After the departure of lightning rod Marc Rzepczynski at the end of May, several different Mariners have taken the brunt of criticism from the public. Few have been the whipping boy more often than Ryon Healy, whose 96 wRC+ is hardly an improvement over what we’ve seen from first base the past few seasons. Though one can easily make the case that advanced defensive metrics have trouble evaluating first basemen, the fact remains that Healy’s -0.4 fWAR is... not great.
Upon his acquisition from the A’s last winter, some pointed out that his around league-average strikeout rate was magnified by a subpar walk rate of just under 4% during his tenure with Oakland.