Chasing The Storm 2043-4 What Now?

[njherdfan]

Welp, it's probably a good thing that the season has come to a close for Seattle. The Storm finished with a record of 63-99, and had a run differential of -169. It's fair to say that Seattle almost certainly earned its record. Today, we're going to take a look at some of the big picture reasons that Seattle played so poorly. Afterwards, we'll take a look at some of the individual performers and try and figure out where Seattle went wrong.

Perhaps Seattle's biggest problem this season was its defense. When you look at the league's team defensive statistics, Seattle's incompetence clearly sticks out. As the old adage goes, "you're probably not going to have a great year when your team ZR is -57.3." What's even more incredible is that the team's outfield defense was pretty good! Essentially just Seattle's infield cost the team over 60 runs. Truly impressive, in a horrifying way. Another fun stat; based solely on errors, Seattle's defense was in the top half of the Frick League. Seattle's defenders made the interesting choice of simply never getting to any of the balls that were hit near them, so they didn't give themselves the chance to make any errors. Savvy!

Unsurprisingly, Seattle's pitchers had the worst ERA in baseball, at 5.28. I'm not aware of such statistics existing, but hitters facing Seattle had a .327 BABIP which would have to be close to a record. Based on walks and strikeouts, Seattle's pitching was much closer to average than horrific, which only makes Seattle's defense look worse.

Looking toward next year, it's no exaggeration to say that it would almost be impossible for Seattle's defense to get worse. However, for Seattle to even be respectable, the defense will need to be much, much better. We'll have more coming on possible ways for Seattle's defense to improve, but for now, let's just marvel at how truly terrible the team's defense was this season.

[RonCo]

Sounds like the Storm front office is getting introspective.

[njherdfan]

Sounds like the Storm front office is getting introspective.

We're doing our best!