Jim Moore: Spring is hope season, and the Mariners look good - but not quite good enough

At 65, I’m old enough to have watched the Mariners in their first season in 1977 and their first game at the Kingdome with my family. We sat in the 300 level along the first-base line as left-hander Frank Tanana of the then-California Angels silenced the Mariners’ bats in a 7-0 victory, a fitting start for a franchise that has experienced more lows than highs in its 46-year existence.

I don’t remember too much from that game aside from Diego Segui being the starting pitcher for the Mariners and my sister being mad that she couldn’t smoke a cigarette in the Kingdome.

They won 64 games in their first season and didn’t post a winning record (83-79) until 1991. They’ve had five playoff teams, proving to be sporadically successful but mostly disappointing.

In 2022, the Mariners ended a 21-year playoff drought and are now seemingly equipped to make it to the World Series. If this happens, it will be a first in franchise history and it will end an even sadder drought than the one last year - the Mariners are the only MLB team to have never played in a World Series.

This time of year it’s easy to consider all things possible. The Mariners have their best rotation ever, featuring four potential aces, and a shut-down bullpen. They also have a budding superstar in Julio Rodriguez. The World Series is the next logical step for a team that beat Toronto in the wild-card round last year and gave the Astros a heck of a battle in the American League Division Series.

You can rightfully contend that the Mariners have a reasonable shot at replacing the Astros atop the AL West.

This type of thinking is fueled by injury concerns with the Astros, who will start the season without two of their fixtures, right-hander Lance McCullers and second baseman Jose Altuve.

On Thursday if we’re not at T Mobile Park for Opening Night against the Guardians, we’ll watch the festivities on ROOT Sports or listen to Rick Rizzs conveying his infectious enthusiasm on the radio.

It won’t be manufactured this season - even the odds-setters in Las Vegas see potential in the Mariners, listing them at 9-1 to win the AL pennant and 18-1 to win the World Series.

Only three AL teams have better odds to win the Series - Houston at 3-1, the Yankees at 3.75-1 and the Blue Jays at 5.5-1.

Nonetheless, I’m skeptical for two reasons:

1) When you’ve followed Mariners’ baseball for nearly 50 years, you develop all kinds of scar tissue and cynicism from so many seasons filled with unmet expectations if there were even expectations at all. Put in a shorter way, you want to believe but can’t. Instead of “wait ‘til next year,” it’s typically been “wait ‘til next decade,” and “wait ‘til next century” works too.

2) A more tangible explanation - the Mariners did not truly improve their lineup, changing some of the names but not making a blockbuster move that could have turned them into super-serious contenders for a championship.

At the end of the season - or heck, maybe by early May - we might wonder why team president Jerry Dipoto did not make a bolder effort to sign one of the four big-ticket free-agent shortstops - Trea Turner, Dansby Swanson, Xander Boegarts and Carlos Correa.

The Mariners illogically committed to their incumbent shortstop, J.P. Crawford, saying they didn’t want to move him to second base even though Crawford said he would have been fine with a position change if it improved the team.

Crawford is coming off a subpar year with his bat and glove and will now deal with added pressure of needing a bounce-back season, particularly if the big-ticket guys are tearing it up with their new teams.

New second baseman Kolten Wong could be an upgrade from Adam Frazier, but Wong committed 17 errors last year and struggled against left-handers in Milwaukee. The Mariners covered themselves with a platoon situation, wanting Dylan Moore to back up second base - and shortstop for that matter - and hit against lefties. Unfortunately, Moore will start the season on the injured list with an oblique strain but is expected back in mid-April.

In spring training, left fielder Jarred Kelenic looked like he planned to go from question mark to exclamation point this season. I read countless paragraphs about swing changes and approach changes, all of which was encouraging but won’t be validated until he produces in games that count.

Kelenic is such a huge key to this lineup that I’d rather see him go 6-for-16 with two doubles and a home run while the Mariners go winless in their opening four-game series than 0-for-16 with the M’s sweeping the Guardians. More than any other player, Kelenic needs to get off to a good start to prevent his mental funk from returning.

Other possible concerns as noted by Luke Arkins in his Mariners Consigliere Substack.com blog.

Wong’s injury history, Logan Gilbert’s hard-hit rate last year (45.6 percent with the MLB average at 38.4 percent) and Cal Raleigh’s T Mobile average of .180 and .600 OPS in 2022 vs. a road games average of .240 and OPS of .961.

Granted, the Mariners have more positives than negatives, and their standout pitching will get them back in the playoffs. But unless Dipoto adds another bat at the trade deadline, this looks like another 90-72 season from a team that will be very good but not good enough to win it all.

Jim Moore has covered Washington’s sports scene from every angle for multiple news outlets. You can find him on Twitter @cougsgo, and on 950 KJR-AM, where he co-hosts a sports talk show from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on weekdays.