by new to keep the conversation current.

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Attacking fellow users instead of their opinions will result in a 1 day ban