Will The 2017 Mariners Challenge The Home Run Record?

The Mariners hit two hundred and twenty-three home runs last year, ranking them as third-best in all of baseball. This year, with a revamped roster, healthy players, and a new found excitement surrounding the club, could this year’s M’s break the home run record set by the 1997 Mariners by hitting just forty-two more long bombs than they did in 2016?

In the mid-to-late nineties, the Mariners let the world know that they were now a power-hitting team.

In their eighteen years of existence prior to 1995, the Mariners had only ranked in the top-five in home runs while hitting at least one hundred and seventy dingers once.

That was back in 1985 when Gorman Thomas, Jim Presley, and Phil Bradley combined for eighty-six of the team’s franchise record one hundred and seventy-one home runs that year.

That record would only hold up for a decade because the nineties generation of M’s players were about to heat up.

In 95′ the Mariners hit eleven more home runs than 85′, thus setting a new team home run record, blasting a total of one hundred and eighty-two homers.

It was no surprise who was bashing the ball out of the park that year. With the likes of Tino Martinez, Edgar Martinez and Jay Buhner sending the ball into the stands with ease, the M’s coasted to the record with more than a week to spare before the season’s end. And to boot, this was in a strike-shortened year as well!

The next season, Ken Griffey Jr. and A-Rod began to contribute in a big way. Aside from players like Martinez and Buhner, who were still tormenting pitchers ever chance they got, the rising Mariners stars combined for eighty-five home runs on their own to help the M’s obliterate their old home run record by more than sixty long bombs.

The 1996 M’s would finish with two hundred and forty-five home runs, only trailing the Baltimore Orioles (who broke the 1961 New York Yankees record of two hundred and forty homers) for most in the league. Although, It wouldn’t be long before the M’s were top home run dogs.

The very next season, the Mariners would not only break their team home run record, but they would also grab hold of the major league record too, swinging their way past the newly minted O’s record of two hundred and fifty-seven, mashing two hundred and sixty-four homers.

Griffey Jr., Buhner, and Paul Sorrento would combine for an outstanding one hundred and twenty-seven home runs all by themselves that year to assist the team to the record.

Over the next two years, the Mariners would continue their torrid home run hitting pace, ending the year as team home run champions in both years, but when the new millennium hit, players left or retired, or simply weren’t as dominant as they had been, and the team’s home run totals sank.

From 2000-2012, the M’s were one of the worst home run hitting teams in the league. Not only did they never hit more than one hundred and eighty long bombs in that span, in 2010 they hit a league-worst one hundred and one homers. Thankfully a positive change was on its way.

In 2013 the M’s got back to their smashing and bashing ways, pummeling an MLB-second best, one hundred and eighty-three home runs.

The forty-something, Raul Ibanez hit a team-leading twenty-nine homers that year and Kyle Seager added twenty-two. This home run spurt was not an anomaly, but the streak wouldn’t be predominately continued by these men.

When the Mariners traded for Robinson Cano in 2014 and then signed Nelson Cruz in 2015, they knew they were getting some decent power injected into their lineup, but I don’t know if they expected the getting to be so good.

In 2015, with a half-healthy Cano and a ready-to-go Cruz, the duo combined for sixty-five homers, while Seager added twenty-six more. The trio hit nearly half of the team’s one hundred and ninety-eight homers that season.

This past year, with a fully healthy Cano, a surging Cruz, and a budding Seager, as well as much more power on the roster, the Mariners once again surpassed the two hundred homer plateau, cracking two hundred and twenty-three balls over the outfield fence.

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That brings us to 2017, a year that many M’s fans feel we’ll be a special one, aside from the fact that it’s the franchise’s fortieth birthday.

Let’s look at the possibility of breaking the record from an optimistic standpoint.

If Cruz, Cano, and Seager combine for one hundred and twenty home runs, that would mean that the rest of the M’s lineup would need to hit one hundred and forty-five more homers. Meaning, if eight Mariners players can hit eighteen or more home runs, then the record could be broken.

If eight Mariners players can hit eighteen or more home runs, then the record could be broken.

That would mean that Seth Smith, Jean Segura, Mike Zunino, Danny Valencia, Leonys Martin and three other M’s would have to have an amazing power-hitting 2017.

So, can the Mariners break their own record? Probably not, but they will definitely break their 1985 old team record and also surpass two hundred combined home runs.

Next: Mariners #9 Prospect Andrew Moore

It will take something special if the 2017 M’s want to out muscle, Griffey Jr, A-Rod, Buhner, Martinez and the other Mariners sluggers of 1997.

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