Your Local Baseball Besties

I, an enlightened being, have been tasked with convincing you, an ignoramus, to care about Mariners baseball at the midseason. I’ve held off on writing this article as long as possible to ensure that my pontificating carries at least mild prophetic power by the time it hits the presses. But, knock on wood, the Mariners have channeled their chaos ball proclivities to win many games (!!), portending an exciting second half of the season. 

Hear ye, some reasons to back our boys in blue (I don’t mean the cops—I mean the sports guys with the way smaller payroll):

Sweet Victory (?)

At press time, the Mariners hold a promising lead in the AL West: a whopping eight games ahead of the second-place Astros. Fancypants statisticians give the team an 86.3% chance of making it to the postseason. 

You read that right: The Seattle Mariners are doing a good job!

That is, um, not really the norm. The Ms have only made it to the postseason on one occasion since 2001 and are the sole team to have never made it to the World Series. The franchise also suffered a sizable revenue hit due to Comcast-induced whatthefuckery at the end of last season, encouraging ownership to approach 2024 with the kind of economic caution that leads to self-defeat. Management executed a number of salary dumps, dropping beloved players like Eugenio “Good Vibes Only” Suárez and slightly less beloved players like Jarred “Water Cooler” Kelenic. They also picked up some inconsistent players during the offseason, teeing up the team for yet another year of subpar acquisitions and performance.

But call it a Tax Day miracle. After a tepid start—going 6–10 before April 15—the Ms found their groove and have since recovered to record 11 wins over .500. The team’s bons temps remain tenuous, however. The Mariners still hold a league-leading strikeout rate, depend too heavily on their (splendid but slightly injured) closer Andrés Muñoz, and lack offensive consistency as well as bullpen depth. If these shortcomings remain, we could witness the team’s eventual disintegration into all-too-familiar mediocrity, as they proved during their horrendous road trip to Ohio and Florida in late June.

Money, Meet Mouth

Yet fear not, nescient child. Local oligarch and Mariners owner John Stanton might actually come to the rescue and adequately finance the Mariners, helping them go far into the postseason. In a 180 from the austerity mindset he seems to typically espouse and endorse, Stanton told Seattle Times reporters Adam Jude and Ryan Divish in early June that he’d help Mariners leadership secure the resources needed to develop a successful team. Couple that with recent scuttlebutt from The Athletic—money isn’t expected to “be an issue” for the Mariners when conducting midseason trades—and it starts to seem like Seattle could be home to batters with star power and offensive talent by the trade deadline. That includes names like Bryan De La Cruz, Eloy Jiménez, Tommy Pham, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. If you don’t know them: They’d be nice to have at T-Mobile Park on our side.

If all else fails, I think ownership should apply its austerity approach to non-player payroll. Following the team’s consistent struggles to turn swings into hits, the Mariners fired bench coach Brant Brown in late May. The Ms’ bats started to heat up almost immediately; they swept the Angels the next day and pulled off some clutch hits, helping them lead MLB in one-run games. Correlation, causation, tomato, tomahto—my oracular powers tell me that past is prologue. In other words, laying off the entire Seattle Mariners coaching staff will resolve all the batting, pitching, and fielding issues the Mariners face, while also freeing up more money for player payroll. Good riddance to the coaches! I love Moneyball!

Mariners Manna

Back to the proselytizing: Feel free to be a fair-weather fan and come cheer on the Mariners, because they have a lovely winning record and will soon feature more famous people on the field. “It’s a free country,” et cetera, et cetera. But even if the Mariners play total horseshit baseball for the 60-odd games left this season, it’s still worth going to a game at T-Mobile Park, and going often.

The energy is so positive and infectious that it’s hyped the Ms toward a 27–12 record at home (let’s gloss over their away-game record, lol). It’s hard not to see why: The Park has something for everyone. You can witness the sassy salmon run, double-fist $4.50 value beers in moderation, catch hot dogs from the heavens above as they parachute into your grubby grateful phalanges, and partake in the cheugiest calisthenics class of your life with a Macklemore-heavy seventh-inning stretch and rally song. It’s everything you need and deserve.

And look at how much fun our tight-pantsed callipygian Mariners are having on the field, even when they can’t end the ninth inning with a little celebratory jig. They’re all buddies and having a great time! And so many of their names are eerily similar; we love a rhyme or homophone or whatever! You’ve got the two Mitches and their monstrosity of a portmanteau sandwich, the Double MitchWich; close pals Cal Raleigh and Luke Raley and their late-game rallies; father-son-duo-but-not-really Ty France and (now AAA-optioned) Tyler Locklear sometimes showing off on first base (Ty’s on first!); and Josh Rojas and Julio Rodríguez sharing initials, defensive dexterity, and extra-base-hit prowess. 

At its core, Mariners spectatorship is an immersive lesson in appreciating that, win or lose, the real victory is the friends we made along the way. I’m only half-kidding. Lean into that can-do attitude and boom! You’ve just found Seattle’s cheapest antidepressant.