Hello and welcome back to the Friday Feedbag! The Mariners are on the tail end of their second disastrous road trip in a row in between strong home stands during a time when just a handful of wins could easily move them ahead of the also struggling Houston Astros for the lead in the AL West. Anyone who has followed the Mariners even semi-regularly this season knows how frustratingly inconsistent the team
has been. Ryan Blake dove into their recent stretch and found some very troubling stats and trends. He found that given any 10-game stretch, the Mariners have the largest standard deviation of wins, which confirms they are indeed the most inconsistent team in MLB by wins and losses.
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And yet they persist! The Mariners still hold the third AL Wild Card spot and they are still only 3.5 games back from the Astros, who keep finding new and interesting ways to implode. With an AL field of teams seemingly having a mid-off to end the season, all the Mariners need to do is keep their head above water, win a few more than they lose, and they’re in. In other words, it’s not time to panic. I found the tone around Dan Wilson’s closed-door meeting in Tampa very strange. I don’t know any other way to say it, but these players need to pull their heads out of their asses and just do the things that have brought them success all season. Your catcher has 51 god damn home runs and your center fielder is finally in his bag and on a hot streak. Pitchers, stop tripping yourselves at the finish line. Just. Keep. Going.
The past doesn’t matter right now. This Mariners team is its own entity and on paper has better pitching and hitting than any Mariners team in recent memory. This is all easy for me to say, of course, as baseball is an extremely hard sport. But, it’s also a mental game and that’s the facet where this team, at least to outsiders, seems to be floundering. I know there have been off-field distractions like the spate of robberies of players’ homes and probably more interpersonal drama than anyone outside the team could comprehend, but this is the moment and y’all have the talent.
Anyways, let’s look back for a moment at last week’s Mariners Belief Index before we get to today’s prompt. Most folks probably hit these polls before the road trip went pear-shaped, but the MBI was quite high as of last week!
Only a 4.8% for the No vote! This is what I’m talking about, Mariners! We believe in y’all. The pessimism had gone dormant until this latest stretch.
Similarly extremely bullish on making the playoffs! How much more can I beat this dead horse?
PROMPT
What the hell is wrong with these Mariners lately and why can’t they win on the road?
Give me your silliest or most sincere answers in the comments or on the FEED.
Otherwise, have a great weekend and hopefully the Mariners can salvage
