The three signs of April in Seattle: tax time, having to pack both sunglasses and a rain jacket when you leave the house, and Kyle Seager having a slow start. However, a couple outlier years—2019, when Seager was hurt and missed basically all of April-May, and 2020, when the season didn’t begin until late July—have prompted me to wonder if the Slow Seager Start is backed up by the numbers, or just anecdotal evidence repeated enough times to gain the sheen of factual evidence. Since Seager is one of the few Mariners we have long-term data for, I pulled some of his season splits for each of his full years in the majors from FanGraphs, selecting the first month(s) of the season in March/April, followed by May and, for good measure, August, when one would assume that if Seager were a cold starter, he’d be good and warm by then.
Mariner of the month: Kyle Seager is Slow Start Seager no more, if he ever was
