Every year, ESPN’s Jayson Stark cobbles together his “strange but true” team feats. This year, the Seattle Mariners and their inept offense have a starring role.
From the excellent story…
• It took the Mariners 151 games to score 481 runs. That’s as many as the Red Sox scored before the All-Star break.
• A total of 32 Mariners made it into the old batter’s box last season. They combined to score a mere 513 runs. That wasn’t just a record for fewest runs scored by an American League team, over a full season, in the DH era. It was even fewer than any National League team has ever scored, over a full season, in the DH era. The former AL record was 530, by Mitchell Page’s 1978 A’s. The NL record is 531, by Bombo Rivera’s 1976 Expos.
• The Mariners also had a .298 team on-base percentage. Think about that. Only 10 hitters in the entire sport (who qualified for the batting title) had an OBP that low. Yet the Mariners’ TEAM somehow had an OBP that ugly. You won’t be shocked to learn that no AL team in the DH era had ever had an OBP less than .300 in a full season — until now.
I think we had a pretty good handle on the M’s scoring woes before your enlightened column. But thanks for the Christmas cheer.
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Well, I do what I can … Plus, I was on a week-long, forced hiatus. I had to come back with good news.
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Div, glad to see you’re back. Every time you don’t post or have an article published for awhile, I start to think the TNT is doing more cost cutting. Guess I was partially right………
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This is Divish’s way of giving us all fruitcake for Christmas.
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Lol.. Well we’ve proven that we can’t do worse
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Last year is history. Let’s look forward to changes in 2011. Anything will be better than last year.
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