When it's all said and done, are the Mariners better as they head into 2024 season?

Hitting...That other thing baseball teams have to do

Hitting a baseball is one of the hardest things to do in spo… Nope. Stop. Go directly to jail. Do not collect RSN revenues.

The narrative all off-season has been will the Mariners do enough/spend enough/improve internally enough at hitting the baseball to break through the crowded AL West. To quote some obscure football guy named John Madden, “You can’t win a game if you don’t score any points”. The 2023 Mariners proved that statement in eight games last year that they failed to score a single run.

In this age of baseball though scoring one or two runs is about the same as scoring zero. When you add the total of last year’s games the number balloons from eight to 34. Of those 34 games where the M’s scored two or fewer runs only eight were wins and seven of those came as the result of a shutout by Mariner pitching.

Without the best pitching staff in the American League, that’s a 1-33 ball club when we score two or fewer runs. All of which should illuminate the point that going out and becoming an offensive juggernaut through off-season acquisitions was not the plan, not reasonably achievable, and most importantly not necessary. We just have to figure out a way to not stink up the joint 34 times a year.