The world spins on, its wobble becoming increasingly eradicate with each passing day. It’s impossible to know what anything will look like a month from now, or a year. What we do know is that the Seattle Mariners start a brand new baseball season … today! There are so many reasons to be worried about this season. So many reasons to feel sick or scared. But there are also reasons for hope. And joy. A few glistering things to look forward to.

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We’ve suspected for a long time now that the 2020 Mariners season was going to be uninspiring from a win-loss perspective. Despite Jerry Dipoto’s 2019 proclamation that Seattle would start rounding into form as a perennial contender in the second half of 2020, skepticism seemed prudent. The Mariners’ time to shine might be coming … but it almost certainly won’t happen this year.

With no team-wide expectations in 2020, we’re left rooting for individual successes. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of flawed-but-fun players on this roster to choose from. J.P. Crawford’s defense has been swoon-worthy at times, and Kyle Lewis can hit the ball approximately three (3) country miles. And then there’s the M’s enigmatic first baseman – if you believe the hype surrounding Evan White, anything less than six consecutive Gold Glove-caliber seasons will be a disappointment. Any of these fellas would be a great pick as “my” guy in 2020 … but, after much deliberation, I think I have to go with Shed.

The Mariners bespectacled, non-water-drinking, seemingly-always-smiling second baseman is so fun to watch play – and that’s the thing that’s going to carry the most weight for me right now. Normally I’m a bit more analytically minded when it comes to rootin’ for this team, but this year? In a largely meaningless, definitely ill-conceived season? Give me the guy who’s going to bring the most joy.Shed still needs to prove that he’s not a defensive liability, but his bat – which has a good amount of pop for a player of his stature – appears to be the real deal. If he can prove to be an everyday contributor in 2020, that would be very cool.

Make it happen, Shed. We’re all pulling for you. –Andrew Rice

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I’ve always been drawn to anything that’s unusual. Things that don’t quite match up with expectations – square pegs, round holes, and all that. No Mariner fits that bill more than No-Longer-Prospect-Now-Big-Leaguer Weird Ass himself, Evan White. A player who throws left but hits right? Check. A player who signed a six (potentially nine) year contract before a single AB in the bigs? Check. A player who will likely be the best defensive first baseman in the league as a rookie at a position where defense is typically an afterthought? Check.

I remember reading some retrospective of the 2001 team that focused on the infield defense being one of the best in the history of the league. The thesis was that John Olerud was so good at first, it allowed the rest of the infield to play more aggressively, giving them a larger margin of error for throws to first. (If you remember this article as well, please reach out to us.) I’m excited to see how good White is at first by seeing how much better Seager, Crawford, et al. look on defense. –Dan

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There are plenty of trials about being a Seattle Mariners fan. First off, they’re perpetually terrible. Second off, ever since Jerry Dipoto became the general manager, it’s been borderline impossible to tack your emotions to any particular player, because he could trade them at the drop of the hat. I don’t fault Trader Gerard for that. The Mariners are an awful team, after all. Blowing it up is a bit painful.

That said, I’m excited to see what Kyle Lewis can do with all the at bats his heart desires. His home runs are some of the most exciting to see a Mariners launch since … Mike Zunino? Granted, he strikes out at an unsustainable rate for the MLB (… Mike Zunino?), but he is rather young and has plenty of time to learn how to hit at a major league level while the Mariners flounder throughout the next 60 games. One of the things the Mariners have been missing since Kyle Seager first debuted in 2011 is a player Seattle drafted becoming an everyday MLB man. That is what I’m excited to see most. –Peter

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Let me preface this by saying that there are plenty of Mariners I’m excited to watch in 2020. As a former first baseman, having a human defensive highlight reel at the position in Evan White is exciting. The idea of Kyle Lewis chopping down the strikeout numbers and allowing me to resume my position of hype train driver would be thrilling: 

Prospects are my favorite, and now the Mariners have a whole dang team built out of them. But what excites me most is the prospect of a season in which we enter late July with every team tied in the standings. Every game is important. Every series could be make or break. Getting a sweep is pure bliss while getting swept would feel like death. We’ll (hopefully) never experience a season like this ever again, and I’m fully prepared to embrace the absurdity of it all. Give me a weirdly competitive Marlins team, or an Astros squad that is completely toast after stumbling out of the gates. I want all of the weird, baby. –Ethan

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An interesting part of following a franchise is that, once you’ve done it long enough, the themes circle back on themselves. I remember the last time the Mariners needed pitching. I remember the last time they needed hitting and defense and so on. Right now, they need pitching, again. The hope of that need rests almost solely on one man: Logan Gilbert. In 2020, I’d love a world where we see Gilbert get four or five starts and flash truly upper-tier stuff. He’s by far the highest-ceiling pitcher the organization has seen since Pineda or Taijuan Walker.

Speaking of Tai, I want to see him pitch all season, without injury, and keep a spot on this team going forward. There’s no story I like more than a homecoming, and Tai fits the bill perfectly. A rejuvenated Kendall Graveman would be fun, as well. More than anything, in what looks to be a massively offensive season due to the short run-up, I’d love to watch some good pitching. It would give me tremendous hope for this organization to see a few arms bearing fruit. –David

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It seems to happen every few years: Seattle picks up some sort of project starting pitcher and he weirdly excels. Chris Young, Kevin Millwood, (I will find another example) [Editor’s note: 404] and it looks like Kendall Graveman will do just that.

Graveman looked very solid in his last tune up start during Camping World Presents Summer Camp 2020 and it could very well be a taste of things to come. His velocity seems nice and his cutter (don’t call it a slider) looks like it has more bite than Barqs. Long live Grave Digger. –SG

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I’m going to be honest: There is no specific Mariner or Mariners-based experience that I’m excited for in 2020. It’s not because I’m angry or cynical or indifferent; I just have more jobs than children, and I have more children than the Mariners have playoff appearances since Ichiro arrived. I don’t get to consume baseball the way normal people do, watching or listening to it firsthand. The baseball I experience is a copy of a copy: I don’t even get to see the shadows on Plato’s wall. I have to listen to other people describe it.

So I’m not anticipating baseball so much as I’m anticipating other people anticipating baseball. I’m looking forward to the jerks who tweet “HOLY SHIT” and supply absolutely no context for the source of their religious epiphany. I can’t wait to see ten jokes, each riffing on and twisting the one before, so I can work backwards to figure out what originally caused them. I miss the crowd noise, that consonant-free, placid murmur that doesn’t need a stadium, just the lives of the people around me, comfortable and safe. –Patrick Dubuque

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The 2020 Seattle Mariners are a write-off squad playing a write-off season, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t intriguing options to consider. Kyle Lewis? Of course! Juiced ball or not, you can’t help but get excited about a dude who’s hitting oppo tacos onto the right field concourse. Evan White? He’s Prospect Weird Ass, there’s something inherently exciting about that. Jake Fraley? NO. NOT EVEN JAKE FRALEY’S EXCITED FOR JAKE FRALEY. GET OUT OF HERE. Also, Taijuan Walker is back. Hell yeah!

These are all so obvious, though. No, my One True Rooting Interest for the 2020 season lies beyond just the Mariners, or any team on any field. They’ll be out there in the grandstands, two-dimensional doppelgangers haunting the ballpark in our stead, a motionless vigil awaiting our returns. That’s right baby, it’s the cardboard cutout fans.

Little Timmy taking an 106 MPH exit velocity home run ball to the dome is a national tragedy that the Texas Rangers would commemorate with a morbidly inappropriate statue. HOWEVER. With proper camerawork and the right broadcast crew, that same dinger outright decapitating Little Timmy’s cardboard replicant would be the funniest goddamn thing in the world. I want to see baseballs absolutely wrecking their shit as often as possible. I don’t ask for much, but I am asking for this. –Matt Eitner

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I’ve never been able to pursue fulfillment purely for its own sake. There’s some kind of stupid, mom-was-a-Mennonite tic in my head that governs down any kind of fun I allow myself to have. Rather, I’ve always found joy in making sure everyone else is having a good time. This may sound altruistic and noble, but I’ve found it to be more akin to something like joy-harvesting. I slowly amble my way from person-to-person, place-to-place, relationship-to-relationship, skimming whatever happiness I happen to find floating at the top, before continuing my rounds. Is this healthy? Is this normal? I can’t tell you that. It almost surely isn’t. 

I say all that because the 2020 Mariners have nothing to offer me. I’ve seen sporting success. I’ve seen miracles. I’ve experienced 100-loss seasons, teams leaving, undefeated seasons, Super Bowls, National Championships, 1995, Payton To Kemp, the whole lot. I’m approaching middle age now, and though I haven’t seen it all I’ve seen a lot. What keeps it fresh is watching others discover sports anew. And that will happen, even though the 2020 Mariners will most likely be pig shit left in the sun, because baseball is the sport that’s best at offering escape. 

When Mallex Smith brazenly accelerates past second towards third, when JP Crawford falls into Bullet Time and begins to glow like a Dragon Ball Z character before firing a laser in the exact opposite direction of his body’s momentum, when Taijuan Walker finishes seven strong and blows a kiss to his son watching at home: These are the moments that allow us to forget the context of the game, and maybe for the most fleeting of moments, our lives. We do that together, not necessarily in the same ways we’re used to, but still communally. That’s what keeps me here, and has me excited. It’s all y’all. Your passion, energy, and continued love for the dumbest team in the stupidest sport in this great big kingdom of idiocy we call America. To look it all in the face, together, and shout “Go Mariners.” It couldn’t be more pure. We couldn’t ask for better. –Nathan Bishop