You gotta love these(?) guys

Yes, I am enjoying the 2025 Seattle Mariners.

When you’re planning your day around ballgames, you know it’s serious. There are 162 of them. Even the worst teams, the most boring teams, the most torturous ones—they’ll play all 162 games.

It’s so many that your life will intersect with even the biggest burrs of teams a couple times a week if you’re remotely interested in the club.

When you’re planning life around a team in early May, a Seattle Mariners team, it’s serious. It might be seriously unwell but it’s serious all the same.

Saturday’s M’s game had a 4:10 p.m. first pitch and the weather application I trust had a band of weather rolling across our northwest corner of Seattle from about four to six. Would you look at that.

I don’t know if it’s still brunch when you have it at 2 p.m. but that, preceded by a walk with the dog and followed by a quick errand and hey, the rain, guess the smart play is to be back home right around top one.

My wife and I were maybe five blocks from the house when J.P. hammered the first pitch out to right-center. I wove on my bike as I laughed, both at the preposterousness of that opening AB following the prior night’s onslaught and also Rick starting his call with “J.P. picks off—”, gracefully struggling to find “picks up” before Jay Buhner hopped in to bail him out.

That’s baseball, man.

Lately, I can’t get enough of it.

Well, yesterday I had day-long pinball tournament. And the Mariners had won six straight and were facing Jacob DeGrom with, what, their seventh-best starting pitcher. Made the right call.

Tonight’s 7:05 p.m. is, on the one hand, brutal after having not tuned in since Saturday. But on the other—the game occupies the entire evening. Might be nice enough to watch up on the roof, maybe with something on the grill. That’s the good stuff.

It’s good when it’s the middle of a Saturday afternoon—going back to that— you’ve been watching since the first and you’re reaching across the couch to low-five your wife after Ben Williamson chops a ball to second to move the go-ahead run over in the eighth.

A few weeks ago, I didn’t even know what Ben Williamson looked like. I just knew that he didn’t hit homers and then he hit a homer. Sometime in-between, @zachleft said on Twitter that Williamson looks like a combination of Dominic Canzone and Ryan Divish so now you have to remember that, too.

The dudes winning this team games—literally notching the plays deciding outcomes—are absurd.

Among players with at least 40 plate appearances in the Majors this year, only Aaron Judge and Carson Kelly are getting on base at a better clip than [Little] Leo Rivas’s even .500.

The Ben Williamson productive out mentioned and pictured above was preceded by a 110.5mph double by reigning American League Player of the Week Jorge Polanco. It was followed, naturally, by a laser of a knock from Rowdy Tellez.

Andrés Muñoz entered and dominated—a reminder that, at their core, the Mariners do have the horses. They have some horses.

Hell, the Mariners got their wins yesterday before the game was over. George Kirby dominated for Tacoma and Logan Gilbert was (inexplicably) out playing catch despite supposedly being shut down from throwing for two weeks.

I have been reticent to let myself so much as internally think “If they get those guys healthy…” because George’s injury is to the worst spot a pitcher can be injured and Logan’s is the first thing you hear before a guy gets Tommy John.

And yet—

They would return to a team with a lineup that has a certifiable second star with Cal Raleigh’s ascension to being best catcher in the sport. I trust Julio will go nuclear at some point.

The real difference-maker with this roster is in the second tier. When Randy Arozarena is not one of your top two or so guys, that’s a sign it’s a good team. When a guy like Polanco isn’t immediately counted upon to bat in the middle of the lineup, and he goes boom not bust, it pushes you to a level that wins a lot of games.

The 2025 Mariners can win a lot of games. They’re going to have me watching most of them if they do.

There’s something about this team that has me hooked. Maybe it’s a classic case of “Winning cures all” but the balance across the roster, winning games different ways with different guys, it’s enthralling.

And it’s only May. It’s only May and we have five—hopefully six—more months with this crew.

Last year I had multiple posts in which I mentioned staying in the present and enjoying things as they unfold. You know, experience things instead of focusing on what those mean.

I say that a lot because 1.) It’s like the most important thing in life and 2.) I am bad at it and what I’m doing there is called proooojection.

I love baseball season. I love the rhythm of it all, game after game and series after series and homestand after homestand. The road trips have their own idiosyncrasies too. You experience all these games and stretches at different places, different mediums, different moments in life.

I want to enjoy it all, the way baseball weaves its way deeply into our day-to-day lives, like a tangle of dog hair gripping strong on a crewneck sweatshirt fresh out of the wash.

Got the game on the roof tonight, maybe one at a new dive bar or something tomorrow. We need to buy our tickets for Friday, actually. That bike ride down’s gonna be heavenly. And so on—

You’re off to the future just like that.

While I try to stay in the present, to appreciate that baseball season is fully here again and that, with that, comes yet another competitive Mariners team—there is a downside in all this beautiful rhythm, that pesky future.

One reason it’s a little easier to stay focused on the present this year is that, hey, as good as this team might look and as good as their position in the standings may be, last year they led the division by ten games and it didn’t matter.

So you might as well just enjoy this now.

On the one hand, that sounds pessimistic. I hate “Same old Mariners” because they’re way too chaotic for anyone to describe what they’re doing as the “same” as something they did before. But really, from a positive standpoint, putting together these competitive teams year after year—and these last two seasons, teams that charge out to a division lead—isn’t easy to do.

From an organizational development standpoint, they’ve done the hard part. But are they committed enough to want more?

The Mariners yet again find themselves leading the American League West early. The American League, same as it was thought to be, is as weak and wide open as it’s been in a generation. They hit and hit big on a free agent lottery ticket (that was still pretty expensive to them because they’re…frugal). The farm is stocked for trade season.

It’s all set up. Again.

Fans don’t have to worry about all that stuff yet. At least, they shouldn’t. It is May, after all.

But if you’re worried about whether or not they’re worried? Worried a smidge about whether or not they’ve learned the lessons of opportunity passed by?

Nah, I won’t blame you there. Same.

For now though, the sun is shining out over the Olympic Mountains and onto the Puget Sound for a few hours longer. Ballgame’s on soon. Gotta get set.

Go M’s.