To continue this series, we move on to Seattle, with T-Mobile Park, which the Seattle Mariners call home. T-Mobile Park is located in the city of Seattle (this is important because some stadiums don’t actually reside in the city they represent). It is next to the Puget Sound, and famously, on a good day, you can see the monstrosity that is Mt. Rainier.
Anyway, enough of my nerdy geography facts. I have enough of those coming in this breakdown.
The Detroit Tigers take on Seattle starting Monday, March 31, and ending on Wednesday, April 2. So, any data used in this article will come from April.
Now, with Seattle, I’m not sure where to start. A lot can be said about this stadium, and I will give a nod to Mike Petriello of MLB.com, who had a great breakdown on how bad T-Mobile Park is for hitters.
I’ll be trying to do my own version of this, catered to the Tigers, and just one month. But I will say, a lot of the scientific things I use to justify the possible performance of the Tigers will probably have already been said in some way.
To start, I should remind you all of this little cheat sheet I created in my first edition of this series for Los Angeles:
“In basic terms: Low density – better ball flight.
High density – worse ball flight.
High humidity – worse baseball flight.
Low humidity – better baseball flight
Weird twist: baseballs don’t always abide by these rules, especially if the elevation is significant enough to help “offset” the humidity effects.
Long story short: cold, damp, humid days = BAD, BAD, BAD for baseball, and just bad for everything sports-related, usually.
Warm, dry days = GOOD, GOOD, GOOD for baseball.”
T-Mobile Park, for starters, is in a three-way tie for 28th place (Citi Field, New York Mets and loanDepot park, Miami Marlins) when it comes to elevation, with just 10 feet of elevation. So, we’re already off to a bad start.
Seattle is another climate that could be considered Mediterranean or even Sub-Oceanic, with relatively warm, dry summers, wet winters, and somewhat in between for both spring and fall.
There are some misconceptions about Seattle, though. Many people think the Emerald City is constantly raining. And those people would be right if they were just talking about the winter, which does see a pretty significant amount of rain. But the warmer months in Seattle actually see very little rain. Overall, it rains just over 150 days a year in Seattle, but some of those days are filled with either a lot of rain or very, very little rain, not exactly consistent enough to say it’s always dreadful and rainy.
In a perfect example, the Tigers will not see any rain, based on the forecast around their game times, but Seattle itself will see some morning showers, and late night showers on both Tuesday and Wednesday.
Anyway, enough about hour-by-hour weather. How will this affect the Tigers? Well, it’s not going to be very kind, truthfully. The Tigers will see relatively high humidity in their time in Seattle, while not seeing a temperature higher than 54 degrees fahrenheit.
They’re already not off to a good start here. Remember, high humidity, low temperatures… not very good for baseballs. Noticeably, though, Seattle does have a retractable roof, one that gives them 0.6 towards their otherwise poor variable extra distance (-5.3 overall, 29th in MLB).
But, uh… they don’t often use it. According to Statcast, they used their roof just 16% of the time in 2024. Seattle on average, is not overly windy, but being so close to the ocean, the wind is there, and it’s not likely to just go away. According to another article by Mike Petriello that uses Weather Applied Metrics, in 2023-24, T-Mobile Park’s wind effect (tailwind, much more than prevailing) prevented 55 home runs and created zero. Yes, it was the only park in that time frame that did not create a home run with wind. (Chicago and Kansas City prevented less but did actually create some).
From 2022 to 2024, T-Mobile Park ranked the lowest in park factor overall, 19th in home runs, last in doubles, 28th in triples, last in singles, tied for 26th in runs overall, and first in strikeouts. It is worth mentioning, too, that the Mariners do have a very good pitching staff, but the effects of the park play a large factor, too.
Hitters on average in the month of April at T-Mobile Park in 2024 hit .204 with 23 home runs(30.478 AB/HR, league average in April overall was 32.066 AB/HR), 29 doubles, two triples, and a .611 OPS.
Seattle pitchers last season were tied for first in MLB with a 3.49 total ERA, ninth in strikeouts, first in WHIP (1.08), first in opponent’s average (.220), first in BB/9 (2.32), and, well, you get the point, right? They were dominant. Their home ERA, though, was 2.85, 9.7 K/9, and a .205 opponent’s batting average. All three categories, among others, were first in MLB.
But on the road? They ranked 18th in ERA (4.18), eighth in opponent’s batting average (.235) and 24th in K/9 (8.1). Kind of odd, no? I mean, Seattle was the only team with a sub 3.00 team ERA at home in all of MLB last season.
Seattle is a pitcher’s dream. This fares well for a very strong Tigers rotation, but not so well for a depleted Tigers offense.
Among the many other factors there’s been speculation, with evidence behind the sun occasionally being an issue, and evidence pointing to the odd batter’s eye as well. Those are all within the linked Petriello article.
T-Mobile’s park’s dimensions are not anything ridiculous, either. Two both left and right, it’s 331 feet and 326 feet, respectively. Dead center field is 401 feet, so I don’t expect the fences to be much of the issue; rather, the pitching and park conditions will be instead.
Predictions
Well, I think this series will go better than the disappointment that was the Los Angeles Dodgers’ series. The Tigers were particularly bad with runners in scoring position against a good pitching staff, and it won’t get any easier with arguably the next best staff outside of Emerson Hancock in MLB.
The Tigers are slated to face the righty, Hancock, on the bump tonight, and they’ll be trotting out the rookie right-hander, Jackson Jobe, in a pretty good spot for his first start of the season. Next, it’ll be the extremely tough right-hander Logan Gilbert, squaring off against another righty in Casey Mize, who looks to use this park to his advantage to kick off a possible resurgence-like year. The rubber match will be the ace lefty, Tarik Skubal, against the nasty righty, Luis Castillo.
This figures to be a series of pitching and defense, and a series I can see the Tigers winning two games in, maybe even sweeping the series if they’re able to provide run support for the staff.
I expect to see the usual small-ball brand of baseball the Tigers like to play, getting aggressive on the bases and trying to manufacture runs in different ways if the bats (like I suspect they will) struggle to drive guys in, again.
I’m going to go with a hot take though. I think both Riley Greene and Colt Keith will take advantage of the shorter portion of the field in right and have some extra base hits to help bring some runs in, maybe even home runs.
But with all of the info provided, I could see this being a series filled with 2-1, 3-2 games in which runs need to be scored late against both team’s bullpens.
Park Factor data and Variable Extra Distance data is per Statcast.
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Ashley Couturier 
Rogelio Castillo