The tease might be the worst part.
Every so often, the Mariners put forth the sort of tidy game that makes you think that a playoff team really does lurk within. They get the combination of crisp starting pitching, timely hitting, clean defense and shutdown relief that sparks a strong sense of déjà vu from last year's playoff run.
You know how Kraken announcer John Forslund likes to declare after each of their wins, "That's Kraken hockey, baby!" Well, in those intermittent cases, "That's Mariner baseball, baby!" — or at least the idealized version that has been far too elusive this year.
Case in point was the Mariners' 6-2 victory over the Angels on Saturday, in which they pounded out 16 hits and got solid pitching from Bryan Woo and a succession of relievers. Had they finally turned the corner? Yeah, right into an oncoming locomotive. The next day, the Mariners belched out one of their too-frequent stinkers, as Logan Gilbert got shelled in a dispiriting 9-4 loss.
Turns out in this underachieving 2023 season, "That's Mariner baseball!" too.
It helps explains why the Mariners sit where they do, in the uncomfortable (some would say untenable) position of needing a miracle. OK, maybe not a miracle, but a sustained run of the sort they improbably pulled off last year, when they were 10 games under .500 after losing four out of five to the Angels in June. It's impossible to overstate the vitriol and pessimism that surrounded this team at that moment (sound familiar?). No matter how you did the math regarding playoff scenarios and bypassing the teams ahead of them, it didn't pencil out (sound familiar?).
That is, until the Mariners proceeded to go 22-3 over the next three-plus weeks, and suddenly the math became entirely solvable. From their 29-39 nadir, the M's went 61-33 — a sizzling .649 winning percentage for more than half the season, good enough to grab the second of three American League wild-card berths. If a team played .649 ball all year, they'd win 105 games — which wasn't quite the jumping-off point for 2023 expectations in Seattle, but in the ballpark.
As the Mariners sit once again in an uncomfortable, untenable situation in mid-June, it's fair to ask a series of related questions:
— Could they have another 2022-style playoff run in them?
— If so, what is it going to take to bring it out?
— Even if they do, is it already too late?
To me, the first and last questions are the easiest to answer. Yes (with qualifiers), and no (with qualifiers). That's not to say it's going to happen — odds are strongly against the Mariners, by their own doing — and it certainly doesn't minimize the team-building miscues that are partially responsible for the mess they're in.
But the Mariners undeniably have the front-line starting pitching that is almost always the impetus for the sort of surge that it would take to snare a playoff berth. And as far as it being too late, you could make that case, and I wouldn't argue too hard. The Mariners entered play Tuesday under .500, with four teams to pass to be in wild-card position. Yet they are just 4.5 games out of a playoff spot after their 9-3 victory — hardly an insurmountable deficit. And despite all the speculation that it's going to take more wins this year with the new scheduling format, the third wild-card team, Houston, is on pace for 92 wins. For the Mariners to get to 93 wins, they would have to go 60-36 the rest of the way — a .625 winning percentage. That's a formidable challenge, but not quite as daunting as last year's.
Of course, that's all numbers and projections, with lots of potential roadblocks and pitfalls. The key question is No. 2: What's going to propel the Mariners in that direction to even give themselves a chance? Scott Servais has talked this week about focus, playing cleaner baseball, and stringing together quality games rather than going on a gem-stinker-gem-stinker pattern.
These last two games against the Marlins have shown the blueprint: Gems by starters Bryce Miller and George Kirby for the Mariners' first back-to-back wins since May 27-28 against Pittsburgh. With Luis Castillo, Gilbert, Kirby and Miller in the rotation, the Mariners have the potential for a well-pitched game every time, with the rookie Woo as the wild card.
I said "potential." Before shutting down the Marlins, the Mariners had a 14-game stretch during which seven of the starts were noncompetitive — two clunkers each by Kirby, Gilbert and Miller, and one by Woo. In those games, Mariners starting pitchers allowed a combined 61 hits and 44 earned runs in 24 1/3 innings for a 16.27 earned-run average. In a related development, the Mariners lost all seven games by a combined 78-27 margin.
There's reason to believe those were aberrations, particularly in light of the bounce-back Monday by Miller and the masterpieces by Kirby that surrounded those games, including Tuesday's 10-strikeout, three-hit gem. I'm sticking to the believe that the Mariners have the starting pitching — and the bullpen, especially with Andres Muñoz back and dominating — to mount a strong run.
So this is a long way to say what we kinda knew: That the success of a potential playoff run for the Mariners will come down to their offense, which has vastly underperformed thus far this season. Yet it is certainly possible to see the potential for a vastly more potent attack henceforth. Two moribund spots have been greatly spruced up. Jose Caballero replacing Kolten Wong at second has produced an on-base percentage above .400 in his monthlong stint as the regular. And Mike Ford on Tuesday delivered his third and fourth home runs in eight games (plus one that was robbed) at designated hitter, which previously had been a black hole for the Mariners.
It still would be nice to see the Mariners reach out at the trade deadline for an impact bat. Despite Jerry Dipoto's recent comment on Seattle Sports 710 that not even prime Babe Ruth could help the Mariners, it's easy to see how a quality hitter would indeed help immensely. Dipoto's point was that so many players were underperforming that they were more than one bat away. And the Mariners do, indeed, need guys like Julio Rodriguez, Eugenio Suarez, Cal Raleigh and Teoscar Hernandez to do more than they've done. Which is not out of the realm of possibility.
I stress that this is a best-case scenario outlook for the Mariners, one that could easily topple in about a thousand ways — many of which have already been displayed. But that was the premise of this thesis: Is there a path to greener pastures?
There most definitely is — but the Mariners need to stop teasing and start showing it's more than wishful thinking.
