In Defense of Jerry Dipoto

With the Ners teetering on the edge of the Wild Card race, it is safe to say that this season has not quite gone according to plan. Yovani Gallardo is the only member of the projected starting rotation to not spend time on the disabled list, the team has used 38 different pitchers this season – 40 if you include position players Carlos Ruiz and Mike Freeman, which ties a Major League Record – and new offensive additions Jarrod Dyson, Mitch Haniger and Jean Segura have spent a combined 143 days on the DL. Even with those blows to our rotation, bullpen, and offense, the Ners are still only a few games out of a playoff spot.

How? Simply put, Jerry Dipoto has pulled a starting rotation out of his ass. Despite facing a very expensive market for starters and a very limited farm system, the Mariners’ GM found a way to stare down the face of adversity and assemble an ad-hoc crew of pitchers that, somehow, have been able to keep the Ners relevant this season.

Quite frankly, this team should not be competitive right now. They should not be able to field an even remotely competent roster with the millions of injuries suffered. The original projected starting five in Spring Training: Felix, Paxton, Iwakuma, Smyly and Gallardo, have spent 477 days combined on the DL, which is 52% of the 182 day season. Fifty-two percent! Meanwhile, replacement-level (read: bad/ incredibly mediocre) pitchers like Sam Gaviglio, Christian Bergman, Chase De Jong, Dillon Overton, Rob Whalen, Chris Heston, and Ryan Weber have started 1/6th of the Ner’s games. Very few teams would be able to survive a season with their 3rd and 4th best AAA starters getting consistent starts – but apparently the 2017 Seattle Mariners are one of very few.

To put the kind of injury luck the team has had in context, since the league expanded to 30 teams in 1998, the average team has had 16 DL trips per season and has lost players to the DL for a combined total of 873 days. The 2017 Ners stand at 23 DL trips and 1,403 combined days lost. Even if the injuries to fringe MLB level players Whalen, Weber, Evan Marshall and Shawn O’Malley are dropped, the Ners have still lost players for 1,042 games this year. Four of our best players (Felix, Paxton, Cano, and Segura) have missed a combined 201 days, and breakout outfielder Mitch Haniger has missed 66 days. Teams that lose that much production and are forced to use replacement players for that long should simply not be in the Wild Card hunt.

But here we are.

What has made this season, and this season’s rotation creation, the more impressive (and depressing) is that Dipoto knows the window is closing for a playoff birth – and I’m not just speaking about this year. The Ners core is built around Felix, Cano, Cruz, Seager, Segura, and Paxton. Felix’s aging has been depressively apparent this season, and his effectiveness moving forward can’t be relied upon (My heart: Shut up, Felix is fine and perfect and he always will be! My head: Father time still the GOAT).

Simultaneously, Cano is due for a move to first base in a year or two, and Cruz is going to be closer to 40 than 35 when his current deal is up after 2018. These three are all on the backside of their careers, which means just maintaining their current production going forward will be a win.

Kyle is 29, Segura 27, and Paxton 28. These guys are in their athletic primes and are as good as they will ever be for the Ners, barring Paxton staying healthy for a whole season. What this means is that the Ners do not have time to wait around for prospects to develop. If we had waited for Tyler O’Neill to figure out MLB pitching for another year, we then lose one of the few productive season left in Cano and Cruz, and waste the best seasons that Segura and Seager could have. With this pressure on, and a limited farm system to draw from, Dipoto managed to formulate a functional – if not exciting – starting rotation to give the team a chance.

The trade Jerry gets dinged for the most was giving up O’Neill for Marco Gonzales…and the criticisms are more than fair. O’Neill was the most exciting prospect we had above A ball and his forearms are about as big as my quads. Plus, he has only continued to mash dingers with St. Louis’s AAA affiliate. Gonzales, on the other hand, has been horrible. But rising stars Gamel, Haniger, Heredia, and the veteran Dyson blocked O’Neill from playing outfield at the MLB level for at least the next two years, and Gonzales was an interesting addition and possible improvement on the then Moore/Bergman/Gaviglio rotation. For all we know right now, O’Neill might pull a Pedro Cerano and prove incapable of hitting MLB off-speed pitching. Unfortunately, we do know that Gonzales can’t handle MLB hitting consistently. That move has not turned out in our favor so far, but I am validating the move by saying that it fit the window and exchanged a position of strength for a position of weakness.

What Jerry does not get enough credit for is also getting Erasmo Ramirez, Andrew Albers, and Mike Leake. He acquired all three for a combined price of Rayder Ascanio, Steve Cishek, and cash – mere peanuts compared to the productivity that Ramirez, Albers, and Leake have given to the Ners since arriving. Those three have combined for an ERA of 2.99 and a record of 8-3 with a K/9 of 7.38, a BB/9 of 1.79 and a HR/9 of 1.39. Leake especially has been dominant in his first few starts with the team, and despite Albers’ demotion to the bullpen, the Lil’ Maple has been very reliable as long as the defense doesn’t commit five errors in an inning. Erasmo has been Erasmo: really good outings punctuated by dingers. The Ners replaced a god-awful rotation of Miranda, Gallardo (below), Moore, Bergman and Gaviglio (Combined 21-30, with a 5.16 ERA, 6.5 K/9, 3.2 BB/9 and 1.95 HR/9), with three serviceable starters that will compete for spots in 2018, at almost no cost. Well done Jerry, well done.

Dipoto has surely made some bad moves in his time as GM: Chris Taylor for Zach Lee is mind-boggling in retrospect, not resigning Dae-Ho Lee broke many fan’s hearts, and the Gonzales trade could still get worse. But Jerry (correctly) recognized that the team has a very finite window to make the playoffs, and that to take advantage of that, he had to sacrifice the limited farm system for players who could help in the next few years. His big name move looks really bad right now, but we will not know the true outcome until a few years from now when Gonzales and O’Neill both have had time in the MLB. Maybe Gonzales’s last start against Texas was the sign of a turnaround (TBH though, it probably wasn’t). But Dipoto also scraped together three solid starters for next to nothing, and has somehow found a way to keep this team in contention. Remember, the Ners spent an above average amount of time on the DL, have had their best players miss significant amounts of time and have had replacement-level pitchers make 1/6th of the starts this season.

We should not be in the Wild card hunt, but we are. And even though it’s only a smidgen, we still have hope this year – and in the next couple of years – thanks to Jerry.

#Opinion