On paper, many would consider the 2023 Seattle Mariners a success. Their 88 wins were 10th best in all of baseball and they boasted a pitching staff whose 20.1 fWAR trailed only Philly and Tampa Bay. Despite all the positives, they still managed to be eliminated from the playoff race during the final week of the season. That Mariners squad was one seemingly destined for a return to the playoffs. Youngsters Julio Rodríguez, George Kirby, and Cal Raleigh had all taken big steps forward in 2022. They added some muscle in Teoscar Hernández and then filled in the rest of the last offseason with the likes of AJ Pollock and Tommy La Stella. Life was supposed to be great in Mariner Land.
”Supposed to be” was the key term.
By season’s end, Seattle finished one game back of a wildcard spot and moved on to the offseason with plenty of question marks. What will payroll look like in 2024? Will they bring back Teoscar Hernández? Can anyone else take that big step forward that JP Crawford did last season? For a team boasting maybe the best pitching staff in baseball, this team needed to adjust. They needed to adjust their focus, adjust their goals, adjust their offensive mindset, and adjust how the front office defines success. They need to look back on 2022, figure out what worked, and relearn how to win.
They’ve since cut a bunch of payroll by ridding themselves of Marco Gonzales, Evan White, Jarred Kelenic, Eugenio Suárez, and Robbie Ray. All big(ger) contracts that they felt hindered their ability to be competitive in 2024 and beyond. In their place, they brought in 2o23 breakout Luke Raley Jr., Luis Urías, Mitch Garver, Anthony DeSclafani, and fan favorite Mitch Haniger. Not the most exciting bunch, but a group of guys with enough upside to make an immediate impact with this Mariners club.
That said, there’s still a lot to look forward to in 2024. Especially in the fantasy baseball world. When players leave, it opens the door for others to step up. That’s what this article is really about. The biggest sleepers and potential busts of your 2024 Seattle Mariners.
Sleepers
2023 Stats (665 PA): .250 | 12 HR | 79 R | 58 RBI | 1 SB
The 2023 Ty France was the most disappointing version of him we’ve seen to date. For a guy who was once one of the most clutch hitters in baseball, he became someone you slowly started expecting to be an automatic out, especially with runners on base.
France had a double-play problem. Only one player grounded into more double plays than France last season. His 25 GIDP was a career-high. It was also 11 more than the next Mariners player (Julio Rodríguez) and the most by a Mariners hitter since Robinson Canó had 26 in 2015. Not something you’d expect from a guy who had the lowest groundball rate of his career (outside of the weird COVID season) at just 41.6%. Much of this seems to be a mix between a bit of bad luck and lack of power.
The other problem with France seemed to be a newfound inability to hit four-seam fastballs.
| Four Seam Fastballs | BA | xBA | SLG | xSLG | wOBA | Whiff% |
| 2023 | .204 | .240 | .346 | .412 | .317 | 19.3% |
| 2022 | .310 | .273 | .462 | .416 | .376 | 16.3% |
| 2021 | .322 | .302 | .489 | .522 | .420 | 16.1% |
France’s ability to hit four seamers seems to be aging like milk rather than fine wine. The good news is it seems to be a problem that is fixable in 2024. Especially when you take into account France is one of the better hitters in the league when it comes to swing decisions and the ability to make contact.
On one hand, you have a contact ability that remained consistently well above league average, while his swing decision chart was more “peaks and valleys”. Which points toward the potential for high-level success to be there. France went through a rough patch in July, but what we need to focus on is how his chart jumped fairly drastically after that. He isn’t a guy known for power, but when he’s consistently making good contact and “controlling the zone” he becomes an excellent line-drive, doubles hitter.
This offseason, France seems dead set on building on that contact and swing decision progress he made. He’s doing the thing we all love to see a player do in the offseason…he’s at Driveline. The hope is he can work on generating more bat speed and getting those exit velocity numbers up. Specifically his abysmal 84.8 MPH average exit velocity on flyballs. Something Driveline seems to excel at with hitters. If this is the case, we may see France repeat the success he had in 2021 and bring legitimate late-round value to your fantasy baseball roster.
2023 Stats (344 PA): .270 | 19 HR | 45 R | 50 RBI
Mitch Garver is set to be the Mariners’ everyday DH in 2024, a title that was donned by Mike Ford last season and a mixture of mediocrity in the seasons before. With the two-year contract he signed, he became the first free agent Jerry Dipoto has signed to a multi-year deal since taking over as the Seattle Mariners GM, so expectations are high.
And they should be.
Garver had a 2023 season that some may consider a breakout. He went from a 31 home run hitter in 2019, to never playing more than 70 games until he managed 89 last season. Now much of his success this season will be predicated on his ability to stay healthy, but it feels like Seattle is set to give him every chance they can to be an everyday stalwart in the middle of their lineup. There’s only one way to be ultra-successful as a right-hander in T-Mobile Park and that’s to be someone who consistently pulls the ball with authority. While this is true for all parks, T-Mobile is the least hitter-friendly park in baseball. If you wanna be successful you’ve gotta be able to put some stank on it. And Garver is pretty consistently good at that.
Garver Hit Ball Hard
Not many hitters can generate extra-base hits the way Garver has shown the ability to. In his last 559 ABs, he’s racked up 47 XBH. Much of this can be attributed to his 90 MPH average exit velocity, as well as the fact he makes weak contact just 1.9% of the time (92nd percentile) and solid contact 8.9% of the time (91st percentile). He does this without sacrificing the ability to hit for contact as well.
His contact rate grew at a pretty steady rate for the entirety of the year, and in turn, his hitter performance ended the year as one of the best in baseball. It all comes down to whether or not he’s able to stay healthy. If so, look for Garver to flirt with HR, RBI & Run scoring numbers similar to that of 2023 Teoscar Hernández, without the “he better not strike out again…” headache that came with him.
2023 Stats (87.2 IP): 4-5 | 4.21 ERA | 1.21 WHIP | 93 K
Woo was the true definition of a breakout player in 2023 even though he fizzled out a bit at the end of the year. Coming straight from Double-A and being tossed out there to face the Rangers’ hard-hitting lineup for his first major league start was brutal. What came after that rough two-inning start was nothing short of masterful.
In his next six starts, Woo showed that he had the potential to be great, throwing 32.2 IP with a 2.20 ERA, 0.89 WHIP, and an impressive 24.4% K-BB%. By year’s end, he had a 25.1% strikeout rate and was one of the best pitchers in baseball when it came to limiting hard contact and ideal plate appearances. His IPA% was just 21.3% which put him in the 96th percentile in baseball. Not bad for a kid nobody expected to even sniff the majors in 2023.
Much of Woo’s success comes from his magnificent four-seam fastball. Even with him throwing just 87 innings, he still tracked as one of the best four seamers in all of baseball last season.
His fastball produced a 5.16 PLV last season, making it by far his most dangerous pitch. It was exceptionally hard for right-handers to hit as well, who he dominated in 2023. With 15 inches of vertical movement and almost eight inches of glove side run, his 95 MPH fastball gets in on the hands of right-handers quickly. This was a big factor in his ability to limit right-handers to just a .179 batting average against and a 30.4% strikeout rate.
For him to succeed in 2024 he just needs to stay the course and continue to improve. The biggest reason for his slide at the end of last season was fatigue. His 131 innings combined last year was by far the most he’s thrown in his career. He’ll need to find a secondary he can use to successfully get lefties out (fingers crossed his changeup can take a big step forward), but if the Mariners can manage his arm well in 2024 Woo has a chance to become another elite strikeout machine in that already great rotation.
Busts
2023 Stats (406 PA): .249 | 19 HR | 56 R | 49 RBI | 14 SB
There are two different ways you can look at the José Caballero for Luke Raley Jr. trade. On the one hand, trading Caballero straight up for Raley seems like a win for the Mariners in terms of overall talent. On the other hand, I’m not so sure Raley will end up being the player the Mariners or fantasy managers hope he can be in 2024.
His end-of-the-year stats look great. There were 20 outfielders to hit at least 19 home runs and steal 14 or more bases. Raley, Chas McCormick, and Nolan Jones were the only three to do it with less than 500 PA. Nobody did it in fewer PAs than Raley.
At the beginning of the year Raley, much like most other Rays players, was playing lights out. Much like the rest of his career, though, that quickly fizzled out. His great start to the season left his end-of-the-year numbers looking promising, but they hide just how much he fell off.
| BA | OPS | XBH | SB | K% | Barrel% | Zone Contact | |
| Through June | .280 | .940 | 28 | 9 | 30.6% | 17.6% | 81% |
| After June | .214 | .693 | 17 | 5 | 32.6% | 7.5% | 76.6% |
Raley played just eight more games through June than he did after. In the second half of the year, he became a fifth outfielder at best in most fantasy baseball formats and that’s if you wanted to hang on what upside he still may have had. The reality is, for his career, he’s a high strikeout guy who struggles to make consistent contact but is fast and can hit the ball hard if he can get ahold of it.
Even though his contact rate stayed consistently well below league average, his power took a nosedive. It recovered slightly over his last 4o or so batted ball events, but even then it only recovered back to league average.
His IPA rate of 22.2% ended up in just the 12th percentile in baseball. This comes a year after he had an IPA rate of only 19.4%. As a low-contact power hitter with some speed, he is not at all set up for the same kind of success as someone like Mitch Garver. Being successful at T-Mobile Park with a low contact rate and high strikeout rate only works if you have the line drive rate to back it up and Raley does not have it.
He’s currently been drafted as high as 254th in NFBC drafts. He profiles as a late-round, fourth, or fifth outfield type, but now being an everyday player in Seattle isn’t going to do any favors to whatever perceived upside Raley may have.
2023 Stats (182 PA): .220 | 6 HR | 23 R | 21 RBI | 1 SB
When I initially was assigned this article, Dominic Canzone was at the top of my “Sleepers” portion. Then Dipoto decided to wake up and made multiple moves that have since buried Canzone on the roster. After Teoscar left, Canzone was set to be the everyday right fielder and he showed enough legitimate flashes last season to be worthy of the intrigue.
He was acquired along with Josh Rojas from Arizona and looked like he was set to be the Mariners’ next under-the-radar trade acquisition that paid dividends, joining the likes of Ty France, Mitch Haniger, Andrés Muñoz, and Matt Brash.
Only four hitters in 2023 did the following:
– At least 150 PA’s
– .470 xSLG or better
– 12% Barrel Rate or better
– 18% Strikeout Rate or betterAcuña, Betts, Seager… and Dominic Canzone. pic.twitter.com/BvKbN3MkB4
— Switch – A Mariners Fan (@IISwitchII) January 3, 2024
I want to make this very clear, Canzone’s addition to the busts list has little to do with ability and potential and everything to do with the fact he’s now either the fourth or fifth best option depending on how Scott Servais views Sam Haggerty. What was looking like the beginning of a potentially high-upside, late-round pick has now become someone who should continue to be a fantasy afterthought for the foreseeable future.