Hello friends. It has been awhile. The old dot com has been sadly neglected most of the season (Just call it the obvious holes in the Mariners roster, amirite!?) It has been hard to generate thoughtful and fresh content for an organization that is not generating thoughtful and fresh results, and the 2023 Mariners are nothing if not an amalgamation of the sleepy 2011-2013 years blasted straight into the cerebrum. It’s very tired in here.

Nonetheless while I will still use X* dot com – THE FUTURE OF UNLIMITED INTERACTIVITY (with electrolytes, which is what plants crave) – to go on the occasional dive into the Mariners being both frustrating and a bottomless well of despair from which no soul can return, I think there are plenty of positive we can take at the moment. They may not be obvious, they may not be the positives we want and they most certainly are not the positives the franchise owes its fans, but they are positives. This article is a rudimentary attempt to catalog and briefly examine them. Ready? How could you be? Let’s get started.

The 2023 Major League Baseball Season is not over, actually

Depending on your point of view this one could potentially be classified as a negative. I’m not here to pass judgment on you and I’ve watched the 2023 Seattle Mariners play, so I get it. However it’s still somewhat possible the Mariners make the playoffs! This year!

The B-Ref/Fangraphs/Baseball Prospectus Trinity has the team’s playoff odds somewhere between 8-11%. Those feel like long odds. They are long odds. BUT it’s really not any more unlikely than the 2022 team doing what it did. That team rode exactly one (1) spectacular ~month to 90 wins and WC2. The 2023 season has roughly two (2) months left. That’s twice as many spectacular months as it would take for this team to bully its way into playoff contention!

Look, it’s a longshot. But this team is no less talented than last year’s. If anything I would argue it’s ever-so-slightly more talented. A large part of why they are 50-50 is due to poor luck in one-run and extra-inning games. Yes, yes. I know, I know. That is very funny. STILL, while they are excruciating and maddening to watch they do not Suck, per se. They have 13 games left against Oakland/Kansas City/Chicago. All it would take is an extremely-easy-to-imagine 10-3/11-2 record against these legitimately awful teams to jump start a run. 

Crucially, and this cannot be overstated: Making the playoffs has never been easier in Major League Baseball. Ol’ Bob Man Fred and his fellas have moved heaven and earth to put 40% of the league into their big money-making postseason. Now, more than anytime in history, making the playoffs is easy. Tell ‘em Jerry!

Julio Rodriguez’s floor is higher than most ceilings

It has not been a good and fun 2023 for the Mariners’ anointed one. The wRC+ is down almost 33%. He’s struggling like crazy in late and close situations, almost certainly a byproduct of the intense internal pressure reacting to the also intense external pressure that comes from being an anointed one. Watching Julio in 2023 is hard. He desperately wants to be all things to all people. He knows what is expected of him and seems acutely aware when he fails to deliver that. More than anything he is 22 damn years old, which is not an easy time to exist for anyone anywhere at any time. 

All that to say: Man what a bummer of a season for our beautiful baseball prodigy here in 2023. AND YET he remains on pace to be about a 4-win player. Here is a list of position players who have produced 4+ fWAR seasons for the Seattle Mariners the past decade (2013-2023):

Robinson Cano
Kyle Seager
Eugenio Suarez
Mitch Haniger
Nelson Cruz
Julio Rodriguez

I’m not great at math but to me that list seems pretty short! Strip away all the above average things Julio does with his bat (and with a 101 wRC+ as of this writing we’re pretty much there right now) and he is still one of the best players this team has had in its modern age. This is because despite being built roughly to the specs of Optimus Prime he moves like gosh danged cheetah in centerfield, and runs the bases like a wizard. He is so good at everything that is “not offense” in 2023 it is almost unbelievable.

It is RIDICULOUS that the 2023 Mariners were built needing Julio Rodriguez to follow the Mike Trout developmental timeline to succeed. That, however, is not Julio’s fault. He remains the brightest star this organization has seen in decades, and the kind of talent that World Series winners can be built upon moving forward. 

Nothing is hecked here, Dude

More than anything the 2023 season has felt like a waste of time. Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo have further cemented the Mariners as one of baseball’s premier pitching development factories for the moment, but otherwise the organization has spent this year spinning its wheels. It’s not fun. We’ve been over this.

That said nothing substantial has been lost, should the team wish to largely bring the band back  for 2024. It’s a ringing condemnation of the levels of ambition and imagination of those in charge that a team with 90-win upside that can maybe scrap for a Wild Card if enough goes right feels like the best we can do, but the team is absolutely that on paper headed into 2024.

It’s fair if that’s not good enough for you. It’s certainly not enough for me. But if you’ve been around this organization for anything longer than 7-8 seasons you’ve seen a LOT worse. The Mariners are headed into 2024 with an absolutely loaded starting rotation, a renewed and possibly actually good JP Crawford, a promising young left fielder in Jarred Kelenic, a 27-year old catcher with pop and a 4-win pedigree, and a galactic, generational 23-year old talent anchoring center field. There’s no reason a team like that can’t make the playoffs. 

Even if it’s not everything we want, we should be just fine in 2024.

Together again

This is probably overly idealistic and foolishly naive. I was slow to come around to the nature of humanity and the silly and hurtful ways we can build canyons as well as we build bridges, but I pretty much get it now. We hurt each other and hold grudges for silly, petty reasons. We (and I very much include myself) are often silly, petty people. That said, the 2023 season allows this fanbase a chance to heal some rifts. The bedrock of the online Seattle Mariners community has been 1) rigorous and objective application of knowledge to the best of each person’s respective ability and capacity and 2) the fickle balancing act of rooting for success while remaining highly skeptical of people in power. 

The community capitulated that second ideal in the offseason of 2009/2010. We all stood and gave Jack Zduriencik and Tony Blengino a standing ovation for winning 85 games in 2009 and trading Carlos Silva for Milton Bradley. The ensuing era of Mariners baseball was a tough lesson, but one I and I know many others have never forgotten. 

The failure of this past offseason and the way it lays bare the hollowness of so much of the Mariners’ years-long branding and messaging sucks, but it is an opportunity for a new generation of Mariner fans to learn that same hard-bought lesson. Rooting for the success of the team does not require unquestioning loyalty to management and ownership. It does not require fawning over trades, or drafts, or front office personalities, or the unquestioning transcriptions and defenses of an increasingly biased media apparatus. We can root for this team and be skeptics. It’s what we know. It’s who we are. When we do it together this fanbase can create some of the best, most thoughtful, humorous, and yes welcoming and inclusive spaces I’ve ever been a part of. 

The 2023 season has thus far not been what any of us wanted. But it is something we can all use. We can learn from it, remember it, and hold its lessons close as we move forward. I don’t know if the team can improve much in its current state, but I’ll always be hopeful we as fans can do better for and by each other.

Goms.

*Please do not sue me, Meta