Two Ways to Look at it

The Mariners lost another game in the standings today, as they fell to the Indians 9-0. The Angels, Rangers, and Red Sox all won, which pushes us back to 6.5 games out in the West, and 5.5 out of the wild card. I see it as there being two different ways to look at the situation – a realistic, more depressing way, and a slightly more optimistic way.

Firstly, there’s the pessimistic way. The Mariners now have 66 games left, to make up 6 and a half on a superior Angels team. The Angels are incredibly hot right now, and they are winning all of these games despite missing both Torii Hunter and Vladimir Guerrero. Right now, no one can stop them, not even Joe Nathan with a two run lead. Not to mention the Rangers, who have won five in a row, and are three games up on the M’s. Realistically, the odds are extremely small that the Mariners are going to be 7 games better than the Angels over the remainder of the season. When you look at it that way, it doesn’t look real good.

Then, there’s the more optimistic way. As of right now, the Mariners are 6.5 games behind the Angels, but there is still a week until the deadline. Albeit unlikely, there’s always the chance that the Mariners will win the next 3 or 4 games, and pick up 2 or 3 on the Angels in the process. At that point, you’re looking at something more like 3.5 games back, with 62 games left to play. That seems a lot more attainable.

If the Mariners don’t gain two or three games before the deadline, though, I don’t think Jack Zduriencik is going to really have any choice but to sell. Selling doesn’t necessarily mean giving up on this season, but it means not buying, and not buying means not attaining a bat.

No matter what happens, this has already been a very successful season for the Mariners, and as fans we really have no choice but to be optimistic about the future. We are in good hands, and we can trust that GMZ will do what’s right for the organization. We also should not give up hope for this season, as anything is possible, and there’s still plenty of baseball to play.

As for tonight’s game, there really isn’t all that much to say. Ryan Rowland-Smith looked good for six innings. He had good command, his velocity was there, and his curve looked sexy. He made a couple of mistakes in the seventh, but overall I was happy with his performance.

Aside from RRS, it was pretty bleak. Our offense couldn’t touch Aaron Laffey, and Miguel Batista gave up 5 runs in relief. This team has made a habit of losing the first game of series, then coming back to win the next two games, hopefully they can continue that over the next two days – they’ll be sending Bedard to the hill tomorrow, and Chris Jakubauskas on Sunday.

You can follow me on Twitter here