SEAside Thoughts: Roller Coaster Ride Continues for the Mariners

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After 22 games, the Seattle Mariners currently sit at 10-12 and 4.5 games out of 1st place in the AL West. Injuries to Robbie Ray, Andres Munoz, and Dylan Moore have hurt this team's depth, and a brutal start by some of the offseason acquisitions has many concerned.

On the flip side, the core pieces on offense are playing good to great. Jarred Kelenic has been one of the best stories in all of baseball. Luis Castillo looks like the biggest challenger to Shohei Ohtani for Cy Young. The Mariners could easily have 14-15 wins if a few things get cleaned up.

It's clearly been an uneven start, made evident by going 3-4 at home this week, being swept by the Brewers. There's still a lot of time left, but they need to lock it in soon.

Jarred Kelenic continues to destroy baseballs

As we stated earlier, Kelenic has continued his tremendous run. During the six games at home, Kelenic hit .238 with 2 home runs and 5 RBIs. Considering Kelenic faced the likes of Corbin Burnes and Jack Flaherty, that near .240 average is pretty dang good.

He continues to be the best position player on the team to start the season, and is a legitimate all-star threat. As this season progresses, it'll be fun to see who gets more home runs, Kelenic or Julio.

Teoscar Hernandez is heating up

Kelenic wasn't the only hitter to heat up this week, as prized trade acquisition Teoscar Hernandez had a fantastic week.

For the week, Teo hit .300 with two powerful home runs against St. Louis. While the Mariners may only be 10-12, the fact that Teo and Kelenic are producing is huge for the 140 games remaining. As this team gets healthy, and sync's up offensively, we could see an offense that is a championship level offense from Julio at leadoff to Kelenic at the six hole.

St. Louis Cardinals v Seattle Mariners / Steph Chambers/GettyImages

Another week, another batch of blown leads

What has been the most frustrating part of this 10-12 start is the fact that the Mariners have given away so many wins. The M's have 12 losses, and they have blown a lead in 9 of those games…9! On top of not being able to hold onto leads, Seattle is 3-5 in one-run games and a staggering 0-4 in extra innings. These are far worse percentages than what we've seen in the previous two seasons.

It's important to remember that the Mariners were 29-39 at one point last season, there's still a long road to travel, but the same tightrope the players and Scott Servais have managed to back-to-back 90-win seasons is failing them right now.

Part of this is the rotation being not as strong beyond Luis Castillo, the bullpen missing Munoz (although still posting a 3.15 ERA), and the 7-9 hitters being as bad as any trio in baseball.

It's frustrating, but these are things that can be fixed.

Goodbye Flexen?

Not trying to be mean, but one of the first things they can do is move on from Chris Flexen. With Robbie Ray's injury, Flexen was forced into a starting role much earlier than expected, and the results are like a horror movie.

Flexen is sitting on a 0-4 record, a 8.86 ERA, and an awful 1.97 WHIP.

As great as Flexen was in 2021, this team is in a much different place than in 2021. There's too much talent in the system to not send Flexen down to at least get some stuff figured out. The Mariners have played well enough to win in 3 of his starts, but he just wasn't able to keep the game in a competitive state.

What’s on deck?

We talked the past few weeks about how important the homestand was going to be, as a difficult road trip was on the horizon. The Mariners went 6-4 but could have easily been 8-2. Now they will head to Philadelphia and Toronto to take on some of the best offenses in baseball.

With a series against the Las Vegas A's after it'd be nice to go at least 3-3 against some powerful opponents.

Go M's

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Jarred Kelenic continues to destroy baseballs

Teoscar Hernandez is heating up

Another week, another batch of blown leads

Goodbye Flexen?

What’s on deck?

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