By Gray Kinard
After a few months of
uncertainty and negotiations, baseball is back, and with it come the
predictions for the season upon us. This year things are going to be quite
different. Instead of playing a full 162 games, the season will be shortened
into a much smaller 60 game span, leaving many opportunities for teams to do
better than expected.
Unfortunately, this
leaves many fans with hope that they normally would not have. In this 60-game
season all a team must do is get hot at the right time and they can bulldoze
their way into the playoffs. It could really be any teams game. As a Mariner’s
fan, however, the slight glimmer of hope for this year is also infuriating.
Last year, the Mariners went an impressive
12-2 through the first 3 weeks of the season. Not only did they somehow do that, but hit an obscene amount of home runs in the process. That little glimmer of
hope would not last at all as they would then fall back to their normal level
of mediocrity, ultimately finishing the season 68-94 and at the bottom of the
AL West.
Now as a Mariners fan I
am quite used to this. Every year we get told as fans it is a new season and
that anything can happen. Anything but make the playoffs that is. The Seattle
Mariners have failed to reach the playoffs for the past 19 years, that
appearance being in the 2001 season. We currently hold the longest active
playoff drought in North American sports. That is just embarrassing considering
some of the talent we have had on our team since 2001.
So, like every new season
prior, it is time to predict where this underwhelming team will ultimately
finish. Let us start with acquisitions. The Mariners throughout the 2019 season
shipped off all players who were performing better than expected. After trading
away Edwin Diaz and Robinson Cano to the Mets and one of their best pitchers in
recent history, James Paxton, to the Yankees at the end of the 2018 season, it
was obvious the franchise was stooping back down to its hope of building a new
roster with talent that could get the team to the playoffs. However, they did
not get anyone good from those deals. The only noteworthy players were prospect
Justus Sheffield and veteran Jay Bruce. Sheffield did not see much action in
the 2019 season appearing in only 8 games at the major league level and acquiring
a 5.50 ERA. Bruce, on the other hand was playing alright acquiring 14 home runs
in the first two months of the season. Not great for the Mariners but definitely
serviceable.
So, the Mariners trading
away 3 star players for some eh prospects and a veteran who they’d immediately trade
away wasn’t great for the season. So, going into 2020 with a roster that has
little talent and horrid front office management, their prospects of being a competitive
team are not great.
With the season being
only 60 games, and the MLB trying to reduce the amount of travel a team must do,
the Mariners will be playing a lot more on the West Coast then they would
normally do. As far as how hard that schedule is, let us look at it. Out of the
60 games total for the season, 24 of those are against playoff teams from 2019.
The Athletics, Astros, and Dodgers were all featured in the postseason last
year and they are all projected to get there again this year as well.
As far as the rest of the
schedule goes, they will be facing teams that are on the brink, or close to
being on the brink of being a postseason contender. The Angles, Padres, and
Rangers are all heavily featured on their schedule and all of them either made
moves during the offseason or have been acquiring talent the past few years to
bolster their rosters.
With a schedule full of
teams that try to make their teams better, there is little hope for the season.
My prediction is that like last year, the Mariners will finish in last place
yet again. As far as their record goes, there is little hope that they will be
anywhere close to 500. My prediction is that they win 15-20 games while losing the
other 40-45.
As a fan of the team it
really hurts to say that they’ll only win 15 games, but with how they’ve played
in the past few years and how their roster has shaped up this year, there is
little to no hope. However, even with that, I will, as usual, have my fingers
crossed that by some miracle they actually play competitive baseball.
