Monday Morning Mariber is a collection of thoughts on the Mariners week that was, with a focus on the weekend games. Today the column measures the spaces between moments, and reckons with its own mortality.

A Lifetime of Joy

The 2022 Seattle Mariners played their 140th game yesterday. It was, thus far, the game of the year. Win expectancy is one of my favorite modern metrics because while most advances in baseball data do an excellent job breaking down the granular aspects of the sport, win expectancy tells you almost precisely how experiencing a game feels. If yesterday’s chart looks like a uniquely demonic roller coaster, or a jump-started heart spastically and wildly fluttering to life, well, that is not an inaccurate description of the viewing experience is it?

I cannot stop thinking about time these days. I am overly preoccupied with the past by nature, and being 40 now has not helped the habit. Two decades and eleven months ago, at about 11:30 PM EDT, Mike Cameron hit a lineout the other the way that found the Shane Spencer’s glove. The Mariners lost 12-3, Old Yankee Stadium roared, and the Yankees advanced to their fourth World Series in a row.

This year’s team has played 140 games, averaging 3:07 per. That’s 436 hours of regular season baseball put on offer, or something like 2.5 weeks. By the end of the season that will rise to something like three weeks, or six percent of the entirety of 2022. Six percent of an entire year that you could spend simply watching this baseball team play baseball on tv.

Since that late October lineout in New York way back in 2001 the Mariners have played something like 60 weeks of pure, unfiltered, regular season baseball. That’s more than a year of life! Not counting Spring Training, or pregames, or postgames, or time spent in chatrooms, message boards, USS Mariner, Lookout Landing, Twitter, the radio, etc. Being a hardcore baseball fan is not a hobby, or a distraction, or a happy place, or an addiction. Or at least it is not just those things. It is an actual honest to god mode of living. It is a grounding point, a core tenant of the daily habit through which we exist. Baseball is not something we consume, it is something we graft onto our being and carry with us for as long as we dare.

And so we have carried it. Some of us for literal years of our lives. Laughing and arguing, weeping and singing. We don’t do it as martyrs but as people who have simply found what we love, what makes us whole, and will never let it go. But the Mariners, my God the Mariners have made it an experience unlike anything else. 

For twenty years, over 3,100 games, 28,000 innings, and 83,700 outs we have found ourselves and our team outside the playoffs. We have never stopped figuring out ways to make it worth it for ourselves, and we’ve never stopped caring about them. And then, yesterday, the 3,278th regular season game since that cold New York October night, the jolt; a heart, newly-infused with energy, pounding away in a maelstrom of adrenaline. We never let ourselves quite die, and now are truly alive. A lifetime well spent.

Three Up

Is It Not Good For Man to Dinger?

Baseball never, ever, lets you feel very smart for long. The trade that brought Eugenio Suarez to Seattle was about two things: The Mariners acquiring a legitimately elite bat in Jesse Winker, and the Cincinnati Reds not having to pay Suarez anymore. Winker has been pretty easily the most disappointing part of this roster (more to come later in this column), while Suarez has simply gone about putting together one of the best third baseman seasons in franchise history.

Since August 1st the man is hitting .248/.355/.620 with 14 home runs. As the team has seen its other supposed offensive stars wane and falter he has filled the gap with dinger after dinger after dinger. He has made me (although not exclusively me thankfully) look very very wrong by doubting him in Spring Training. He is almost certainly the second or third most important position player on this roster, given the almost total lack of alternatives. 

I have a friend who works for the Oakland A’s that told me, way back in April, Eugenio got stuck in the corner of one of the Coliseum’s surely plague-filled tunnels after a game. Oakland’s game staff and employees were all filing out after the day’s game and Suarez was forced to wait them out as they passed. His response to this was to enthusiastically say good night to each and every one of them with a gigantic smile on his face.

The vibes, they are good.

Juliooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Ho hum cut and paste just another week for the most exciting Seattle Mariner in 25 years in which he had his first multi-homer game in about the most important spot he possibly could. He’s going to push a five win season with a 140 wRC+ while playing centerfield at 21 years old. These are the same kinds of things I say every time I write this column. What else can be said? The man is a tear from heaven grafted into a baseball player. We are blessed.

Oh So George Kirby Is Just An Ace Now Ok Cool

So yeah here’s this. Georgy Kirby would be very much in the thick of the AL Rookie of the Year race if Julio Rodriguez did not exist. He is pitching something like a right-handed prime Cliff Lee if Cliff Lee threw 98. His 2.7 fWAR ties him for 13th in the AL, despite having thrown only 111 innings. There are zero question marks about him beyond durability. None. His makeup, his delivery, his stuff, his command is all well above average to elite. He’s so casually, mercilessly efficient that his outings feel completely routine. He’s basically just the modern starting pitching ideal made manifest and throwing every five days for the Seattle Mariners. Seems cool?

Three Down

Los Bombed Errors

For all the joy the 2022 Seattle Mariners have gifted us with precious little of it would be possible without the incredible work of the bullpen. The Mariners have boa constricted their way through the season; clawing a small lead out of timely hitting and excellent starting pitching and then spending innings 6-9 slowly asphyxiating their opposition with arm after arm after arm slanging some of the nastiest stuff in the game.

So while, yes, last night’s implosion ended up merely setting the stage for a pure 1995 redux I do not advise the Mariners make a habit of it. There is simply not enough offensive talent on this roster to regularly comeback from blown leads. 

What a Stinker

I’ll keep it simple here. 

2021: .305/.394/.556

2022: .219/343/.347

That 200+ drop in slugging is simply staggering. Jesse Winker was brought onto this roster to crush right-handed pitching, and he is running a 104 wRC+ against them. His defense is somehow worse than advertised. He is a one-tool player, and that is his ability to draw a walk. He’s hitting like 2010 Chone Figgins with a better eye and worse glove. I dunno. What a miserable season.

Mitch Please Ball Hit

We’ll start with a broader view. Since returning from injury Mitch, who is one of my favorite players on this roster, is hitting .242/.305/.375. That’s not going to cut it for a bat-first corner outfielder. More recently it’s even worse, as the past 15 games have seen a line of .164/.220/.230. ZOINKS!

It’s easy to forget in all the euphoria how paper-thin so many parts of this roster continue to be, but a prolonged absence/slump from one the lineup’s supposed daily players sure does it in a hurry. We’re down to dreaming that Mitch finds his stroke or Taylor Trammell decides now is a good time to be good. Please just hit again, Mitch.

The Weekly “Mariners Tweet that Made Me Laugh Most Embarrassingly in Front of My Family” Award

https://twitter.com/SavageDipoto/status/1569112263793197057?s=20&t=CpoeT051UiYm-pIPa7FuHg (Please note for the record: I am not, nor have I ever been, owned.)

*****

That’s got to be the most positive feeling 3-3 week I can remember. The Atlanta Braves are one of the handful of truly elite organizations and rosters in baseball and the Mariners just won a series from them in front of a weekend of sold out crowds. This is what creates and solidifies the next generation of baseball in the Pacific Northwest and, truly, we do love to see it.

I hope you all have a great week. Fall is here. Let’s swaddle ourselves in playoff dreams.

Goms.

You can follow Nathan on Twitter at @nathan_h_b. Additionally he appears on the Ian Furness show on Mollywhop Mondays on KJR 93.3 FM every Monday at 1:10 PM with Chris Crawford and Kevin Shockey. Please be nice, he is doing his best.