Yahoo Sports’ Hannah Keyser and Zach Crizer discuss the Seattle Mariners and their underwhelming season. After breaking a two-decade playoff drought last season and winning a playoff series, expectations were high heading into 2023. Yet the Mariners are under .500 and in third place in the AL West. Can Julio Rodriguez and the M’s regain the magic they had last season and take the next step, or is this team doomed to hover just short of true World Series contention? Subscribe to The Bandwagon wherever you get podcasts.
Video Transcript
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HANNAH KEYSER: I’m going to bandwagon the Mariners because I want them to make the postseason again so the catharsis of having made the postseason last year isn’t kind of rendered moot by the, like, well, maybe that was the fluke instead of, like , that was the beginning of a new era of contention.
Currently, the Mariners, 38 and 39. It is much better than they were this time last year. This time last year, on this date, they were 34 and 41. They were also about to go into a 14-game win streak that really turned the tides on their season.
Also, they were playing in a much easier division. The Rangers and Angels, not nearly as formidable-looking last year as they are this year. Eh, they’ve been a little bit better. Over the last month, they are ninth in team home runs and second in team FIP. And those stats are only a little bit cherry picked to– like, some things are going well.
ZACH CRIZER: The Mariners are a great half team. They have a tremendous pitching staff. And they cannot hit anything.
HANNAH KEYSER: They cannot hit anything. And they are not the Yankees, and Julio Rodriguez is not Aaron Judge. But they are kind of that in that, like, Julio Rodriguez has been basically just a little bit better than league average this year. And all of a sudden, it feels like– do they have no offense whatsoever? And it’s kind of like, no, they don’t. And I don’t know that he can carry the team himself because he doesn’t hit 62 home runs.
They are a team that played an extremely long game. And Jerry Dipoto, their lead– their top baseball executive, their president of baseball operations– Jerry Dipoto has taken this approach of, like, we’re going to be extremely honest and upfront with the fans and super communicative. And we’re going to tell them that we’re doing this rebuild. And it’s going to take a long time. But then it’s going to pan out.
And last year really looked like, oh, that is the successful model. Everybody should do that kind of thing. And then it’ll be really disappointing for fans if it’s just like, nope, never mind.
ZACH CRIZER: Yeah. That’s a team that earned patience in the worst way by being so bad for so long that it was like, well, if he even has a thought of how he might get us to the playoffs, that’s fine. But then now, the one time with a first-round exit was– that’s not going to be–
HANNAH KEYSER: Excuse me, a second-round exit.
ZACH CRIZER: Second-round exit. I’m sorry. A second-round exit is not going to be the most exciting thing. They have to do it again. And it’s not as simple as just taking last year’s team and plopping it into a new season. It’s a whole new challenge. And sometimes that challenge is going to be a different thing. And they’re going to have to add pieces, which they sort of didn’t really do.
HANNAH KEYSER: But I don’t want for them to be the White Sox, which is like, a team that thought they were close and so they tinkered a little bit and they tinkered a little bit and they tinkered a little bit. And everybody was like, I don’t know. They have good players. But never quite enter this true window of contention.
Like, I want last year to be the beginning of a window of contention for the Mariners and not just, like, a little, tiny peak in what is a run of just around 500 seasons. That’s what I don’t want for the Mariners, if only because Julio Rodriguez is a lot of fun and is a lot more fun when he is having fun. And he is having fun when they are good.
And I know that everybody else who’s on team get Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout to the postseason– I actually think it would be sadder for the Mariners to miss the postseason and for their fans to be like, we don’t mind having waited. We’re just happy we’re there, to like, what was all this for?
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