There’s a lot of hope that goes into being a Seattle Mariners fan. Going deep on data and crunching numbers related to the team’s day-to-day success or even World Series chances just seems like a ticket to baseball heartache.
Adam Jacobson is a lifelong Mariners fan and an analytics geek who is subjecting himself to that unique form of fandom by running a new website called Grand Salami Time.
But in the midst of a late-season slump in which the team has lost four straight and 15 of their last 21 games, he appears to be taking a rather zen approach.
“People get way too passionate,” Jacobson told GeekWire this week. “I think, ‘Oh, man, the Mariners are blowing it’ and I get frustrated, too. But I kind of expect it.”
From what his work is telling him, the angst could persist until the final game of the season.
Born in Bellevue, Wash., and raised on Mariners games with his season-ticket-holding family at the Kingdome, Jacobson is a University of Washington graduate and tech veteran. He interned at Amazon and even with the Mariners in 2013 as a business analyst looking into how to improve season ticket holder retention rates — hot tip: winning helps.
For the past 13 years, Jacobson has worked in finance and data science, first with eBay and now with Walmart where he’s tackling e-commerce supply chain issues.
Grand Salami Time — named for a catchphrase from Mariners Hall of Fame broadcaster Dave Niehaus — is a passion project born in part out of a paternity leave.
Growing up, Jacobson wanted to be a professional baseball player. Lately he’s thought he might like to eventually be the Mariners general manager. The website is filling the time in between.
“It’s always been a dream of mine to work in something that I love,” Jacobson said. “Baseball is just a big hobby of mine.”
And tracking stats and analytics in baseball has been beyond a hobby for years. The serious business of it all was popularized in the book and movie “Moneyball,” about how the 2002 Oakland A’s used computer-generated analysis to acquire players.
Jacobson likens Grand Salami Time to a Mariners-focused version of sites such as FanGraphs or Baseball Savant, or the old FiveThirtyEight site. He felt like Seattle-area media was lacking in such an offering that could go deeper on data and analytics.
Baseball geeks seem to agree. The site has attracted more than 10,000 unique visitors since launching a few months ago and it’s growing. Fans can also subscribe to a weekly newsletter.
Examples of analysis and stories include:
- Why more than the marine layer makes T-Mobile Park a tough place to hit.
- The one defensive adjustment that could earn Julio Rodriguez a gold glove.
- Why Cal Raleigh would break Aaron Judge’s AL record of 62 home runs if he played at Yankee Stadium.
Jacobson has a couple buddies contributing help, including writer Evan Franklin, who has a recent piece looking at whether M’s starting pitcher Bryan Woo has what it takes to be the next Greg Maddux. Podcast co-host Robby Gross is another UW friend whose claim to fame is that he was recognized as the 3 millionth fan to watch the M’s at the Kingdom during the 1997 season.
And beyond baseball, Jacobson’s tech pedigree goes pretty deep — his mom Sandra Jacobson joined Microsoft in 1983 and was the company’s longest-tenured woman employee at the time of her retirement in 2014, after 31 years.
“She says I have her side of the brain,” Jacobson said.
Beyond data-specific stories and visualizations about individual Mariners players, Grand Salami Time’s key focus right now is its “Playoff Odds Simulator.”
As of Saturday morning, with 21 games remaining, the site puts the likelihood of Seattle reaching the postseason at 61.5%. The team has an 8.1% chance of winning the AL West division, a 53.4% chance of winning an AL Wild Card spot, and a 2.5% chance of winning the World Series.
The percentages jump a bit higher when the site runs odds based on the WAR statistic — an especially nerdy stat based on how valuable a player is compared to a backup or minor league player. It also runs the odds of reaching the 54% Jerry Dipoto benchmark, a cheeky reference to the Mariners GM’s comments regarding consistency in 2023.
Jacobson was feeling much better a few weeks ago. In the midst of a Mariners hot streak and trades that brought in stars Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suárez, his data projections showed the team with a 97% chance to make the playoffs (based on the WAR simulation) and a 10% chance to win the World Series.
“And then we tanked,” he said. “The Mariners are Mariners-ing.”
Now Jacobson is in full Mariners fan semi-panic mode, half laughing his way through explaining how for the third straight season, the team’s playoff hopes will likely be decided by one game.
“I think we’re going to land somewhere around, I hate to say, 83 or 84 wins,” Jacobson said. “If it’s 84 we’re in, 83 we’re probably out. We’re gonna come down to the final game again, our simulation projects.”
He doesn’t really even need to look at the dizzying array of stats and predictions to agree with those findings.
“Based on Mariners history, that’s also what I think.”
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