The Seattle Mariners scored in the first inning in Game 1 of their ALDS matchup against the top seeded Houston Astros. They scored three times in the top of the second and led 6-2 in the middle of the fourth. 7:3 we went to the round of 16. It was still 7-5 with two outs in the ninth inning. And yet the Mariners lost.
They controlled the entire game until there were two outs in the ninth game, even as the Astros’ outstanding offense faltered. The Mariners should have won. Just look at the profit expectancy chart:
That’s about as steep as you’ll ever see. Off a cliff indeed.
What happened? Well, the Astro’s offense being loaded helped. Yordan Alvarez, who is the second scariest batsman in the world after Aaron Judge, has also helped. But the Mariners’ decision-making was pretty suspect.
Alvarez’s walk-off home run came from Robbie Ray, a starting pitcher who was called out in relief just to face Alvarez.
Why did the Mariners make this decision? Let’s break things down.
Reasons to bring Ray in
1. He is left-handed. That’s all. Reigning AL Cy Young Award winner Ray has been much tougher with lefties throughout his career, keeping them to a .212/.260/.387 line this season. He gave up just four homers to other lefties, though it was only in 137 at-bats.
If the Mariners really wanted the draft advantage over Alvarez, it was either Ray or Matthew Boyd. There are no other lefties on the list. All of the Mariners’ best helpers are right-handed. Ray started Game 2 of the Wild Card Series against the Blue Jays and was still challenged Tuesday.
Of course, have you ever seen Alvarez’ splits? It basically hits both sides equally. Here are his career slashes:
vs LHP: .303/.381/.582
vs. RHP: 0.292/0.386/0.594
He hit .321 against southpaw this season!
If you’re interested in the head-to-head story, Alvarez was 1 for 3 with two walks against Ray before this one. It’s too small a sample to really matter, but it wasn’t like Ray included a number of successful stories in the matchup there.
Reasons not to involve Ray
1. He’s a starter. Starting pitchers are used to longer, more extended warm-ups. All players are creatures of habit anyway, so putting a starter in relief is always risky. Some are fine with it, but you don’t know until you try. Ray has only appeared relieved four times in his entire career, three of those coming in his rookie year in 2014 and one coming in 2020. That’s it.
2. He gives up a lot of home runs. Ray finished second in the AL this season with 32 homers allowed. Even last year when he won the Cy Young, he finished fourth with 33 legal. Alvarez is one of the best power hitters in baseball and one game beats you: a home run.
3. He hasn’t thrown well lately. Ray had a 5.27 ERA with eight homers allowed in 27 1/3 innings in his last five regular season starts. He then coughed four runs on six hits, including two home runs, in three innings in Game 2 of the Wild Card Series.
4. The Astros owned him. Ray made three starts against the Astros this season. He gave up 23 hits and 13 earned carries in 10 2/3 innings (10.97 ERA, 2.81 WHIP). Astro’s hitters hit him .442/.509/.865. Small sample? I guess. Nothing here is really encouraging, however.
5. He’s a fastball guy. Ray throws fastballs almost 40 percent of the time. This is his most common offer. Alvarez was the second highest-valued hitter against fastballs this season (behind Judge, unsurprisingly), hitting .355 with a .752 hit against the heater. The homer came on a sinker, but I’m just talking about the thought process for getting Ray in.
On the surface only, I have five pretty good reasons not to use Ray when there was a reason – albeit a flimsy one – to use him. Avoiding the trigger while driving was a breeze.
“We talked about it going into the series,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said after the game. “We talked about it before the game today. I looked at it in the seventh inning and was like, ‘Hey, this could happen.’ So that was the plan, at the end of the day you have a plan, we have yet to execute it.
It’s true. It was the plan and they had to execute the plan better. But it’s also pretty easy to argue that it was a bad plan.