2024 Team Previews: Seattle Mariners
Going through all 30 teams, looking back at 2023 and ahead to the 2024 season through a fantasy baseball lens.
Welcome back to the 2024 team-by-team previews and rankings series! Become a paid sub today to get the full series along with 2024 season-long projections, dashboards, tools, rankings, and so much more!
Introduction & Links to All Teams Here
If this is your first time visiting the MLB Data Warehouse, learn more about it here.
Mariners Intro
I don’t have a ton to say about the Seattle Mariners. I grew up on the east coast and the Mariners weren’t all that good or interesting for the years when I was most paying attention. The Randy Johnson and Ichiro Suzuki memories in my head are pretty faint.
I did like that Macklemore “My Oh My” song in college, that one is about him growing up as a Mariners fan. But now I don’t really care for that guy.
I’m guessing nobody really cares about my personal connection with these MLB teams anyways. Some mornings I’m really pumped to jam out a bunch more words at you people that are outside of the realm of analyzing baseball players and numbers, but today - I’m not in much of that mood.
I wrote this post a few weeks ago, so the Jorge Polanco writeup is on the Twins piece, and he won’t show up here. That was a nice move for them, and this would seem like a pretty good year for them to make some moves with “win now” as the goal. This pitching staff is really, really exciting. The offense isn’t nearly as impressive, but it’s not a bad unit whatsoever. Off we go!
Hitters
Julio Rodriguez
Age: 23
Pos: OF
The reigning Rookie of the Year sputtered a little bit through the first two months of the season with just a .749 OPS, but he got it together and finished another fantastic season:
714 PA, .275/.333/.485, 32 HR, 37 SB, 24.5% K%, 6.6% BB%, 102 R, 103 RBI
A 30-30 season with 205 R+RBI, and it was almost completely overlooked because of the stuff Acuna and Betts were doing. This could so easily be the #1 overall pick in 2024 if not for Acuna, and with some of these other young studs in the league now you can sometimes even get J-Rod at #5.
We can pretty much breeze through J-Rod. He’s built perfectly for roto fantasy baseball, and he makes a really nice consolation prize if you can’t get pull off that 1.1 pick to get Acuna.
He did hit a few too many ground balls last year, but he was hitting the ball so hard while managing a good contact rate and striking out only around a league average amount.
The percentiles:
You can look at all of this and say that he’s got a little bit of a flaw with the Contact% and K%, or at least say that he’s far from elite in those categories. The way I’d rather take it is that this guy has just ripped off an .831 OPS with 60 homers and 62 steals in two seasons before turning 24, and that means there’s tons of opportunity for him to improve on that K% and Contact% and step the game up to a 40-40 season or two.
I think J-Rod is my #2 player just because of the age and I think he has a little bit more upside than Carroll with how much more raw power he has.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Corbin Carroll, Mookie Betts
JA: 667 PA, 106 R, 32 HR, 93 RBI, 27 SB, .263/.329/.484, .813 OPS
BatX: 663 PA, 101 R, 30 HR, 88 RBI, 34 SB, .284/.351/.505, .856 OPS
Cal Raleigh
Age: 27
Pos: C
Another big year for Raleigh as he blasted 30 homers to lead the position in that regard, and he finished #3 on the player rater behind just Contreras and Rutschman.
For the last two seasons now, Raleigh has slashed .223/.297/.470 with a .767 OPS and 57 homers in 984 PA (17 PA/HR). He has driven in 138 runs and stolen one base.
So the profile is clear. He will hit you a bunch of homers and be pretty good in R+RBI, but hurt your batting average and not contribute in steals. This is a profile I’m not very interested in except at the catcher position. The position makes a big difference here.
I only have four catchers projected for 25+ homers, and Raleigh is four homers ahead of the field with another projection for 30. He also leads the position in projected RBI at 84.
In 2023, Raleigh started 114 games at catcher and 14 more as the DH. The Mariners signed Mitch Garver this offseason, which could actually end up being bad for Raleigh if the Mariners carry Seby Zavala onto the roster. That would make Garver the DH and reduce Raleigh’s opportunity there. The impact of that is minimal though since we’re talking about only 14 DH games there a year ago. He is able to play catcher most days of the week and still keeping producing at the plate, so he’s a very good catcher option this season.
I don’t see any reason to doubt that he’ll continue to hit homers at a high rate. The launch velo is good and the launch angle is way up there.
I can’t stress enough that the lack of steals here really doesn’t matter much. Only J.T. Realmuto projects more than 10 steals at the catcher position, so nobody in your league is going to get a bunch of steals from their catcher in all likelihood. He is not near the top tier of catchers because of the batting average and the fact that he won’t get near 600 PAs, but he’s a really strong tier 2 option.
Comps/Rank-Arounds: Francisco Alvarez
JA: 518 PA, 66 R, 26 HR, 78 RBI, 0 SB, .228/.301/.450, .752 OPS
BatX: 502 PA, 58 R, 26 HR, 72 RBI, 1 SB, .223/.298/.449, .747 OPS
The rest of the post is behind the paywall. Subscribe today to get this full series along with my 2024 projections, rankings, and much, much more!