Outside the Box

Yahoo! Sports: Pitching-rich Mariners wouldn't sink without A-Rod

It's sort of breathtaking how fast the Mariners have gone from all-hit/no-pitch to all-pitch/no-hit. And it is pretty much a misreading of the numbers that has caused this misperception.

Look at these last three years of home and road ERA's and OPS's.

Year	Lg_ERA	Home_ERA	Road_ERA	Lg_OPS	Home_OPS	Road_OPS
2000	4.91	3.84	5.20	.789	.760	.842
1999	4.86	5.28	5.18	.783	.814	.783
1998	4.65	5.28	5.18	.769	.831	.794

The Mariner offense was better than ever, if anything, this year. A-Rod, E-Mar, and J-Ole are fantastic offensive players, sprinkle in some OBP guys like Henderson and McLemore and this is a pretty good offense. Add a Charles Johnson and Ichiro Suzuki to the mix and this is a great offense. The pitching was improved this year, but their road ERA was worse than league average. I'm not sure that qualifies as a pitching rich team. Sounds like the Dodgers to me.

The Mariners weren't an all-time offensive team, but they were among the AL's top three, and you can't say the same about their pitching staff.