A Fork Please

Well, at the halfway mark int the season, the Mariners are 35 wins and 47 loses after losing 2 of 3 games to the Chicago Cubs over the weekend. They had and have flashes of good games, even an occasional comeback win, but they usually find a way to lose.

This was evident again in the series with the Cubs, winning one in extra innings before losing two, one giving up a two-run homerun and the second with errors allowing runs.

They can't make the excuses some of the better players have been or are on the disabled, that's normal to have these. But the reality is that they're simply not playing even up to they own normal standards.

This is part because while veterans are good to have on a team,  but they need to be productive, and the ones they have aren't even playing at their career level.

And that in part is the problem with the team. It's full of older players playing ok but not good and lots of young players not playing consistently. On top of that there's isn't much in the triple-A team Tacoma Rainiers there to bring up who are better than who they already have.

What hurts the team as a whole is that their fielding, which was second in baseball last year, is barely in the top 10 this year, and the pitching, which was good last year, is worse too. This is due to 2 of the 5 in the pitching rotation being at the end of their career and showing it.

And we don't have to think about the hitting, it's consistently in the bottom 10 and usually the bottom 5 for baseball. Not the American league, mind you, but of all 30 teams. There isn't one player over .300 in the lineup and several near or below .200.

So what we're hearing is what we've heard for 4+ years now about lots of hope, promise, potential, etc. but nothing real let alone consequential. And nothing of a real improvement. Add to that they don't have any real potential trade-worthy players outside of the few they want to keep for the future.

For the fans, it's just more of the same stuff we've heard from the management of the organization, trying to do good on the cheap but not really interested in building a pennant winning season. And the future looks the same for the next few years.

So exactly why did we build a world class baseball-only stadium? To finish near or at the bottom of the division every year?

For this year, like the last few years at the halfway mark, you can stick a fork in them. They're done.