Mariners? My oh My

I love the Mariners. I go so far to call them my Mariners. I've been a baseball fan since the early 1960's and an M's fan since moving to the PNW in August 1997. It seems like for the past 9 years or so, the talk in this town is the same. This is a rebuilding year. And each year, toward the middle to the end of the season, we continue to be disappointed with the result.

After losing the last three of four games to Texas by a combined score of 33-10, while my head tells me we are still rebuilding, my gut tells says, "Oh no. Here we go again." I'm going to say it. The 2010 season is over -- as far as competing in any kind of serious way.  We can't hit -- for average or power -- and we can't pitch -- glaring weakness in starting pitching, the bull pen relievers and even our closer is questionable. At the 1/3 point in the 2010 campaign, I don't think it's going to change.

Until we add some guys who can hit and hit with some serious power, we'll never be serious contenders. I've heard all the arguments. "Safeco isn't a park for hitting home runs." Or, "Seattle is a pitchers park." Whatever. I'm sick of it. First of all, it seems to me, other teams when they visit don't seem to have all that much trouble driving the ball yard. And second, we play half of our games in someone else's park. So, why not plan on going long there???!!!??? Even if the ball doesn't travel as far in SoDo, a long fly-ball out might still advance a runner -- even score someone from third base. Or, maybe, just maybe that hard hit liner will hit the gap and go to the wall, pushing guys around the bases. So, I don't want to hear it anymore. Get some sticks!!!!!

Many times over the past couple of seasons -- especially last year and this one, sometimes our guys have been in the game until the later innings, but we haven't been able to score runs to hold the lead. If the hitting would improve, we might start scoring more than 1 to 3 runs a game and, we might discover our pitchers improve too. And not necessarily because they do anything differently. It's got to be disheartening for the guys who toe the rubber to go 7 or 8 innings only to lose by a run or two BECAUSE WE CAN'T HIT AND WE DON'T SCORE RUNS!!!!!!!

There I said it. And having said it, I'd like to think it's out of my system. And it is....at least for now. I still love my Mariners very much. I still wish them the best. I'll be a Mariners fan until the day I die. Truth be told, in baseball, I really am the ultimate optimist. If this season goes as I am concerned it will. Well, we've been there before, and, as they say, "There is always next year!" Go M's!