In 2024, the Atlanta Braves offense took a massive step back, going from one of the best offenses in MLB history to being simply mediocre.
Aside from Marcell Ozuna, the few members of the offense who didn’t suffer catastrophic injuries took a step back, leading to the Braves dismissing Kevin Seitzer, the team’s hitting coach, at the end of the season.
Seitzer quickly caught on with the Mariners, and a little over a month into the season, it seems plainly obvious that Baseball America’s 2023 MLB coach of the year wasn’t actually the root of the Braves offensive struggle.
Braves former hitting coach has completely transformed Seattle Mariners offense
Even at the time, letting go of Seitzer seemed like a reactionary move to a disappointing season that was marred by injuries.
Seitzer was the longest tenured coach on staff and was being tasked with trying to turn Orlando Arcia into a viable productive hitter. Seitzer admitted after getting fired that he struggled to keep hitters from pressing too much at the plate and trying to do too much.
While the Braves offense as a whole this season has been decent, especially after the addition of Alex Verdugo, the team as a whole is slashing .240/ .315./.391, a roughly league average offense according to wRC+ (98 wRC+).
It seems like Tim Hyers, the club’s new hitting coach, has also struggled to get through to players like Jarred Kelenic, Michael Harris, and Orlando Arcia, who all have wRC+s under 61, showing that there’s only so much a hitting coach can accomplish.
Meanwhile, Seitzer, along with former assistant hitting coach Bobby Magallanes, have helped transform the Mariners’ offense into one of the best in baseball.
Over the last few seasons, the Mariners offense has struggled to reach their full potential. In 2024, the Mariners had the 12th-best offense according to wRC+, but was also 21st in runs scored.
The team got disappointing performances from Jorge Polanco, J.P. Crawford, and Mitch Garver to name a few.
This season, all three players have seen dramatic improvements. Polanco has been one of the best hitters in the league, slashing .387/.427/.800 with a 253 wRC+, up 161 points from last season. Crawford currently has a 149 wRC+, up from 89 wRC+ a season ago, and Garver is hitting closer to his 2023 levels of productions with a 121 wRC+.
The Mariners have the third-best wRC+ in baseball and the sixth-most runs in the league. Seattle already hs nine games this season with eight or more runs. According to Foolish Baseball, at this point in the season last year, they only had two.
Almost entirely thanks to the offense, the Mariners are currently in first place in the AL West, with a 19-12 record, two games ahead of the (not Oakland, not Sacramento) Athletics.
It’s difficult to quantify just how much Seitzer and co. have to do with the team’s improvements, but it’s safe to say that the Braves firing him was almost certainly an overreaction to the club’s underwhelming performance that already had a clear explanation.
