Mariners

Aaron Sele and the 2001 Playoffs, Cal Raleigh Passes Ken Griffey Jr., and the 1989 Mariners Parody That Echoes in 2025

A mish mash of things!

The Seattle Mariners are very much in the running for the American League West division title! They just won one of the biggest regular season series in their history! They have a Magic Number! It’s pretty surreal.

I’ve been thinking back on the years the Mariners have gone to the playoffs, all five of them. If everyone combines for some version of Seattle wins and Houston losses that equal 3, the Mariners will win the American League West division title for the fourth time. The Mariners haven't spent much of their history thinking about Magic Numbers. Even when they were good, it didn't come into play much.

There wasn’t a lot of nervousness or anticipation about the ebbing Magic Number in 2001, as tends to be the case when you win 116 games. In 1995, the division title came down to the one-game playoff against the Angels. So before this week, it was really only in 1997 that we got to relish the countdown.

I’ve had a tough time with baseball this season for a number of reasons, mainly the political situation in this country. But if things have to be out of the ordinary, I'll take the Mariners being out of the ordinary. I’m jumping all the way in as the calendar flips to fall. Buy the ticket, take the postseason ride.

The last division title was 24 years ago, and I’ve spent quite a bit of time this year immersed in 2001 Mariners lore for a few different projects that are in the wings. For one of those I re-watched the entire 2001 American League Championship Series. It was a 0/10 experience. I do not recommend it. However, it was fascinating to go back and revisit that series, because it was striking, the ways that baseball has changed over the last couple decades.

I’ve long thought that Mariners fandom was so quick to embrace the advanced statistical revolution because it was so obvious to us, watching Félix Hernández pitch, that stats like pitcher wins didn’t actually mean anything. So, you can understand what a wild experience it was to re-enter the world where pitcher wins mattered.

I want to take a closer look at that and redeem a Mariner who deserved better statistics…and run support.

Aaron Sele and Pitcher Playoff Wins

Aaron Sele was one of the first Mariners players who grew up a Mariners fan (at least to the extent that anyone was a fan in the 80s). He grew up in Poulsbo and took the ferry to Seattle with his friends, often sneaking down from the cheap upper deck seats in the Kingdome to sit behind the dugouts as the game proceeded.1 He played baseball at Washington State University and began his professional career with the Boston Red Sox. After the Red Sox, he went to the Texas Rangers and started for Texas in the last game at the Kingdome.

He signed with the Mariners in 2000, going 17-10 with a 4.51. He followed that up in the 2001 regular season with a 15-5 record and 3.60 ERA, never allowing more than 4 earned runs in a start. 15 wins and a sub-4 ERA were pretty nice numbers in the steroid era and Aaron Sele was considered a good starting pitcher. We were all happy to see him on the mound when he started.

And then the playoffs came around.

Suddenly everyone was wringing their hands over Sele starting the first game of the 2001 ALCS against the New York Yankees. In New York, they were celebrating. The story went that Aaron Sele simply could not get it done in the playoffs. He was good in the regular season, and fell apart when it really mattered, failing to keep his team in the game.

I looked at his postseason stats and it was immediately clear that his teams simply did not score runs for him. Then, I found a clip from SportsCenter going into Game 1 of the ALCS:

Sele’s run support in his career during the regular season is 5.7 runs a start, the highest for any pitcher over the last 50 years. But in the post season, Sele’s run support just 1.2 runs per start, the lowest of any pitcher in 50 years.2

Sele made two postseason starts for Texas, both against the Yankees. In the first, in 1998, he allowed 4 earned runs over 6 innings. Not ideal, but not the worst. He and Texas took the loss, 4-0. The following year he also faced the Yankees, giving up 3 earned runs in 5 innings. Again, not great but not the worst. He and the Rangers lost 8-0.

In 2000 with the Mariners, he went 7.1 innings against the White Sox, allowing 1 earned run and earning a no decision in a 2-1 Mariners win. In the next round, he faced the Yankees again. 4 earned runs in 6 innings and took the loss in a 8-2 Mariners loss. Going in to the 2001 playoffs, his teams had scored a grand total of 2 runs in his 3 losses.

Granted, he had a rough start in Game 3 of the 2001 Division Series against Cleveland. He only lasted 2 innings and was responsible for 2 earned runs (5 overall). The Mariners, for their part, scored only 2 runs. In 5 playoff games, his teams had scored 6 runs for him. It’s tough, if not impossible, to get a win out of that kind of run support.

He took the mound for Game 1 of the ALCS against the Yankees. Once again, the Mariners only scored 2 runs in that game. Sele put in 6 innings of work and allowed 3 earned runs. The Mariners offense had struggled mightily in the division series and was again stymied as the ALCS began.

Sele’s final postseason start was the Mariners’ final game in the 2001 season. This time, however, the Mariners' pallid offense scored the most runs a team had ever scored in an Aaron Sele postseason start.

Three.

It was also Sele’s worst postseason appearance. Over 4 innings, he allowed 5 runs, only 1 of them earned. But those runs kicked off a Yankee offensive explosion, in which they would score 12 runs, and send the Mariners home without an American League pennant to show for their historic season.

Cal Raleigh and Ken Griffey Jr.

Cal Raleigh hit two home runs during the series in Houston, is 57th and 58th of the year, passing Ken Griffey Jr. for the most home runs in a single season by a Mariners player ever. And he’s staring down 60 home runs in a season.

Ken Griffey Jr is one of the most bountiful home run hitters in major league history, a first-ballot Hall of Famer who hit 56 home runs in consecutive seasons in 1997 and 1998. In 1998, he was part of the chase for Roger Maris’s single season record of 61 home runs, along with Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. He's one of the all-time greats. He's Ken Griffey Jr.!

In contrast, it really can’t be overstated just how incredible Cal Raleigh’s season has been. He’s always had power, and hit 30 and 34 home runs the last two seasons. Anyone getting 30 home runs a year from their catcher is going to be over the moon, and that’s part of why Raleigh got the contract extension he did.

As a full-time catcher, the most physically demanding position in baseball, Cal Raleigh has hit more home runs in a single season than center fielder Ken Griffey Jr. ever did. He has hit more home runs than Griffey did in the homer-happy Kingdome while playing in T-Mobile Park, the most pitcher-friendly ballpark in baseball.3 It's an astonishing accomplishment. And he might get to 60 this year!

Either way, Cal Raleigh is an all-time Mariner and may very well find himself in the ranks of all-time great catchers by the time his career is over.

Of all the history happening lately, I like this type this best.

Jimmy Kimmel and George Argyros

Unless you’ve been hiding in a hole (in which case, I’m not sure how you’re reading this), you know the situation with Jimmy Kimmel's show. Turns out, it's not the first time he's made people mad with some pretty tame words.

Kimmel began his career in radio. One of his first jobs was in Seattle at 102.5 KZOK on a morning show called “Me and Him”, starting in April 1989. In June that year, Kimmel his radio partner, Kent Voss, wrote a parody song called "George Argyros is a Mighty Schmuck," to the tune of “Quinn the Mighty Eskimo”, in response to the trade of Mark Langston to the Montreal Expos.

I searched the internet high and low and couldn’t find a recording of it, but a newspaper article shared a sampling of the lyrics:

The refrain used throughout the song says, “George Aryros is a mighty schmuck.''

Larry Sharp, KZOK program director, said the Mariners found this verse most offensive:

"He's dumping stars for human waste, even Griffey is tradeable,
All the fans beneath the dome are drinking beer and cursing him,
If George the bonehead shows up, they are all going to spit on him.'"

The song also has Argyros trading "Jeffrey Leonard for a pregnant gnome.''4

If those were the most offensive lyrics, it seems pretty tame to me. The Mariners, on the other hand, couldn't stomach it. After the song first aired, the team "complained and threatened to pull their advertisements,” said Sharp. The station stopped airing the song for a week.

But that wasn’t enough for the Mariners, who went ahead and canceled $8,000 worth of advertising with the station. KZOK re-aired the song and the Mariners complained more. Sharp said, “parody is legal. It’s no big deal. I can understand them pulling the ads, but they ought to have a sense of humor about it.”

Mariners vice-president of marketing and sales Bill Knudsen sniffed in response, “It’s not a matter of us having a sense of humor, but the song is pointed and detrimental to what we’re trying to do here.” Knudsen claimed that Argyros had not heard the song.5

It’s also unclear what the Mariners were “trying to do here” when Argyros spent nearly his entire time as Mariners owner trying to move the team or sell the team, and went so far as to buy the San Diego Padres in 1987 while he owned the Mariners.

Kimmel was fired from the station in February 1990. The official reason was a format change. (“They did an 18-to-24-year-old show. We’re a 25-49-year-old station,” said program director Larry Sharp.)6 But who knows. $8,000 went a lot further in 1990 than it does now.

Shoutout to Lex Vaughn of The Needling: Seattle’s Only Real Fake News for first uncovering this story: Jimmy Kimmel Actually Still More Pissed Seattle Radio Station Fired Him Over Joke About Mariners Owner in 1990