{"id":69696,"date":"2022-09-08T10:07:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-08T10:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/why-no-team-will-want-to-face-the-mariners-in-the-playoffs\/"},"modified":"2022-09-08T10:07:00","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T10:07:00","slug":"why-no-team-will-want-to-face-the-mariners-in-the-playoffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/why-no-team-will-want-to-face-the-mariners-in-the-playoffs\/","title":{"rendered":"Why no team will want to face the Mariners in the playoffs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Barring a massive and sustained collapse that might cause a mass mutiny (or universal depression or both) from its fan base, the long local nightmare will soon be over. The Mariners are \u2014 stop reading now if you believe in jinxes \u2014 really, truly, probably<\/em> headed for the playoffs after a 20-year absence.<\/p>\n

Here’s the best part: They are set up perfectly to do some major damage when they get there.<\/p>\n

Disregard the aberration of Wednesday’s 9-6 sloppy loss to the White Sox, in which the Mariners belied the pregame declaration of manager Scott Servais: \u201cI’ve often said to you, we win a lot of games. We also don’t lose a lot of games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, they lost this one by giving up six unearned runs via three errors. But it’s an outlier; the Mariners have been among the best defensive teams in baseball all year long and fundamentally strong. Servais was right when he said this after the game: \u201cI’m not going to harp on it. The sky’s not falling. We had a bad day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mostly the Mariners have stacked good day after good day since mid-June. Every year, a team is anointed as the one no one wants to face in the postseason. The Mariners deserve that label in 2022. Oh, you could certainly say the same thing about the Dodgers, Astros and Braves, but they’re hardly sneaking up on anyone; those three teams represent three of the last five World Series winners (and four of the last five World Series losers).<\/p>\n

The Mariners would be new blood. They are a team that has been absent from the national stage so long that it would be easy for the casual fan (and even some avid ones) to sleep on them.<\/p>\n

That would be unwise. The Mariners would be entering the postseason as a wild card, but they possess many of the elements that lead to long runs. let me quickly add that they could also be ousted in the first round; the postseason is a crapshoot, as Billy Beane stated more eloquently (and profanely) after one of multiple early ousters of his A’s. The Mariners are far from an offensive powerhouse, and they still have a penchant for squandering too many scoring opportunities. That’s why they are double-digit games behind the Astros in their division.<\/p>\n

But here’s why I like their chances of making noise:<\/p>\n