Mariners manager Scott Servais frustrated by team’s struggling offense

Like a father worn down with exasperation from lecturing his kids daily about focusing on their schoolwork and cleaning their rooms only to see more poor grades and unmade beds, Mariners manager Scott Servais can’t hide the frustration and disappointment when it comes to his team’s offensive failures.

In the immediate aftermath of Monday’s 2-1 loss to the Rangers, Servais’ displeasure was evident, and his comments were as critical as he will get in an on-the-record media session.

Perhaps his most telling comment: “At certain times, we are too easy to pitch to, if I’m being frank about it.”

Less than 24 hours later, Servais was back talking about an offense that is one of the least productive in baseball. It’s been a daily occurrence since the first week of the season. Whether it’s about an individual player or the overall team numbers, he’s been asked so often about the struggles and the constant search for solutions.

Tuesday afternoon was no different. It started with something based on the previous night’s comments.

Why is this team easy to pitch to at certain times?

“I think any team in the league is easy to pitch to when they are swinging at balls just on the edge or off the edge,” he said quickly. “It makes anybody easy to pitch to. Getting to where we need to be, we need to get back to (hitting) pitches over the middle of plate and be OK with taking (not swinging) a lot of edge pitches.”

When the offense goes stagnant, the Mariners seem to fall into the mindset of swinging their way out of it — and they aren’t too picky about what they take a hack at.

“When you’re not getting the results you’re looking for offensively, you tend to be more aggressive,” Servais said. “It’s, ‘I’m gonna try harder. I’m going to get the big hit.’ When you do that, you do chase more edge pitches. The thing that stood out for me with our offensive approach the last two years, we were very comfortable taking the edge pitches. And we would grind teams down to the point where teams would hate pitching against us. You raise their pitch count because you don’t chase.”

The Mariners’ have a 27.9 % chase rate, which is the number of swings at pitches at outside the strike zone divided by the number of pitches thrown outside the strike zone. It’s about middle of the pack in baseball.

“We haven’t gotten the results maybe some of our guys are used to getting and they’re expanding a little bit too much,” Servais said. “Any time you don’t swing at strikes, you are easier to pitch to. We’re swinging a little too much, in my opinion. They’re not coming to us. We’re trying to go get them. It’s a tough way to have success in this league.”

One player who has seemed to embody that sentiment is Julio Rodriguez. After going 0-for-4 on Monday, Rodriguez’s slash line fell to .210/.278/.399 with six doubles, one triple, six homers, 15 RBI, 11 walks and 42 strikeouts in 151 plate appearances.

Looking at MLB Statcast data, Rodriguez’s plate-discipline numbers are largely similar to last season, with his chase rate up 2% to 35.4%. He’s actually swinging at fewer first pitches — 34.4% down from 39.2% in 2022. The other deviation is that Rodriguez is swinging at pitches considered a “meatball” 72.7% of the time compared to 77.9% in 2022 despite seeing more pitches considered in the middle of the plate.  

But of the 566 pitches thrown to Rodriguez this season, 311 were considered out of the strike zone. He’s taken 192 for balls (61.7%) and nine for called strikes while swinging and missing at 53 of them with 36 fouls balls and 16 balls in play for outs and five hits.

Looking at his strike-zone profile on those pitches is where the recent scouting report on how to get Rodriguez out has emerged.

It’s four-seam fastballs inside and under his hands or sinkers low and in toward his back foot early in the count. Followed by breaking pitches low and away, specifically sliders to get him to chase. The hard-inside and soft-away game plan isn’t new. It’s something that’s been used often against young and aggressive hitters.

Of the 126 pitches thrown in the low-and-away quadrant outside the strike zone to Rodriguez, only 19 were fastballs.

It’s a similar philosophy being used on Teoscar Hernandez, who is considered a streaky hitter. Hernandez has a .226/.267/.416 slash line with five doubles, seven homers, 16 RBI, four walks and 50 strikeouts. The 34.2% strikeout rate is among the highest in baseball while the 2.7% rate is among the lowest. His 36.2% chase rate is up from 30.3 in 2022.

The Mariners have their own internal metrics, but they aren’t that much different.

“The numbers don’t lie,” Servais said. “They don’t. Julio is chasing more of the pitches that are off the plate. It’s why the walk rate is down. Julio is so gifted. He’s putting those balls in play. I wish he’d swing and miss at ‘those’ pitches. That’s what is leading to his struggles at times. It comes back to getting the ball over the middle of the plate. The numbers don’t lie. They are there for a reason. It’s the reason we look at them.”

Those numbers are relayed to the players daily as well as the scouting reports of what pitchers are doing to get them out.

“Everybody is saying, ‘Oh they should just tell him that he’s doing this too much,’” Servais joked. “Great idea. Never thought about it. We are paid to coach them up and let them know what’s going on.”

Still, knowing what’s going on only helps so much once a player steps into the batter’s box against pitchers who can execute with outstanding stuff. Then it’s on them.

“Eventually it will come,” Servais said. “We’re too good of an offensive team with too good of players for it not to start showing up. I just hope it shows up tonight.”