Hope springs eternal for long-suffering M’s fans — could this be the year that it blooms?
The Pacific Northwest is finally emerging from its dreary winter months with a stretch of warmer days ahead, and baseball season is on the horizon.
The Mariners have returned from their annual sunny stay in Arizona, set to open their 2021 season Thursday night in Seattle, in what is hoped to finally be the end of another dreary period: a two-decade absence from the playoffs.
By the time this Seattle club reaches the home stretch of the regular season in September, it will have been a complete 20 years since its last trip to the postseason — when the club tied the major league record for most wins in a season (116), sent eight players, including American League MVP and Rookie of the Year Ichiro Suzuki, to the All-Star Game it hosted at what was then known as Safeco Field, and captivated a fan base that didn’t know a loss to the Yankees in New York on Oct. 22 of that year would be Seattle’s last playoff game for the foreseeable future.
Flash forward to this spring, and there is reason for optimism as the Mariners begin what is expected to be a full 162-game set following last year’s COVID-19 pandemic-shortened 60-game season.
Several of their up-and-comers have already arrived in Seattle — and three of them in center fielder Kyle Lewis (AL Rookie of the Year), first baseman Evan White (Gold Glove) and shortstop J.P. Crawford (Gold Glove) brought the club prestigious accolades in 2020 — and more are expected to debut and contribute to this young base as the summer progresses.
Mariners manager Scott Servais said back in December it felt different heading into this spring training, which the Mariners wrapped up earlier this week with an 11-11-6 record.
“Certainly we made all the trades after the ‘18 season, going into ‘19 we were in transition,” Servais said. “Last year was all about giving young players opportunity. Now I feel like we’re starting to see a core come together. … The young players that are coming up through our system, if they continue to get better, I like our chances for being very competitive this upcoming season. I really do.”
There is also reason for skepticism — it’s been a long wait for a fan base that has endured the longest-running active postseason drought in major American professional sports.
But, the Mariners believe, following the past three years of blockbuster trades, restocking what is now considered to be one of the best farm systems in baseball, and developing this young talent, they are, at long last, on the cusp of contention — and sustained success in the years to come.
“This is a year for us that we’ve been anticipating for some time as our young players have now started to arrive on our major league roster,” general manager Jerry Dipoto said back in January. “They have had some opportunity — guys like Kyle Lewis, Evan White, Justus Sheffield, J.P. Crawford and so many others — over these last two years, but particularly year-and-a-half, have had an opportunity to cut their teeth at the major league level.
“We feel like this is another opportunity for a big step forward in achieving our goals and building a young core that has a chance to compete consistently for championships at the big league level.”
Does that guarantee the Mariners will swipe a playoff spot this fall coming out of an AL West division that includes perennial contenders like the A’s and Astros, and an Angels club that has sometimes underwhelmed, but has arguably the game’s best player in Mike Trout?
Of course not, but this young club was in the postseason conversation until the final week of the regular season last fall, and returns each member of their core group with a season more of experience, which provides some hope that contention is near.
“We feel like we’ve never been closer than we are today to that reality, and (we’re) excited for the start of 2021,” Dipoto said.
It’s a refreshing statement to a fan base that has endured the string of disappointing seasons in Seattle spanning the past two decades.
For years, they have had to cling to nostalgia, reminiscing about the Mariners teams that enlivened the Pacific Northwest — like the team that reached the playoffs for the first time in 1995, awakening a fan base that had little to cheer for during the club’s first 18 years in Seattle.
Olympia resident John Kiley, who grew up in the South Sound, attended Olympia High School — where he now coaches basketball — and the University of Washington, and was a longtime Mariners season ticket holder, remembers that magical season, and the three playoff appearances that followed in 1997, 2000 and 2001.
“It was incredible,” he said. “You went from not being able to give tickets away to having people call you asking for tickets. And the drive was nothing from Olympia. The energy was palpable. … Every night they found some bizarre way to win, and you just knew they would win.”
Kiley was in the packed Kingdome for each game of the 1995 postseason run. He remembers the moment Edgar Martinez hit the famous double down the left-field line in the 11th inning against the Yankees that scored Ken Griffey Jr. from first base and catapulted the Mariners into the American League Championship Series for the first time.
“It was so loud,” Kiley said.
How loud? The more than 57,000 packed inside the stadium were roaring. Kiley likened it to games at Lumen Field, when Seahawks fans disrupt the opposing quarterback.
“Think about that for the Yankees pitcher,” he said. “People forget how loud it was as these at-bats were happening. So, there comes the pitch and the ball is in the corner, and you’re thinking Griffey on third, and it’s so loud, and then he rounds third. And it’s like it’s in slow motion. You feel like Hoosiers all over again. You see him digging for home plate, and then he scores.”
Kiley said it was one of the best feelings he’s had as a Seattle sports fan.
“That moment where it was true unbelief, where they were so bad for so many years, and they got over the hump, and you truly believed beating the mythical Yankees, that they were going to do even more,” he said. “More great things ahead.”
Though the Mariners lost to Cleveland in the ALCS that year, the energy remained. Lou Piniella was the Manager of the Year and Randy Johnson the Cy Young Award winner.
It was two years later that Griffey was named the AL MVP, and the Mariners were at the top of the West again before losing to the Orioles in the ALDS.
Two more postseason appearances followed in that galvanizing seven-season stretch. The Mariners snagged a Wild Card berth in 2000, the year closer Kazuhiro Sasaki was named the AL Rookie of the Year, and advanced to the ALCS again, but lost to New York.
Ichiro’s debut, the second of Piniella’s Manager of the Year awards and the club’s historic run to 116-46 unfolded the following year, but again ended a step short of the World Series — the Mariners remain the only club in Major League Baseball that has never advanced to a World Series — against the Yankees.
That’s where Seattle’s run of success came to an abrupt end. The club posted winning seasons in 2002 and 2003, but has finished above .500 only seven times since then — most recently in 2018 — hasn’t been back to the playoffs, and has often dwelled near or in the division’s basement.
There were often hints of better days to come during this unexpected decades-long drought, but a return to those golden days of baseball in Seattle hasn’t yet materialized, leaving its fan base stuck in frustration.
“We’re going to get it this year, we’re going to get it this year — then that didn’t happen, that didn’t happen, that didn’t happen,” Tacoma native Ginny Alton said.
“It’s real frustrating. But, I think sometimes you stay with it because you like the sport and it’s local.”
Alton, 63, has always been a fan of baseball. She remembers nights in high school when she and friends would watch games at Cheney Stadium. She’s had the Mariners’ 20-game ticket pack, and often added onto it, for more than a decade.
She enjoys keeping score and being active in the game, but like so many others, has had to try to find positives in so many losing seasons the past 20 years.
There have been some moments to hold onto. On Aug. 15, 2012, longtime Seattle ace Felix Hernandez threw the first — and so far only — perfect game in franchise history on a sunny afternoon against the Rays. Alton was working the day of that game, but remembers seeing history unfold on TV.
“We all stopped what we were doing to watch Felix,” she said.
On July 24, 2016, Griffey became the first Mariner inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Martinez joined him three years later on July 21, 2019, which put a positive note on the Mariners’ most troubling season in recent memory — a fifth-place finish in the division with the fewest wins (68) since 2011.
That was the year this rebuild began. In 2018, the Mariners appeared on the brink of ending their long postseason drought behind a clubhouse full of experience only to be eliminated with eight games to play.
That season was tough to see end, Kiley said, to see the club so close to the playoffs again and not have it materialize.
But, like so many others, Kiley, who has had the club’s 20-game pack in recent years, returns each spring with a renewed hope.
“It’s that every day thing,” he said. “You don’t have to wait a week. You don’t have to wait a few days. So, it was always on the TV as our kids grew up, and it was a great way to be able as a family to just enjoy a team that we all wanted so desperately to see win.
“ … My boys grew up playing baseball, and so we have that in common, and there’s always that hope until August or September. You know it’s 162 games, so it can really captivate your attention with people around you that care about the same thing.
“To me it’s just that connectedness that happens during the baseball season that’s very unique.”
Kiley is hopeful that energy from the Kingdome in the 1990s will soon return to T-Mobile Park, believes the Mariners are on the right course, and said it is hard not to be excited about the club’s up-and-coming prospects.
Per MLB.com’s rankings, the Mariners have six of the top 100 prospects in baseball, including outfielders Jarred Kelenic (No. 4) and Julio Rodriguez (No. 5), starting pitchers Emerson Hancock (No. 31), Logan Gilbert (No. 33) and George Kirby (No. 92), and outfielder Taylor Trammell (No. 100), who will make his debut Thursday.
Trammell said Wednesday ahead of the club’s workout at T-Mobile Park there is a want among the club’s young group to succeed.
“We want to win,” he said. “And it’s easy to say that, but the way that these guys work the way that our mindsets are, it’s really to the point where I really do believe that we can.
“I know that sometimes in the past it hasn’t really happened, but the guys that are here, the guys that are within our clubhouse, the personalities that we have, it really just seems like it’s one mindset — and it’s winning.”
That energy truly seemed to emerge last season, and fans, like 28-year-old Puyallup native Zack Cloe, could sense it.
“They’re playing well and it looks like they’re having fun on the ball field, and I think that’s a huge difference,” Cloe said. “You can see it. You can feel it almost. … You just see the drive.”
Cloe, a former pitcher at Emerald Ridge and Bellevue College who was expected to be drafted out of high school before arm injuries ended his career, was only 9 years old the last time the Mariners played in the postseason.
He spent his childhood listening to Dave Niehaus call games on the radio. In recent years, he has made the trek to Seattle for about 16-25 games.
“I think honestly it’s just the love — the want to see this team succeed,” Cloe said of what brings him back each season.
Cloe said he believes the club has shown more promise since this rebuild began than it has in quite a while.
“I think right now, in a sense more than ever, we have something to build on,” he said.
A more successful future now seems within reach.
“I feel as a fan myself that we are most definitely (heading) in the right direction, and I know for a fact that they’re going to be competitive,” Cloe said. “Whether competitive is making the playoffs or competitive is over .500 and we’re gaining every year, I’m not looking for instant success.
“ … I’m looking for if we can just grow every year, I know it’s going to be bound to happen. It’s going to get here. And I think we’re on the right path.”
