> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Analysis: What Does Underlying Data Say about Mariners’ Hitting Abyss? - URL: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/seattle-mariners-hitting-abyss-underlying-data/ - Published: 2026-04-11T01:17:05.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-08T06:12:07.000Z - Author: Callaghan Bluechel - Tags: Analysis, Mariners, Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodriguez, Josh Naylor, Randy Arozarena, Cole Young \[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="4387"\] ![ Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh (29) hits an RBI single during the fifth inning against the Texas Rangers at Globe Life Field. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/seattle-mariners-catcher-cal-raleigh--2829-29-hits-an-rbi-single-during-the-fifth-inning-against-the-texas-rangers-at-globe-life-field--mandatory-credit-3a-kevin-jairaj-imagn-images-format-original.jpg) Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh (29) hits an RBI single during the fifth inning against the Texas Rangers at Globe Life Field. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images \[/caption\] There have been a lot of bad results with the bat in the first 13 games the Mariners have played in 2026, and for every bad result, there are 1,000 ways to quantify and describe it: worst in the league in average (.184), on-base percentage (.280), and slugging percentage (.301). The league’s second-lowest hard-hit rate (34.2%) and highest whiff rate (32.9%). Bat speed declines for Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodríguez, Josh Naylor, and others. But with 149 games left to go, how much of this is actually meaningful and predictive? How much of it is pure noise? ### The top lines are too early to tell right now; any answers will come from underlying data. There isn’t much that can be told from the first 13 games as to which disappointing slash stats are because a good player is in a slump and which are because the player is plain overmatched. Both Aaron Judge and Willi Castro entered Friday with a .222 batting average, but it’s safe to say that their career OPSes of 1.025 and .696, respectively, are good indicators of who is more likely to get hot. Underlying metrics comport with this: Castro’s 105.3 mile an hour 90th percentile exit velocity (EV90) and 38.5% hard-hit rate so far are both below Judge’s 107.4 mile per hour EV90 and 46.7% hard-hit rate. And yet Judge’s early-season struggles are evident from these underlying stats: he had a 111.8 mile an hour EV90 and 59.2% hard-hit rate in his 2025 campaign. His average bat speed has declined from 77 miles an hour to 75.2 miles an hour (still far above most of the league). These underlying stats have taken a seeming downward turn for the three most notably struggling Mariners: Rodríguez, Raleigh, and Naylor. When looking at average bat speed on competitive swings, for example, Naylor has gone from 71 to 70.3 miles an hour (a decline of 0.7 miles an hour), Rodríguez from 76.4 to 75.7 miles an hour (a drop of 0.7 miles an hour), and Raleigh from 75.2 to 74.8 miles an hour (a 0.4 mile per hour drop). On the one hand, bat speed tends to stabilize *very* quickly for the season, with almost all players [settling into their range by their 10th swing of the season](https://jrod20033.substack.com/p/understanding-bat-speed-how-early). But on the other, these ranges can include shifts of about a mile an hour in each direction. Looking at rolling average bat speeds for March and April of both 2025 and 2026 gives us a sense of where these players were around this point last season. All three of the struggling Mariners are included in the following graph, in addition to the instructive example of Randy Arozarena. \[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1200"\] ![ Rolling bat speeds for select Mariners in both 2025 and 2026 during March and April. Data sourced from Baseball Savant and compiled using RStudio. ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/rollingbatspeed-format-original.png) Rolling bat speeds for select Mariners in both 2025 and 2026 during March and April. Data sourced from Baseball Savant and compiled using RStudio. \[/caption\] Both Raleigh and Rodríguez have slightly higher bat speeds than they did through this many competitive swings last year, though both by only about a half a mile per hour. Josh Naylor’s decline in bat speed, meanwhile, appears a bit more significant (-0.9 miles an hour), but it’s actually *Arozarena* who has taken the steepest decline in bat speed (72.6 miles an hour to 68.1 miles an hour, a full 2.5 mile per hour gap) - and Arozarena’s .707 OPS is far and away the best of the four. Bat speed isn’t the be-all and end-all, though Arozarena’s notable dip is concerning for his future performance this year. There are some noticeable mechanical differences in Arozarena’s swing so far in 2026, as he is moving his back foot earlier and seemingly much more reliant on upper body lean than last year, when he tilted his full body into the swing. But since it hasn’t resulted in meaningfully lower whiff rates after 73 competitive swings and 88 swings in total - well past the rough 40 swing stabilization point (though even “stabilized”, his whiff rate could notably decline or increase; the “stabilization” point for a stat can be misleading) - while his general exit velocity numbers have remained around his career numbers due to his higher “squared-up” percentage (Arozarena accessing more of his bat speed’s potential exit velocity), it could end up being a wash or a slight downgrade. It’s worth noting that squared-up rate and bat speed have a notable negative correlation \[1\] since a lot of batters knowingly sacrifice bat speed for bat control, so Arozarena’s new look could end up producing a similar sum as last year despite a different set of parts. But it’s a much weaker correlation than that between bat speed and hard-hit rate, for example. ### It’s still a bit early to get a full read on exit velocity data, though the picture does offer some optimism for Raleigh and Rodríguez. Exit velocities take quite a bit longer to stabilize than bat speed, and it’s also a bit more complicated as to which exit velocity metric to use. If there’s anything to take away, it’s this: average exit velocity is the least valuable common exit velocity-related stat. That might seem counterintuitive, but since all batters are able to produce weak dribblers while only some can torch the ball consistently, taking some sample of the higher end of a batter’s exit velocity range tells you more about the hitter’s ability to hit it hard consistently. One such metric is EV90, which is the exit velocity of a batter’s 90th percentile hardest hit ball. Another, variously called best speed or EV50, is the average of a batter’s top half exit velocities. I’ve referred to it as EV50 in the past, but since other stats of the formula “EVNumber” mark percentile points and EV50 refers to an average for all above the median, I’ll refer to it here as best speed. Plotting these four batters on rolling EV90 and rolling best speed, similarly to the bat speeds, shows some unclear signals. \[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1200"\] ![ Rolling EV90 for select Mariners in early 2025 and 2026. Data sourced from Baseball Savant and compiled using RStudio. ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/rolling-90-format-original.png) Rolling EV90 for select Mariners in early 2025 and 2026\. Data sourced from Baseball Savant and compiled using RStudio. \[/caption\] When it comes to EV90, Raleigh and Rodríguez are a little bit below where they were at this point last year while Arozarena is essentially intersecting where he was 28 batted balls into 2025\. Only Naylor’s EV90 has taken a notable dip, with about a four mile per hour difference. Best speed tells a somewhat different story. Naylor and Arozarena are basically keeping pace with their 2025 seasons when it comes to their top half exit velocities, while Rodríguez and Raleigh still have a ways to catch up. \[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1200"\] ![ Rolling best speed/EV50 in early 2025 and 2026 for select Mariners hitters. Data sourced from Baseball Savant and compiled using RStudio. ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/rollingbestspeed-format-original.png) Rolling best speed/EV50 in early 2025 and 2026 for select Mariners hitters. Data sourced from Baseball Savant and compiled using RStudio. \[/caption\] But this can be explained by the fact that EV90 and best speed describe two somewhat different things. A strong EV90 but weak best speed is a telltale marker of a good hitter going through a slump: he is still able to get off enough smoke to push the upper tail of his distribution close to where it usually is, but once you get outside that upper tail, things rapidly fall off. Yet the clear ability to torch one up is still present, and you can expect Raleigh and Rodríguez to start rattling off some more hard hits. Naylor’s issues seem perhaps more concrete, though his unusual profile could make that cease to matter. A pace-keeping best speed with a notable decline in EV90 indicates that he has lost some ability to access the top of his range. Naylor’s contact-oriented approach (despite impressive raw power that has led to 99th percentile maximum exit velocities) means that he can weather a hit to the top of his range - so long as Lady Luck allows it. ### The 2026 Mariners, on top of their underlying struggles, have faced some of the worst batted ball luck of any team in the last decade. Naylor has notably racked off 14 hard hit balls without one hit to show for it (all five of his hits have come on softly hit balls), a stroke of bad luck despite a few too many grounders. The league’s StatCast expected batting average (xBA) on hard hit balls this year has been .478 and its actual batting average on them has been .457 - but Naylor’s xBA on hard hit balls has been just .288\. Eight of Naylor’s 14 hard hit balls have been grounders, obviously giving the fielders a fairly easy time of it no matter how hard he smashes the baseball. Five have been fly balls with a roughly 30 degree launch angle and roughly 95-100 miles an hour off the bat, a set of hits that really depend on wind, direction, and spin as to whether they will be homers or flyouts. His other hard hit ball was a 17 degree, 101.8 mile an hour liner at home, scooped up by a solid Chase DeLauter play. There are two common ways to measure batted ball luck: batting average on balls in play (BABIP) and subtracting StatCast expected stats from actual stats. BABIP is a more general measure of luck. Some hitters tend to maintain higher BABIPs than others, either because they hit more line drives than the average hitter or because they’re part of the small subset of Ichiro-esque batters who actually *can* consistently direct the ball to holes in the field. But even for these hitters, BABIP tends to be quite erratic, and across a whole team, it tends to stabilize around league average .290 - though this is down from .300 in years past thanks to improvements in defense. The Mariners tend not to have great BABIPs for two reasons, one downstream of the other. T-Mobile Park, while it is middling when it comes to home runs, is murderous for BABIP. This means that the Dipoto-era Mariners (a timespan almost congruent with the StatCast era) have tended to organize their roster around home run hitters, since their source of production doesn’t die out at home. But even compared to their usually below-average BABIP, the Mariners’ .238 is a historic outlier. It is the 11th lowest team BABIP in any month since 2008 - out of *3,150* such months. No 162-game season from any team since 2015 has come close, with the 2022 Athletics’ .265 marking the next lowest year outside of 2026’s infancy and Covid-shortened 2020\. Subtracting expected stats from actual stats gives a similar picture, though of course some of their bad luck is actually reflective of bad hit quality. Weighted on-base average (wOBA) can be thought of as an advanced version of OPS, coming closest to a catch-all offensive metric with a series of granular weights for each outcome and using the scale of on-base percentage. StatCast keeps an expected wOBA (xwOBA), and by subtracting xwOBA from wOBA, you can get another measure of luck, with negative numbers indicating bad luck (lower production than expected) and positive numbers indicating good luck (higher production than expected). Seattle’s -.025 isn’t a *giant* outlier - it is only the 78th unluckiest month out of 1,890 (quite unfortunate but not [Roy Sullivan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy%5FSullivan?ref=emeraldcityspectrum.com) levels of unluckiness) and the 2023 Yankees reached -.020 for a full 162 game season. But plotting both metrics on a chart shows that the M’s have been one of the unluckiest teams in the StatCast era. \[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1500"\] ![ Team BABIP and wOBA above expected for each year since 2015. Data sourced from Baseball Savant and compiled using RStudio. ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/xwobas-format-original.png) Team BABIP and wOBA above expected for each year since 2015\. Data sourced from Baseball Savant and compiled using RStudio. \[/caption\] Some of this luck is due to the ballpark the M’s play in, as the teal points clearly cluster around the lower edge of both axes. The Rockies’ batsmen, shown in black dots, clearly benefit from their legendarily hitter-friendly venue and had the luckiest batting season of the StatCast era in 2017. ### Regression to the mean is clearly in order for the guys across the lineup, but there is one area where the M’s have already established themselves as worryingly uneasy. The Mariners’ whiff rates might reflect a persistent issue getting to the ball, especially as concerns Raleigh and Rodríguez. Neither are usually the picture of contact hitting, but their 31.5% and 28.2% whiff rates in 2025 have made way for 39.1% and 38.5%. Naylor has seen a slight increase from 22.1% to 25%, but that’s still well within the realm of manageability (though any increase in whiff rate from Naylor risks exposing his high chase rate). Even worse for Raleigh and Rodríguez, their misses have come on a lot of fastballs in the zone. Rodríguez’ 33.3% in-zone fastball whiff rate is more than double the big league average of 15.5% this year while Raleigh’s 40.4% in-zone fastball whiff rate is an astronomical level of whiff (though he brought it down from around 50% with an excellent at-bat against Jacob DeGrom, showing how fleeting some of these early granular metrics are) that is really only rivaled in recent Mariners history by June-July 2025 Dylan Moore. The thing about whiff rates, however, is that they don’t actually tell us a whole lot on their own about how good a player will be. Cole Young has been a well above average hitter this year with a 13th percentile in-zone contact rate, while of course Cal Raleigh came four votes away from MVP last year while missing on nearly a third of his swings. Putting whiff rates in context helps matters. Bat speed and whiff rate have a notable correlation for obvious reasons, so a hitter who swings harder and hits the ball harder will often trade away some contact in order to do so. But since Raleigh and Rodríguez have remained roughly even in bat speed and seen slight declines in hit quality, it’s not immediately obvious what should be producing these slumps. Well, it is, but not from a spreadsheet. They’re both trying to defend against everything the pitcher can throw at them, and to paraphrase Frederick II of Prussia: when you defend everything, you defend nothing. That’s why hitters often sit on the fastball and adjust for off-speed, while especially zoned-in batters intuit the upcoming pitch. This stretched-out, overly-defensive approach is killing their ability to hit fastballs in particular, though for Raleigh it also appears to be increasing his propensity to chase. In a way, that can be seen as a good sign - an attitude issue that can flip easily - but in a game that’s 90% mental \[2\], that adjustment needs to come quickly. ### The struggling Astros arms offer a chance for the M’s to reset. Whoever adjusts first between the Mariners and Astros will be the one to take the four-game Ichiro Statue Series. Having given up 35 runs in their past four games and 46 over their past six (though this stretch was oddly interrupted by a shutout), the Mariners’ longtime AL West foe has seemingly seen its arms fall off right when the Mariners’ bats became ghosts. The rest day also came at the right time for these teams, both needing to disrupt their respective negative spirals. As always in baseball, things can turn on a dime, so the only way to really know is to watch and wait. \[1\] It’s even the [default chart](https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/bat-tracking?ref=emeraldcityspectrum.com) on Baseball Savant’s bat tracking leaderboard, though it’s worth noting that it tracks squared-up% on *swings* rather than on *contact*. \[2\] The other half, as the great Yogi Berra once said, is physical.