Bills hand off top drought to Mariners
After the Buffalo Bills slipped into the NFL playoffs thanks to a Cincinnati Bengals victory, the Seattle Mariners now own the longest postseason drought in the four major North American pro sports leagues.
The Mariners’ last appearance in the Major League Baseball playoffs came in
2001, when arguably the best regularseason team in modern baseball history went 116-46 but lost in the American League Championship Series to the dynastic New York Yankees.
To be fair, the MLB’s postseason is the hardest to crack, as only 10 of the league’s 30 teams play beyond the regular season in the current format. Before the league added two wild-card spots in
2012, only eight teams made the playoffs. More than half of NHL and NBA teams make their leagues’ respective playoffs every year, and 12 of 32 NFL teams continue on past the regular season.
Still, Mariners fans have arguably the roughest lot in all of U.S. pro sports. Not only has the club endured 16 consecutive seasons without qualifying for the playoffs, but it also is one of only seven MLB franchises that has never won a championship and one of only two that has never reached the World Series. The other, the Washington Nationals, has played in its current city since 2005 and has reached the playoffs in four of the last six seasons. The Mariners began play in 1977.
And in recent seasons, the Mariners have proved especially frustrating in their ability to remain on the fringes of postseason contention into September only to fall apart late and miss out on October baseball.
In a 2017 AL wild-card race that proved something of a war of attrition, the Mariners remained above .500 until Sept. 15, when they began a stretch in which they lost eight of nine games and fell out of the race. They finished three wins shy of a wild-card spot in 2016 and one game shy in 2014.
Now run by one of the most active general managers in baseball in Jerry DiPoto, the Mariners have already added two new presumptive regulars in trades this offseason and brought in a handful of new pieces for their bullpen. But they’ll endeavor 2018 in a division that includes the reigning World Series champion Houston Astros and a Los Angeles Angels team that added Shohei Ohtani, Ian Kinsler and Zack Cozart to a roster that already included Mike Trout.