Jeff Passan’s recent ESPN piece on Joey Votto reacting to never-before-seen Ted Williams hitting footage offers more than just a fun baseball rabbit hole. It also lands on a lesson that matters for the Mariners: pulling the ball in the air is valuable, but it is not some automatic cheat code.
Williams, as always, sounds like a hitter from another universe and this one at the same time. His thoughts on timing, swing shape and efficiency still feel sharp enough to pass for modern instruction. But the real eye-opener is Votto’s breakdown of just how tough it is to actually do what Williams is describing.
“The face of the barrel gets smaller,” says Votto of a swing meant to produced a pulled ball in the air. “Combine that with the speed of the pitching, the complicated nature of pitching -- changes speeds, up, down, all these variables -- to be, like he said, strong enough and quick enough to be able to accurately match barrel to ball and hit it on the easiest side and put it in the air is the trinity.”
That’s the heart of it. The ideal outcome is a pulled fly ball. The problem is getting there consistently enough to matter.
That conversation lines up neatly with a separate Seattle Times story by Adam Jude that raises questions about the Mariners’ offensive direction. Since Dan Wilson and Edgar Martinez took over in late 2024, the emphasis has been on making good contact up the middle. That older-school approach can run headfirst into the newer idea that the best damage comes from pulled fly balls and home runs.
One anonymous Mariners hitter put it plainly to Jude: “All I know is we tend to win games when we hit homers. And to hit homers, you need to pull the ball,” He also added: “It’s fair to say we are a group at a crossroads.”
The Mariners have actually been good at that specific skill. Last year, their 19.6 Pull-Air% ranked sixth in MLB, and it went with 238 home runs, third in MLB, and 766 runs, ninth in MLB. This season, they’ve pushed it a little further, improving to 19.7 percent.
And yet the overall offense has gone nowhere close to matching that profile. The Mariners are sitting in the middle of the pack with 163 home runs and are second-to-last with 3.91 runs per game.
That gap says plenty. Injuries have played a major role.
So has Cal Raleigh’s historic downfall. There’s been some bad luck mixed in too.
But the larger point is harder to ignore: a team can lean into pulled fly balls and still not produce a great offense.
The Mariners are not alone there. Of the top 10 teams in Pull-Air%, only five are also top-10 in runs per game.
Only four are top-10 in home runs per game. And only three rank top-10 in both home runs and runs per game.
Home runs still matter, and they still track closely with scoring. The Mariners have every reason to chase them, too, especially in a park like T-Mobile Park that is rough on hitters, even if it is not quite as brutal on homers as people might assume.
Still, the answer probably lives somewhere between the old-school and new-school extremes. Pulled fly balls shouldn’t be treated like a bad habit.
But they also shouldn’t be mistaken for a universal solution. They are unicorn swings, best left to unicorn hitters.
In Other News...
Bryan Woo Just Gave Mariners Fans A Real Reason To Worry
Bryan Woos latest outing ended earlier than the Mariners would have liked, even if the right-hander tried to downplay it afterward. Seattle had him continue pitching in the game before he eventually departed, which fit the clubs usual conservative approach to handling pitcher health and suggested the team was watching the situation carefully rather than forcing anything in the moment.
For a rotation that has leaned on Woos stability, the next few days now matter. He is slated to take the ball again on Saturday, and the Mariners will be monitoring how he comes through the short-term recovery window before deciding whether everything is on track. [Read more 🡒]
Colt Emerson Just Added To A Mariners Pattern Fans Hate
Colt Emersons season has followed an all-too-familiar Mariners path: a young player grinding through offensive struggles, then later revealing that something physical was getting in the way. The shortstop was optioned to Triple-A Tacoma after a season in which he hit .190/.246/.335 with an elevated strikeout rate, and his numbers tailed off sharply after mid-June. Once the demotion was already in place, the club placed him on the injured list because of a left wrist injury.
For Seattle, the larger concern is less about one disappointing line than the pattern it reflects. Mariners players have repeatedly tried to play through injuries, and the result has often been the same - production that never quite gets going and an offense that keeps searching for answers. Emersons situation fits that frustration, because the wrist issue helps explain the slump, but it also raises the same lingering question the Mariners keep facing: how much more damage gets done before someone speaks up? [Read more 🡒]
Mariners May Have Found A Needed Right-Handed Answer Against Houston
Seattle has added another right-handed bat to the organizational mix, signing Andy Ibez to a minor league contract and sending him to Triple-A Tacoma. The Mariners are looking for depth and a little more balance in a lineup that has wanted more help against left-handed pitching, and Ibez brings the kind of versatility teams value this time of year. He has played multiple defensive positions and has previous big league stops with the Tigers, Athletics and Mets.
The fit is easy to see from the Mariners' side, especially with the club continuing to search for answers that can play in different spots and offer a different look off the bench. Ibez has a track record as a right-handed hitter who can move around the diamond, and Seattle will get a longer look at whether that profile can translate into something more than just insurance. There is also a familiar Houston connection in his past that gives this move a little extra edge, even if the full reason for the intrigue is still waiting down the road. [Read more 🡒]