Who needs offense? Mariners stalwart rotation carrying them into playoff race

The Seattle Mariners have the potential to turn the baseball world completely on its head.

This era of baseball has been led by offense, offense and more offense. Teams are hitting more home runs than ever and it's crucial to be able to put up as many runs as possible on any given day. If you can't compete with the high-powered offenses in a shootout, you just can't win the World Series.

The Mariners haven't fallen into this trap though. Instead of trying to compete in shootouts with these high-powered lineups, Seattle has just decided to lean into their pitching and win in pitcher's duels. And the Mariners pitching staff is the only staff in the entire league that can get away with this sort of strategy.

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Mariners pitching staff dominates a series again

Recently in a series against the New York Mets, the Mariners starting pitchers tossed 19 innings and allowed just one earned run. This was led by six innings with one earned run from Luis Castillo, seven shutout innings from Logan Gilbert and six shutout innings from Bryce Miller. The worst performing starter of the series was Castillo, who tossed six innings and surrendered just one run. That's ridiculous.

And it's the sixth time this season that the Mariners pitching staff has allowed two or fewer earned runs across an entire series.

Their dominance doesn't just stop there though. They have allowed the lowest number of runs to score, just 437, well lower than the second-ranked team in the league. This is increasingly impressive when you note how historically dominant the Guardians bullpen has been.

The Mariners still aren't locked into a playoff spot, but they continue to push closer to the AL Wild Card again. It's incredible that they're even in the playoff race, given that they've scored the fourth lowest number of runs this season. They have only outscored the Marlins, White Sox and Rays.

Seattle added some offense at the trade deadline, but it's still obvious that they're going to lean on their five man rotation of Castillo, Miller, Gilbert, Bryan Woo and George Kirby.

That kind of consistency and dominance gives them a chance in any series, no matter how stagnant their lineup is.