At the break, Mariners in position to end playoff drought
SEATTLE (AP) — At some point, it’s going to end. The feeling of imminent failure among some Seattle fans is going to manifest on the field and this unexpected season is going to start crumbling until it’s just like each of the previous seasons since the Mariners last made the playoffs in 2001.
That feeling is what nearly two decades without post-season baseball has created in the Pacific Northwest.
While there is excitement for what Seattle accomplished in the first 3 1/2 months, there’s also a sense of dread among the most fatalistic fans who have seen promising seasons go south before, and it won’t go away until the Mariners officially end the longest current post-season drought in any of the four major pro sports.
Lucky for the doubters, this team is showing the type of resilience needed to do just that.
“I think the thing I’m most proud of, I guess, with this group is the ability for them to be as tight as they are,” Seattle manager Scott Servais said. “I think there’s a special bond within our team and it plays out on the field.”
The Mariners are sitting at 58-39 and hold a three-game lead for the second wild-card spot heading into the second half of the season.
What makes that remarkable is the Mariners have overcome enough obstacles thus far to derail most teams.
Five different starting position players have spent time on the disabled list and catcher Mike Zunino is currently on his second stint on the DL. Their bullpen has seen another four key arms go down at various times all the way back to spring training.
And that doesn’t take into consideration the 80-game suspension of second baseman Robinson Cano. Rather than disrupt what Seattle had going, Cano’s suspension seemed to galvanize the team. Seattle is 36-22 since Cano’s suspension started.
Seattle’s success in the first half was based around beating the bad teams in the American League. The Mariners were 51-22 against the rest of the AL not named the Red Sox, Astros or Yankees.
Seattle is third in the AL in batting average, and fifth in both slugging and OPS.
The Mariners’ pitching staff is fifth in ERA and they’ve been one of the better defensive teams in the AL.
Their flaw is what has made them so good so far. They’ve been heavily reliant on being terrific in close games. Blowouts are foreign to Seattle and that lack of consistent offence could be a problem in the second half.
Going back 80 years, the 1978 Giants hold the mark for the most one-run wins in a season with 42. Seattle already has 26.
But there remains the lingering worry of a Seattle collapse, which was amplified when the Mariners went 2-7 over their final nine games prior to the All-Star break.
What was a seven- or eight-game lead in the wild card over Oakland is down to three and Seattle now trails Houston in the division by five games.