These are the Mariners we know

and love. Sometimes.

One of the biggest challenges in writing about baseball is that they play every day. Every day.

And there’s two sides to this—one, can you imagine being a beat writer? You write, for sure, a story a day and it’s gotta be done by 11pm or whatever. And sometimes a sidebar or a feature on top of that.

This? Or the considerably more professional version of it—column writing? Not even close to as bad. But when part of your intended task is taking the pulse of the club and attempting to put it into words, said pulse changes every 12 to 24 hours.

I was thinking about this earlier this week, after the series in Houston. In the finale, the Mariners jump out to a 2-0 lead early, they add on another on the Luke Raley solo shot in the sixth and…they were trailing 4-3 before an out was recorded in the seventh.

And that could’ve been that. That should’ve been that. Given an opportunity to take a big road series and throw a handful of dirt on the lid of the Astros’ casket, they fail to add on and allow Houston to climb back to eight-under.

Nah. Dylan Moore keys a rally and then Cal does what Cal does.

And the mood leading into the Twins series was joyful exuberance. Monday changed that. Tuesday—one of the best games of the year changed it back.

Two duds later, here we are—sitting on the roof deck on the nicest day of the year with a bike ride to he ballpark on deck, trying to put into words how I’m feeling about this club because I owe you a post.

This is the other hard part of writing about baseball: for as volatile as things are and how frequently the tenor around the team shifts from positive to putrid and back again, the 10,000-foot view often has the Mariners in about the same spot.

Which is to say—writing now literally as the Matt Brash TJ news breaks—I’ve seen this Mariners team before. We’ve all seen different iterations of this same club.

They’re not perfect, and they’re probably not great—because that’s never been the goal, by ownership’s own admission.

“We've got a team that [will be] competitive on the field against the Red Sox on March 28 and all the way to the end of the season,” John Stanton said to Paul Silvi in the lead-up to Opening Day.

For as long as the 2024 Mariners have regular season games to play—or at least close to it—they will have something at stake. That’s the target, and I’d bet they hit it.

While the 2024 Mariners may not be a great (they still might!), they’re probably good. They’re almost certainly decent. They are often fun.

There will be times when it looks like they could win the World Series and there will be times when it looks like a handful of folks upstairs and down will be leaving the ballpark in the first week of October with their personal effects in a cardboard box.

And the end result will probably be somewhere in the middle.

I hate for my first post in a bit to not be anything profound, takesy or well-researched but that’s just how it is. It’s baseball, and the older I get the more I understand—ahem, the more I try to understand—you can’t get too high or too low.

It is May 10th. Summer isn’t even here yet, though it’s starting to feel like it.

We have so much to go. And think about all the stuff we’ve already seen.

Hell I’ve been to ten games in person and even within that sample there’s an insane range of outcomes.

I’m not gonna harp on the bad stuff, mostly because my memory tries to dump it real fast, but the Mitch Haniger grand slam was one of the best baseball moments I’ve ever seen live.

Exactly two weeks ago today. Another Friday night homestand opener. Another perfect evening in Seattle. I remember thinking, literally as the inning was unfolding, that the sky even looked perfect—one those orange skies produced by just the right amount of cloud cover.

a photo from right after the slam

And there came Mitch Haniger. Second tour. Bases loaded. The Mariners, as they often are, starving for that one big knock.

“He’s not gonna do this, is he?”

And he did. Of course he did.

That familiar swing, the airy trajectory of the ball and then, *boop,* a kiss off the top of the wall and over. Euphoria.

I have to wrap this up because I gotta get Grinnell out before hopping on the bikes and heading in but, for as challenging as this very familiar Mariners team can and will continue to be, we get moments like that.

I’m due for at least a few more instances of hugging my wife and lifting her into the air in pure joy.

Due for even more “LET’S GOOOOOOOOOOOS” in the next neighborhood over as I walk Gri—as Cal hit a slam on Tuesday right between her doing her business and me picking it up.

Due for some fist-pump fits like when Garver hit that two-run walk-off during Monday Pinball League.

Here’s to a couple of those this weekend. Here’s to one tonight.

We’ve been waiting for a season that’s better than all the rest—a step forward from the plateau this organization’s better teams often end up on—and maybe 2024 turns out to be just that. Maybe they chance into it.

Either way, we’ll have a lot of the ups to go with the downs.

I’ve seen this Mariners team before, yeah. But some of the best moments of my life have come watching teams like this.

I want more, we all want more. But these are the words I have now—for where the team is now.

See you at the ballpark.

Go M’s.