Rose colored, homer preview of the Seattle Mariners

It is almost as discouraging this year as it was encouraging last year to look at the preseason predictions for the Mariners.  Last year, after signing Chone Figgins, trading for Cliff Lee, and focusing on defense (the new Moneyball), the Mariners were being celebrated for how good they were going to be in the 2010 season.  I was right there with them eating it up.  I thought if this team can make the playoffs then they'll only have to pitch Felix, Cliff Lee, and Bedard and will dominate any team that faces them.  I was pretty sure that this team had our best chance at winning a World Series.  No other Mariner team had ever been this dominant at the top of the rotation.  While Felix and Lee pitched exactly how they were expected it didn't matter.  The offense flopped so badly that it didn't matter that Felix had only given up 1 run because the offense didn't score at all.  Lee's ridiculous strike out to walk ratio of something like 19:1 was totally wasted too.  It's easy to see why every single journalist and analyst has the Mariners finishing in the same place as last year.  Some people have put the Mariners on par with the terrible Pittsburgh Pirates, who have bad pitching, bad defense, and only average hitting. 

While I don't think the Mariners will win the World Series this year and they will probably not even make the playoffs I am optimistic about the upcoming season.  Almost every one of the hitters hit well below their career averages last year.  Chone Figgins changed positions and it seemed to affect his previously stellar defense and solid hitting skills.  Ichiro! saw his batting average drop to .315.  Milton Bradley had his expected meltdowns and Franklin Gutierrez regressed.  Other guys (Jose Lopez, Rob Johnson, Griffey/Sweeney, Josh Wilson, and Casey Kotchman), who were black holes, are now gone from the team.  I think Figgins and Ichiro! will bounce back, although Ichiro! is 37 so its no guarantee.  Gutierrez is having issues with his stomach, but after that is resolved I can see him having a bounce back also.  Milton is a wild card, but he is a good hitter when he's healthy.  The new guys look to be better than the black holes that they are replacing.  Jack Cust has good power and good patience at the plate.  He will be a huge improvement at DH this year.  Justin Smoak is unproven, but was a highly ranked prospect before last year.  Even if he's terrible he should be better than Kotchman was last year.  If he's bad enough the Mariners could just trade for Branyan again.  Lopez and Josh Wilson are being replaced with a combination of Adam Kennedy, Jack Wilson, Brendan Ryan, and Dustin Ackley.  Ryan and Kennedy should be improvements over Wilson and Lopez while Ackley, even if he doesn't hit for power, should still have the ability to get on base at an above average level.  This team cannot be worse than last year's offense and should be much better.

The defense will still be good this year.  Every position except maybe left field and possibly first base has an above average defensive player.  The Mariners should be one of the top defensive teams again this year.


Eric Bedard's Arm?

The starting pitching could be very good this year.  I see this part of the team as having the most volatility because of Michael Pineda and Eric Bedard.  To a lesser extent Doug Fister and Jason Vargas will have to show that they can do what they did last year.  Rookie pitchers not named Stephen Strasburg are wild cards.  Pineda has the talent, but there's no way knowing that he can consistently get Major League hitters out until he does it.  Bedard has pitched really well this spring, but has not been able to stay healthy as a Mariner.  Because of the volatility the Mariners will probably see a lot of starts from the AAA pitchers like Luke French.  Even though the rotation is the Mariners biggest strength I believe that it could be the one part of the team that leads to the team not having a winning record this year.  If Bedard and Pineda can pitch well and stay healthy this team could be very good otherwise it may be a long season again. 

I feel like the relief pitchers of a team are very hard to predict.  Every year, it seems, that someone comes out of nowhere and is awesome or someone that was previously counted on for years hits a wall and suddenly is not productive anymore.  This is true of any portion of a team, but I feel that it is more extreme with the bullpen.  David Aardsma wasn't good enough for the Giants, White Sox, Cubs and Red Sox and then the Mariners pick him up and he suddenly is the team's very effective closer.  I'm very excited for Tom Wilhelmsen to pitch this year.  If you haven't heard his story it's definitely worth checking out.  Josh Lueke is an interesting arm that will be playing for the first time at the Major League level too.  I advise you not to check out his past history.  One thing that bullpen will have that it didn't have last year is a lefty, Aaron Laffey.  With Aardsma returning soon and League holding down the closer role I could see this bullpen being a strength of the team, however, with the rookies and volatility of relief pitcher performance from year to year it could be a weakness.  Hopefully the Mariners starting pitching will be good enough that the bullpen will not have to work a ton of innings this year. 

The talent on this team is better than the national analysts and journalists think.  I wonder if they are so hateful of the Mariners because of how badly the team made them look last year when many of them were predicting great things for the team.  I think this is an 80 win team which is about 10 wins better than almost anyone else is predicting.  Don't let me down Mariners or I might have some of the same bitterness toward them as the "experts" do this year.