Homer record would be M-ty without Series
SEATTLE — So when exactly did “Too many home runs!” become a thing? Some time after 1997, it appears. “No, I don’t remember that being a complaint,” Edgar Martinez, then the Mariners’ designated hitter and now their hitting coach, said in an interview Friday at Safeco Field. “I think obviously in the Kingdome, it was a hitter’s ballpark. We knew that we would score runs.
“If there was a complaint, it was that we didn’t have enough pitching.”
The 1997 Mariners have enjoyed considerable attention here in 2018 because they hold the all-time team record with 264 home runs. And because these Yankees, who wrapped up their visit to the Pacific Northwest on Sunday with a 3-2 loss to the Mariners, are making a serious run at that record. (Through Sunday, their 232 homers in 143 games has them on pace for 262.8).
If you’re a Yankees fan, particularly one of those who laments the Yankees’ perceived dependence on the long ball, you probably don’t want to hear too much about those ’97 Mariners. As it turns out, those ’97 Mariners serve as a handy worst-case scenario for their powerful challengers from The Bronx.
Those Mariners, who led the majors with 5.71 runs per game, posted a .280 team batting average, which would be spectacular in 2018. In 1997, it placed them a good but not great fourth in the American League. They struck out 1,110 times, the most of any playoff team and sixth overall in the AL.
And after winning the AL West, the Mariners went down quietly and quickly in the playoffs, falling to the Orioles in four AL Division Series games. While Seattle’s pitching got hit hard in the first two games, the Mariners’ feared offense, headlined by Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez, Martinez and Jay Buhner, scored a total of 11 runs in the four games while striking out 42 times and drawing seven walks.
“I think we just got caught in a series that the Orioles pitched very well,” Martinez said. “We couldn’t get anything going offensively. I do remember that. The pitching dominated, pretty much, that series.”
These Yankees, who ranked second in the majors with 5.13 runs per game entering Sunday’s game, hit worse for average, with their .250 batting average through Saturday’s action putting them seventh in the AL, and that’s partly because they strike out a little more — their 1,246 whiffs through Saturday were third in the AL and most among current playoff teams.
Hence the criticism of the Yankees, hardly unfounded yet not altogether accurate. If their offense has a shortcoming, it’s not an abundance of home runs but rather an abundance of strikeouts. It’s a worse case, so far, of what afflicted those Mariners.
The affable Martinez, a candidate to join Yankees icon Mariano Rivera in the Hall of Fame class of 2019, said he didn’t even know of the ’ 97 Mariners’ place in history, nor the Yankees’ current challenge, until our conversation. Little fanfare seemingly accompanied those M’s record-setting 258th home run, Buhner’s three-run blast off the Angels’ Allen Watson at the Kingdome on Sept. 23, probably in large part because the record of 257 had been established just the previous year by the Orioles.
It’ll be different this year if the Yankees hit their 265th, partly because it’s the Yankees and partly because of the elapsed time. And partly because the home run itself has become a more polarizing offensive weapon, as exemplified by the extensive conversations about these Yankees’ offensive efficacy, over the past two decades.
When Austin Romine hit his 10th homer Saturday night, a game-winner, the backup catcher became the 10th Yankees player to reach double digits, putting this club on a short franchise list featuring only the 1998 and 2012 teams.
“Obviously, we’ve gotten production from a lot of different places, maybe even that we didn’t expect coming into the year,” Aaron Boone said late Saturday. “So the fact that we’ve gotten production from everywhere I think is a big reason we’re having a strong year.”
It is a strong year, by any objective measure. The ’97 Mariners recorded an even stronger year, though, and it got them to a place that this year’s Yankees would view as a disappointment.