Mariners watching their perfect missing piece shine on Dodgers is infuriating

Stop us if you've heard this one before, but a player who the Seattle Mariners really should have ended up with over the winter is suddenly making a big impact. This time it's Hyeseong Kim, who is standing out even amid the Los Angeles Dodgers' veritable ocean of star power.

Because the Dodgers optioned Kim to the minors midway through spring training, the 26-year-old only just made his major league debut on May 3. Yet the hits started coming with his first start on May 5, and they basically haven't stopped as he's gone 9-for-25 with a homer in his last nine appearances.

Granted, there is value to the notion that one should not covet their neighbor's goods. And in the abstract, at least, we're not talking about a Pete Alonso-sized whiff when it comes to the Mariners not landing Kim in free agency.

The Mariners were destined to miss out as soon as Hyeseong Kim signed with the Dodgers

Yet whereas the Mariners merely should have pursued Alonso, they actually did go after Kim as he was looking for work in Major League Baseball after a successful career in Korea. There were reports that the M's even offered him a contract.

Kim fit the bill for the kind of player the Mariners needed to be interested in this past winter. He was a .304 hitter in eight seasons in the Korean Baseball Organization, with 211 stolen bases and four KBO Gold Glove Awards on his resume as well.

In the end, Kim fell within even Seattle's narrow price range. President of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto reportedly had about $15 million to sink into new salaries, and the Dodgers got Kim for just three years and $12.75 million, plus a $2.5 million posting fee.

From there, a story began to unfold that seemed on its way to having a happy ending for the Mariners. They eventually pivoted to Jorge Polanco, who has been a revelation in his second season with the team. And even after Kim got optioned in March, he only hit .252 at Triple-A.

Yet it now seems as if Kim merely needed an extended warm-up. Even setting aside the hits, he's also impressed with his speed and his glovework at shortstop, center field, and especially second base.

Meanwhile in Seattle, a Mariners lineup that had gotten off to a terrific start has more recently been buckling under the weight of injuries to Victor Robles, Luke Raley, and Ryan Bliss, not to mention a major black hole at first base. The team has scored only 34 runs amid a 3-7 stretch since May 4, and the defense has gotten shaky in its own right.

Despite the aforementioned notion on coveting, it's hard not to look at how Kim is performing for the Dodgers and wonder, "What if?" More specifically, what if he was shoring up second base in Seattle, thus allowing Dylan Moore to hold it down at third? Or, what if he had been the one to take over for Robles in right field, thus sparing the Mariners from having to chance it with Leody Taveras?

One can initially wonder such things with whimsy, but anger crashes the party when you realize that it wasn't the Dodgers' formidable resources that robbed the Mariners of Kim. It might have been something else — like, say, their ridiculous propensity for winning — but it wasn't money.

If the Mariners truly had a $15 million budget, they hypothetically could have signed Polanco (1 year, $7.75 million) and Kim ($4.2 million per year) and come in under budget. They're instead pairing Polanco with Donovan Solano, who is badly underperforming even a $3.5 million salary.

The bright side is that the Mariners are in first place anyway, with their 23-19 record giving them a 1.0-game edge on the Houston Astros. But their lead is shrinking, not growing, and the only immediate path forward involves holding on until reinforcements arrive off the injured list.

Whether we're talking a pie in the sky like Alonso or a more realistic target like Kim, you just can't escape the feeling that the precariousness of the Mariners' season was made possible by their failure to make their offseason count.