A sleepless night

With the M's pulling up stakes from spring training to open their season in Tokyo, it seemed like a good time to summarize my thoughts about the future of this team in 2019.  I made the mistake of pondering that question just before I turned out the lights to go to bed.  I fretted over my answer until early dawn.

I am embarassed to confess I am one of those fans whose emotional well-being rises and falls with the petformance of my home teams, most especially the Mariners.  My daughter Errin will never forget the psychic meltdown I had in the parking lot of the Oakland Coliseum following a late-inning loss marked by, if dark memories serve, two errors at third base by Mike Blowers.  I just don't follow this team and now write about it, I live this.

It pains me then to pass on the thoughts I struggled with in the dark hours of the early morning.  This is not a very good team and investing too much hope in it is not only unrealistic but heart-breaking.  What makes this conclusion so hard to take is this, like many past M's roster, is full of likable, generally able players.  They are easy to root for.  But it the end, like so many other Mariner teams, it just doesn't add up.

And watching a very talented Marco Gonzalez struggle in his last two starts only underscored my gloom.  Marco, who will be an ace and, hopefully the backbone of a championsip team in years to come (just not 2019) is not quite ready.  Nor is the rest of the team.  They are either older veterans who have pretty much topped out and even then weren't championship quality (Gordon, Bruce, Encarnacion, Narvaez, Beckham, Leake, LeBlanc, Seager, Hernandez) and, in the case of the latter two, may be on their way down, or they are richly talented young, untested, players who look like a year or two away from stardom (Smith, Healy, Marco, Vogelbach, Santana, Kikuchi, Gonzalez, even Haniger).

Are there some wins in that group? You bet. I think the can get 85, maybe more.  Can they challenge for the play-offs?  Not yet.  This team is exactly what Dipoto promised... a step back in preparation for a competitive run in 2020 (maybe) or 2021 (possibly) if my list of future stars led by Haniger and Gonzalez mature and guys like Bishop, Moore, Sheffield, Swanson, Dunn, White, Lewis, Crawford and Long become MLB ready.

Notably missing from these two lists... relievers.  I have no idea where the bullpen stands.  I think Strickland has some upside.  The others?  I can't tell the difference between Bradford, Brennan, Rumbelow, Gearrin and all the rest.

The last few spring games provided a realistic picture of what the season will be like.  Hitting: homers, strike-outs and double plays; fewer men on base than you would like and too many left standing there at the end of an inning.  Pitching: lots of strike-outs, either really sharp through six or struggling to get out of three.

In fact, I'd argue that by the end of three innings, you'll be able to predict the game's outcome with a high degree of accuracy.  They will either lead, probably 3 to zip, and go on to win, or be down 4 to 2, and lose.  Throw in a couple of late-inning bullpen collapses and I've pretty much summarized you evening tv watching for this summer.

This is not all bad news.  Probably not what I want to think with the season's opening a week away.  You can love these guys all you want, cause you gotta do that, but don’t give your heart away.