2022: A Successful Season for the Seattle Mariners

The Seattle Mariners 2022 season ended in disappointment.  But for 29 MLB teams, that is always the case.  However, this 2022 season was remarkable.  The Mariners ended their postseason drought of 20 years and finally made it back to the playoffs.  

What's even more impressive is the wild card series the Mariners had.  They took care of business in game 1, and then in game 2, they came back from a seven-run deficit to win 10-9 in one of the greatest postseason comebacks in baseball history.  This was all done on the road in Toronto, a harsh environment to play in.  That series showed that this team can never be counted out.  

Because of the Mariners' Wild Card Series win, they were able to advance to the Divisional Series against the Houston Astros and play at least one home playoff game.  Unfortunately, one home playoff game is all they would get as they got swept in three games.  The Mariners lost the three-game series by a total of 4 runs.  They just couldn't get luck back on their side.

I said a month ago I'd consider this a successful season if the Mariners got to the divisional round and got to play at least one home playoff game, and that they did.  They were in each of the three games against the Astros.  They held a lead in the first two, which they unfortunately could not hold.  They went 18 innings against the Astros in game 3, only to lose on a fluke home run by the Astros.  They were close to winning all three games, yet lost all three.  

What seems so disappointing is that this team seemed to be on a run.  In game 1, the Mariners held a 4-run lead and seemed to be on their way to their third straight playoff victory and a huge game 1 win.  Instead, the bullpen folded, the Astros hit a walk-off homer, and the Mariners could never fully recover.  The Mariners only scored 2 runs in the final 27 innings of the series.

The big obstacle in the Mariners' way is the Houston Astros.  They have made it to six straight ALCS's, won 5 of 6 AL West division titles, and are always tough for the Mariners to beat.  They are the Goliath to the Mariners' David, and the Mariners will either have to best them in the regular season or beat them in the playoffs if they want to do any better in future years.  

Maybe the 2023 Mariners can win the AL West outright.  That'd certainly seem to be the most straightforward plan.  The Mariners are still in a 21-year division title drought.  Every other AL West team has won the division since the Mariners last won it.  

So let's hope the Mariners' front office makes the right moves this offseason to upgrade the team.  Moves need to be made so that this team can finally get past the Astros.  A couple bats, and a bullpen arm, and they might just be there.  It is imperative that the Mariners make progress in 2023 and not take a step back.

Twenty-One Years in the Making

 The 2022 Mariners, barring the most miraculous finish by Baltimore and the most epic of collapses by them, will make the playoffs for the first time in twenty-one years.  The playoff drought for this team will not see its 21st birthday if you count from the last playoff game in Mariner's history, which was October 22, 2001.  Just one more win by the Mariners and one more loss from the Baltimore Orioles will make it so it is impossible for Baltimore (or any team behind them, for that matter) can supplant the Mariners from a Wild Card playoff spot.

I have waited twenty-one long and painful years for this.  As a Mariner fan, I have endured ineptitude, horrible trades and free agent acquisitions and have always been disappointed by September at the latest.  It's going to be weird.  The Mariners in the playoffs seems so abnormal in today's world, like seeing someone still using an iPod shuffle or a Microsoft Zune.  But the Mariners making the playoffs has to become a new fad or trend, and one that will hopefully stick around longer than the Zune did.

It's hard to express my emotions right now.  To be honest, part of me is half-expecting to wake up and realize this was a dream and see the 2022 Mariners with a losing record.  So it might take a while for it to sink in with me.  

What would also help is having a home playoff game.  Playoff baseball in Seattle is like no other.  Unfortunately, there hasn't been enough of it in MLB history.  But playoff baseball in Seattle is, for lack of a better term, electric.  The Kingdome rocked in the 1990s with pennant fever.  T-Mobile park has shown signs of what the players have dubbed "The electric factory."  But imagine if the Mariners did damage and won a playoff series at home.  

Unfortunately, with the way the playoffs are currently designed, the Mariners would have to get the top wild card spot in order to guarantee themselves home playoff games.  Otherwise, they'd have to win their wild card series on the road, likely against Cleveland or Toronto.  Neither is an easy task.  So while the Mariners may end their playoff drought, they still might not get to host a playoff game, and that streak could continue.  

But I'm sure many Mariners fans, myself included, would take this situation in a heartbeat.  After twenty-one years, you'll just take any modicum of success your team can achieve.  To have the Mariners in a playoff series, even if it's entirely on the road, is something I've dreamed about for twenty-one years.  When I watch them play in the playoffs, it's going to feel so surreal, on the verge of feeling unreal, almost.  

I'm so stoked these guys are on the verge of ending this drought, and I wish them the absolute best for the rest of the season and in the playoffs.  Regardless of the finish (provided we clinch the playoffs), this 2022 season will always be looked back at fondly.  The playoff drought now is longer than the one this team endured to start its existence.  And you know what?  It's about damn time we made the playoffs.  Go Mariners.

What Constitutes a Successful Season at this Point for the 2022 Mariners

 The 2022 Seattle Mariners season has been quite the roller coaster.  From being 10 games under .500 to going on a 14-game winning streak, this team has really experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.  The Mariners currently sit at 82-67, guaranteed their first consecutive back-to-back winning seasons since 2002 and 2003.  But the team's sights are set on the postseason, to make their first trip there in 21 years.  

The Mariners are currently nearing the end of a three-city road trip, a road trip that has gone about as bad as it could for a contending team.  They salvaged the final games in each series so far from the Angels and A's, two teams that have no shot at the postseason.  They also seem to have lost Julio Rodriguez, their star player, for at least a few games.  Even if the Mariners sweep the Royals, they cannot have a winning road trip.

I'm left wondering what constitutes a successful season at this point.  The worst realistic scenario would be this hitting slump continues, injuries mount, and the Mariners limp into the #6 wild card spot and promptly lose two games in Cleveland.  That to me would not constitute a successful season given where the Mariners once stood.  

I'd say the bare minimum for the Mariners is they need to win a playoff game.  I could argue the Mariners need to host a playoff game, which would mean either claiming the top wild card spot or winning their wild card series.  I'll say this: If the Mariners can host a playoff game, it will definitely be a successful season, regardless of how the rest of the postseason goes.  If they cannot, it'll definitely be left up to the determination of their fans.

This recent stretch of losing and poor hitting is certainly concerning.  But if the Mariners can enter the postseason on a hot streak, good things can happen.  They'll need to use their final homestand to get right.  They'll need to use it to figure out which hitters will be on the postseason roster and to break some hitters out of slumps.  

Of course, the Mariners have not clinched anything yet.  The postseason is not guaranteed.  But a collapse of that proportion would be too much for most Mariners fans, myself included, to handle.  We have put up with too much heartbreak in the last two decades, and a collapse of that nature would put me over the edge as a Mariners fan.  

Once the season is over, I will make another post recapping and say if it was a successful season or not.  It'll be hard to say it's not a successful season if the Mariners make the playoffs, ending a 21-year postseason drought.  But if the Mariners limp in, promptly lose both games and fail to even host a playoff game, it'll be equally hard to call it a successful season.

Resetting my Expectations for the Seattle Mariners

 Boy, I've talked about the Mariners a lot on here, haven't I?  Just do a search for "Mariners" on this blog, and you'll see what I'm talking about.  I care a lot about them; they're one of my top two favorite sports teams.  I've followed them passionately for almost 25 years, and boy has my loyalty been tested.  The 2022 season is about to begin and there's something this team has that they haven't had too often the last 20 years: Expectations.  This team is expected to improve, succeed, and finally end that now 21-year postseason drought.  But I've learned from past experiences to not get my hopes up too high with the Mariners, because I always seem to be let down.

Honestly, I'm torn.  Part of me wants to be super excited, get behind this team, and stay as optimistic as I can.  However, the other part of me knows if I get too excited and optimistic that I will be let down again, and to be let down after being that optimistic is just heartbreaking.  

One thing that makes me not want to be optimistic is the fact that the Mariners outperformed last season.  They relied upon winning a lot of close games, and when they lost, they lost bad.  They ended up with a -51 run differential, meaning they should have won closer to 76 games than the 90 they ended up with.  I fully expect that run differential to improve, but that doesn't mean their win total will.  Many times in sports, teams regress the year following a season they were "lucky".  It happens in the NFL and it happens in Major League Baseball.  

We will learn a lot from this season.  We will learn if this team will continue to be on the rise or if they take a step back.  We'll learn about Jarred Kelenic, and if he is going to make something of himself or not.  We'll get to see Julio Rodriguez and see what he can do.  If anything, I'm just excited to see new faces and see what this team can do with expectations.  

I'll likely write another blog on the Mariners around the mid-way point of the season, giving my thoughts on the team.  I hope to be writing about the amazing start the Mariners have, how they're leading the AL West, and start envisioning a playoff berth for the first time in 21 years.  Should be fun!

The Seattle Mariners are Cursed

The Seattle Mariners are cursed.  They find ways to lose games, and they find ways to miss the playoffs.  They did something to anger the baseball gods, although I do not know what that would have been.  But I have believed for a long time now that the Mariners are cursed.  They have the worst luck of any team I have seen both in games and season by season.  The Red Sox used to have a curse, the "Curse of the Bambino".  The Cubs used to have a curse, the "Curse of the Billy Goat".  I believe the Mariners were inflicted with a similar curse.

The year would've been 2001.  The baseball gods are not happy with the Seattle Mariners.  They helped assemble us some of the best talent of their generation.  Four sure fire Hall of Famers played on the Mariners in the late 90's.  And we let three of them go.  We were supposed to win a World Series with these players, but couldn't even get there.  Then we let them go.  Randy was traded.  Griffey was traded.  We let Alex test free agency and he signed with the rival Rangers.  Edgar stayed, but was older than all of them and closest to the end of his career.  The baseball gods did not like this.  We then spurned them by signing Bret Boone and Ichiro.  We won 116 games, which I'm sure made the gods angry.  How was this team, without A-Rod, Griffey, and Randy, winning 116 games?  They promptly inflicted us with fatigue and prevented us from reaching the World Series.  Not only that, but they inflicted the Mariners with bad luck in everything they do: Trades, free agency, and in games. 

When you ask a casual baseball fan about the Seattle Mariners, they might say that the Mariners don't make the playoffs much.  It's not for lack of trying.  And many teams have been very close.  Five times since 2002 the Mariners have been the best team in the American League NOT to make it to the playoffs.  That's more times than they've made the playoffs in THEIR ENTIRE HISTORY.  That's right: The Mariners have more often been a few games away from making the playoffs in the past 17 years than they have made the playoffs in all of their existence.  What kind of team has this kind of luck?  A cursed team.

Speaking of playoffs, the Mariners have made the playoffs in just four of their 43 seasons.  When there were four playoff teams, any team had a 27% chance of making the playoffs.  Now that there are five playoff teams with the addition of another wild card, the playoff chances rise to 33%.  But the Mariners have made it for just 9% of their existence.  And most notably and recently, the Mariners have the longest playoff drought in all of North American professional sports at 18 years.  That is like spinning an item, and for 18 consecutive tries never getting it to face North.  Unreal.

It's amazing to me how often Mariner's opponents get a lucky break and how often the Mariners get a bad one.  Watch pretty much any one of their games.  A ball that lands foul for the Mariners is a fair ball for their opponents.  It also seems on replay reviews that calls go against the Mariners for more often than their opponents.  I wish I had a nickel for every time I heard Mariners play-by-play man Dave Sims say, "Tough break for the Mariners." 

What shall we name this curse?  The easiest answer would be to find a player who left after 2001.  The most notable I see is Jay Buhner.  We could call it the "Curse of the Bone".  It's kind of got an eerie and dark vibe to it.  Granted, Jay Buhner only played 19 games in 2001, but he was still a clubhouse presence and leader on that team.  My other choice would be the "Curse of the Big Three."  The big three being Randy, Griffey, and A-Rod.  They were the big three that left, and aside from 2001 we haven't made the playoffs without them... at all.  Not before them, not after.  But I'll stick with the "Curse of the Bone". 

Jerry Dipoto has decided to have this team go through a rebuild process.  He acquired quite a few prospects and he'll probably acquire even more as the trade deadline draws near.  The expected run at the playoffs will happen in 2022.  All I'm going to say is this: If a lot of these prospects fail (as so many of ours have in recent years), and we fail to make the playoffs during that run, there will be no doubt whatsoever in my mind that this team is full on cursed.  And there shouldn't be any doubt in your mind, either. 

The 2018 Mariners Don't Inspire Much Optimism

Spring training for the 2018 MLB season is just around the corner, and I gotta say, I can't remember a time feeling less optimistic about the Mariners season.  The Mariners didn't make any particularly notable moves in the offseason and they aren't coming off a winning or even positive season.  They ended the 2017 season on a sour note, falling out of the playoff race alarmingly fast.  With the Buffalo Bills in the NFL having made the playoffs, the Mariners now own the longest playoff drought in North American professional sports.  I hate to say it, but I think that drought will continue because these Mariners just aren't good enough and play in too tough of a division.

The Mariners had a relatively quiet offseason.  They acquired Dee Gordon from the Marlins and Ryon Healy from the Athletics.  Their pitching staff didn't get a huge upgrade, just depth in Juan Nicalsio.  These moves to me to scream the typical Band-Aid type job the Mariners usually get, which never results in anything great.  They just sign or trade for who they can, constantly hoping the new guys they acquire will be able to lift a team to the playoffs.  It hasn't worked before, so I have very little hope or reason to believe it can happen this year.

But for me, the biggest reason to not be optimistic about this season is the strength of the division the Mariners play in, the AL West.  The Houston Astros are the reigning World Series champs and will no doubt be a great team again.  The Los Angeles Angels made the biggest move of the offseason and acquired Japanese phenom Shohei Ohtani.  The Mariners were in the running but lost out to their division rival, something I know will haunt us for years to come.  The Angels expect to be improved and since they just missed the playoffs themselves last year, they'll be in the running again more than likely.  The Texas Rangers still boast a ton of talent and could win a bunch of games.  And the A's always have the ability to surprise and win games when no one expects them to.  If I had to pick right now where I expect the Mariners to finish, I would say fourth, not because I think they'll lose a lot of games, but because their division is just that tough.

But for some reason I think the Mariners could fly under the radar.  Felix will be desperate to prove his career is not over.  Paxton will want to prove he can be a front of the line ace and pitch an entire season.  Iwakuma still wants to pitch and should be healthy.  The bullpen should be better, and Edwin Diaz should have better control.  And that's just the pitching.  The lineup could be one of the better ones in the American League.  There's speed (Gordon, Gamel), power (Cano, Cruz, Seager), and contact hitting (Cano, Segura).  The dominoes have to fall just right for this team.  They certainly did not last year.  But if the rotation can stay healthy, and the hitters can have productive seasons, the Mariners have a shot.  But it's a slim shot, and no Mariner fan in their right mind should hold their breath over this team.  Give them a month or two to prove themselves, because I think we will learn by May what kind of team the Mariners will be in 2018.  I'm tempering my excitement, because this time the Mariners have to earn my excitement for the team.

Mariners Constantly Making Me Feel Conflicted

The Seattle Mariners have been one of the hard-luck organizations in Major League Baseball.  They're still one of two teams to have never appeared in a World Series, and have the longest playoff drought in baseball at 15 years and counting.  That's not me being negative, those are facts.  However, the roller coaster of emotions we Mariners fans go through in the course of a season is perhaps unlike any other team.  We go from thinking this team is cursed, unlucky, bad, to having glimmers of hope and optimism, thinking the end of futility is near.  It's much akin to being stranded on a deserted island and hearing a plane overhead, but them not seeing you, so you remain stranded. 

This Mariners season of 2017 has not gotten off well and it seems the Mariners are in a very unfortunate pattern of following up hopeful seasons and offseasons with losing seasons.  They have not even had two straight winning seasons since 2002-2003.  The influx of talent of Cano, Cruz, and Seager the past few years has given fans something to cheer for and given them hope.  But two of the past three seasons the team has fallen just short of the playoffs in the final week of the season.  It leaves fans wondering "What if?"  What if the Mariners hadn't gone on that losing streak, what if they hadn't blown the lead in a particular game? 

I think Mariners fans are the most bipolar fans in all of baseball.  When the team is struggling, I see two crowds.  One crowd thinks this team is the worst in baseball, everyone needs to be fired, and perhaps that the organization is cursed.  The other crowd remains optimistic, saying we can't play this bad all year, and we can't have this bad of luck all year.  I have to admit I flitter between both crowds.  I sometimes feel like boycotting this team, not going to games, watching their games on TV, or buying any merchandise, because they are underperforming.  But other times I know I will be rewarded for my loyalty and passion for this team, because whenever they do finally make the playoffs again, it will make it THAT much sweeter. 

I am never going to fully give up on the Mariners.  No matter what they do.  They could trade Felix, Seager, AND Paxton, and I would still call myself a Mariner fan.  They are too engrained in me to ever switch allegiances.  There's just something about MARINERS BASEBALL that makes me want to be root for them until the day I die.  Perhaps it's memories of Martinez, Griffey, Niehaus, and Ichiro.  Perhaps it's that the organization has EVERY reason to fold and just admit they are inferior as a baseball organization but every year do their absolute best to show they are a likeable and fun bunch. 

One thing I never want to be called is a bandwagon fan.  For someone who has stuck through a team's losing seasons, and the team becomes successful and popular and then get called a bandwagon fan is absolutely infuriating.  I will stick through the Mariners lack of playoff success until they finally start making the playoffs again, whether that starts this year, in 5 years, 10 years, or 20 years.  Anyone who ever calls me a bandwagon fan will get directed to this post.  I have been a fan of the Mariners since I started watching sports.  I've followed them through the lean post-2001 years, the disastrous 2004 and 2008 seasons, the horrific hitting seasons of 2010 and 2011.  I remember watching in agony as players like Carl Everett, Jack Cust, Milton Bradley, Scott Spiezio and Corey Hart were brought in watching them STRUGGLE.  I remember watching first round draft picks like Jeff Clement, Brandon Morrow, Dustin Ackley, Phillipe Aumont, and (now) Alex Jackson not pan out.  I remember Bill Bavasi and Jack Zduriencik making bad front office decisions.  I remember, because I stuck with the Mariners through it all.

So what is my mood with this team?  Resilient.  Patient.  Determined.  I'm neither optimistic nor pessimistic.  Odds are somehow someway this team will make the playoffs some year.  Five American League teams out of fifteen now make the playoffs.  That is exactly one third.  If everyone had the same odds, you should expect your team to make the playoffs once out of every three years.  Odds are, the Mariners will make the playoffs soon.  But that hump they have to get over is huge.  Once they do, they could go on a string of seasons where they make it 3 in a row, 4 out of 6, something like that.  But once they get over that hump, it'll be so worth the wait AND I'll be right there in the middle cheering the Mariners on.