With a few days to rest and reevaluate after a disappointing end to the first half of the season, the Mariners are hoping to start fresh after the All-Star break. Julio Rodriguez and Brendan Donovan should be returning from their injuries sooner rather than later, and the team will kick off the stretch run with a six-game homestand against a pair of weaker National League teams. That\u2019s a pretty soft landing to begin the second half of the season, hopefully providing the team a spark ahead of a huge matchup against Texas next weekend.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a rough season for the Giants, both on and off the field. This team was supposed to be good enough to challenge for a NL Wild Card spot, but they\u2019re looking like they\u2019ll need to reset their roster for next year at the trade deadline. The uninspired play on the field is one thing, but the off-field issues are overshadowing everything. There was the Pride Night controversy, the mismanagement from new manager Tony Vitello, tone deaf comments from players and president of baseball operations Buster Posey. It\u2019s been a circus, and it\u2019s hard not to believe that all those distractions are taking a toll on the team\u2019s play on the field.<\/p>\n
There are a few bright spots to point to in the lineup. Luis Arraez earned a spot on the NL All-Star team thanks to a career-best season. His power output is the highest it\u2019s ever been thanks to the expansive gaps in Oracle Park, helping him earn 21 doubles and seven triples. What\u2019s more impressive is that he\u2019s turned himself into an excellent defender at second base thanks to the tutelage of infield guru Ron Washington. Rafael Devers got off to a slow start but he\u2019s posted a 147 wRC+ and 12 home runs since the beginning of June. The other two stars in the lineup, Willy Adames and Matt Chapman, haven\u2019t found much consistency this year; both are in the midst of career-worst seasons. With those two stars unable to produce in the middle of the lineup, San Francisco has had to turn to breakout utility infielder Casey Schmitt and rookie Bryce Eldridge to carry a lot of the load.<\/p>\n
Landen Roupp has taken a big step forward on the mound this year. His strikeout rate is nearly four points higher than it was last year, leading to a 3.29 FIP that ranks 12th in the majors. Unfortunately, he was also one of the pitchers at the center of the Giants\u2019 Pride Night controversy<\/a> a month ago, which has overshadowed the progress he\u2019s made on the field. As our own Ryan Blake pointed out on FanGraphs<\/a> back in April, Roupp\u2019s improvement this year seems to stem from his position on the mound. That\u2019s helped him disguise his two best pitches, his sinker and curveball, a bit better. His spotty command is still holding him back from joining the game\u2019s elite, and he\u2019s been a bit unlucky to run such a high ERA despite his solid peripherals.<\/p>\n Few pitchers have been as consistent and durable as Logan Webb has been over the past five years. He\u2019s accumulated at least 4.1 fWAR in every season since 2021, though that streak might be broken this year. After enjoying a huge jump in strikeouts last year, his K% has fallen to the lowest it\u2019s been since 2020. Both his walk rate and groundball rate are approaching career worsts as well. He spent three weeks on the IL in May with a knee injury \u2014 the first time he\u2019s dealt with any kind of injury since 2022 \u2014 which could be affecting his performance on the field. He\u2019s also throwing his four-seamer and cutter a lot more often this year at the expense of his sweeper; that pitch mix change could explain some, but not all, of the issues he\u2019s facing.<\/p>\n After recovering from Tommy John surgery in 2024, Robbie Ray put together a full, healthy season last year. He\u2019s not the same pitcher that won the AL Cy Young in 2021, nor the pitcher we saw for a single season in Seattle. His 7.4% walk rate during those two years looks like an aberration; he\u2019s back up above 10% in his three seasons in San Francisco. More importantly, his strikeout rate has fallen in consecutive seasons, and it now sits at just 20.3%, the lowest it\u2019s been since his rookie cup of coffee back in 2014. He\u2019s also diversified his pitch mix, adding a changeup and a sinker to give him a deeper five-pitch repertoire to keep batters off his signature four-seamer and slider.<\/p>\n The Rangers eeked out a series win over the Astros last weekend to maintain a 1.5 game lead in the division. Texas travels to Atlanta this weekend while Houston hosts Baltimore. In the Wild Card race, the Mariners are tied with the surprising Twins and the surging Red Sox, riding a nine-game win streak, are just a half game back. Minnesota travels to Chicago to face the Cubs while the Red Sox host the Rays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With a few days to rest and reevaluate after a disappointing end to the first half of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,111440,132760,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-402939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-seattle-mariners-game-information","tag-seattle-mariners-scores-standings","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}