Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports
In the seventh inning of Sunday afternoon’s game in Houston, Bryce Miller left a sweeper over the inner third of the plate, and Jon Singleton didn’t miss it, hammering a towering two-run shot to right field that yielded a bat flip and gave the Astros a 4-3 lead.
With that, the Mariners were stopped short of tying a major league record — a semi-obscure one, but an impressive one nonetheless: the most consecutive games with a starting pitcher allowing no more than two earned runs. The Mariners did rally to win 5-4, sending them to their sixth straight series victory and lifting their record to 19-15, enough to help them preserve their half-game lead over the Rangers (19-16) in the AL West.
The starters’ streak began back on April 10, when Logan Gilbert held the Blue Jays to one run in 7.2 innings, and extended to 21 games through Saturday. Most of the starts were exceptional, and for the stretch, the unit pitched to a 1.38 ERA and a 2.91 FIP, but two of those starts depended upon the earned/unearned run distinction to extend the streak, and two were short outings of four or fewer innings; one of those starts, Emerson Hancock’s clunker last Wednesday against the Braves, was both. Still, even including unearned runs, their 1.86 runs allowed per nine allowed during the streak is impressive.
Mariners’ Starting Pitching Streak: 2 or Fewer Earned Runs
| Player | Opp | Date | Tm | Result | IP | H | R | ER | HR | BB | SO |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Logan Gilbert | TOR | 4/10/24 | W | 7.2 | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 8 |
In the fourth inning of Hancock’s outing against Atlanta, Orlando Arcia’s fly ball clanked off the heel of right fielder Mitch Haniger’s glove for a two-base error; it would have been the second out of the inning. With two outs, the Braves strung together four straight hits and scored four times, with all of the runs unearned, and with Hancock heading for an early exit. The Mariners lost that one, 5-2.
For as dominant as Seattle’s pitchers have been, it’s fair to suggest that some of their run prevention is owed to their surroundings. The Mariners have scored just 3.61 runs per game (12th in the AL) while allowing a major league low 3.24.
At T-Mobile Park, the team and its opponents are averaging just 3.07 runs per game while combining to hit an unsightly .198/.265/.327 with a .258 BABIP (29 points below the major league average) and a 73 wRC+. The Mariners themselves are hitting .223/.302/.366 (98 wRC+) overall.
Check out these splits:
Mariners and Opponents Home/Road Splits
| Team | Venue | AVG | OBP | SLG | wRC+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mariners | T-Mobile Park | .204 | .289 | .334 | 87 |
The Mariners aren’t a bad team offensively if you take them out of T-Mobile, but at home it’s always the Year of the Pitcher.
It’s no state secret that T-Mobile tends to lag in most systems’ park factors, including ours and those of Statcast. One major reason for this is the marine layer, “a shallow layer of air that forms when warm air moves atop a body of cooler water and becomes saturated with water vapor,” as Adam Jude of the Seattle Times explained in a recent feature.
With the Mariners’ average game time temperatures of just 53.3 degrees (third-coldest in the majors behind Pittsburgh’s PNC Park and Chicago’s Wrigley Field), that cold air means more drag, which shortens the flight distances of baseballs.
A 2017 study by David Kagan and Chris Mitchell for The Hardball Times Annual estimated that the effect amounted to a six-foot reduction of fly ball distances…
