Only two parts into Catching Up With the Mariners and I’m already making a deviation from the format. But when I was planning out my next position group (infield), I couldn’t help but get stuck on Abraham Toro. In fact I’m not the only one who seems to be unable to let go of him: Scott Servais (or perhaps Jerry Dipoto) insists on keeping him in the lineup. Toro has played in 67 games this year, but the fans haven’t been all that happy about it. In this post, I’ll take you through Toro’s numbers this year as I try to figure out what’s got everyone seeing red when it comes to Toro.

Running With the Bull

As I just mentioned, Toro has seen a lot of playing time this year with 241 plate appearances across 67 games. He’s taken the field primarily at 2B, but also 3B and DH. Given Dylan Moore’s relative ineffectiveness with the bat having another player take on backup infield duties makes sense, especially with the rotation going on in RF. However, has he made sense as a DH? Let’s take a look at some of his overall batting stats from 2022:

AVG	OBP	SLG	HR	OPS+	wRC+
.185	.237	.333	7	65	63

Well, that’s a firm no. The HR totals aren’t too bad, but everything else is not worthy of a DH spot, and might even be enough to keep him out of those infield spots. Dylan Moore has been better offensively with .184/.347/.351 and a 106 OPS+ and 112 wRC+. A case is definitely there for Moore to be getting more chances than Toro, although realistically someone else should be getting it over either of them (and based on recent performance, that someone is probably Sam Haggerty). But maybe there’s something Scott and Jerry are looking at that we aren’t.

Strikeout Rate and BABIP

While Toro may not get as many hits as you would want, he is at least really good at avoiding strikeouts. Toro has a strikeout rate of just 16.2% this season and 16.8% for his career, whereas the league average sits much higher at 23%. So that’s a good sign, but where are the hits?

I find BABIP to be a funny stat, since it’s almost a measure of luck. For those who are unfamiliar with it, BABIP stands for Batting Average on Balls In Play, or how often a player gets a hit out of a ball they put in play. It’s different from standard batting average in that it’s more of a measure of how often fielders are able to make a play on balls hit by a player. A player can make great contact but hit it right to a fielder for an out – and hence the phrase “BABIP luck”, for how “lucky” a player is with hitting the ball into outs. BABIP allows us to see how often that happens to a player and if they’re having good or bad luck on the balls they put in play.

And sure enough Toro has struggled this year when it comes to BABIP, with a meager .190 in 2022 versus the league average of .293. That means compared to an average player, Toro is seeing an extra 10.3% of his balls in play turn into outs. That’s some pretty bad luck. That could lend some credibility to letting him play – eventually his luck must turn, right?

You Make Your Own Luck

To check on if Toro’s luck can change, we’ll need to see why is Toro generating such a low BABIP this season. That being said, this isn’t exactly an aberration – his career BABIP is still well below average at .225.

A point in Toro’s favor is he seems to make contact on far more swings than the average player, and he has his whole career. His contact rate in and out of the zone is higher than league average, and his swing-and-miss rate is lower.

Stat	Toro 2022	Toro Career	MLB Average
Zone Contact %	87.6	86.7	82.0
Chase Contact %	65.8	68.3	58.4
Whiff %	19.5	19.0	24.6

The problem is even though he hits the ball a lot, he doesn’t hit the ball very hard. He ranks near the bottom in average exit velocity and hard hit percentage not just this year, but for his entire career.

Stat	Toro 2022	Toro Career	MLB Average	Percentile
Exit Veloicty	87.7	87.0	88.4	23rd
Hard Hit %	31.7	32.7	35.7	13th

This high-contact, low-power combination is perfect for generating a low BABIP: he gets a lot of weak hits in play which are easy to get him out on. With this in mind, it would seem there isn’t a statistical or analytical reason for Toro to be getting as much playing time as he has. But there could be another reason…

The Trade

That reason has to do with how Toro got to be a Mariner in the first place. He was traded from the Astros in 2021 along with reliever Joe Smith (real player, I promise) for Rafael Montero and, critically, Kendall Graveman.

The move shocked both Mariner fans and players, with the players taking it exceptionally poorly. And it’s easy to understand why – the Mariners were in the playoff hunt and Graveman had been outstanding for the M’s with a 0.82 ERA in 33 IP in relief. Trading him away, especially during warmups against the team he was being traded to, went over disastrously in the locker room. It would make sense to try to win the players back by showing the Mariners won the trade. How could that happen? By having Toro and Smith play well.

Smith had been terrible in Houston, with a 7.48 ERA in 21.2 IP. To his credit, he turned it around on the Mariners with a 2.00 ERA in 18 IP, but he couldn’t make up for Graveman’s departure. Toro, well, let’s just say 2022 has been pretty demonstrative of his whole career.

So is it just stubbornness? Does some combination of Scott Servais and/or Jerry Dipoto insist on playing Toro in some futile attempt to prove they won the Kendall Graveman trade? That seems to be a popular theory, and it makes sense given statistically there’s no justification for playing him.

A Final Defense

No, this section isn’t going to be about Toro’s defensive metrics, although they aren’t too shabby as Toro placed in the 78th percentile for Statcast Outs Above Average. I think there may be another explanation for Toro’s playing time: personnel.

In my previous post about the Mariners outfield, I noted their struggle to find a consistent third outfielder, and how Dylan Moore and Adam Fraizer have taken on a large number of extra OF innings as a result. Moore is the notable name here given Fraizer is theoretically the M’s starting second baseman. Moore is the Mariner’s primary utility player and has shown himself capable of filling in for just about every spot on the diamond, although with a below-average bat. With Moore and Fraizer taking up outfield backup duties, Toro just happens to be the next man up. Now if he should be is another question (see: Sam Haggerty), but I think it’s possible Servais has just been trying to field 9 guys on occasion. Then again playing Toro at DH does not help his case here, so maybe it really is just a matter of poor talent evaluation and stubbornness.

So what do you think? Does Toro deserve the playing time he’s been getting? Why? Next time around I’ll cover a whole position group (probably the infield), but don’t be surprised if the next post is about F1 or even the Seahawks now that the NFL offseason is heating back up again. Either way, see you soon!

Statistics gathered from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, and Baseball Savant