In 1997, led by manager Lou Piniella, center fielder Ken Griffey Jr., shortstop Alex Rodriguez, and designated hitter Edgar Martinez and ace Randy Johnson, the Seattle Mariners won the American League West for only the second time in franchise history but the second time in three seasons. They would lose to the Baltimore Orioles in the ALDS, but the winning group could do something the 2010 Mariners could not: score runs. This 1997 team scored an incredible 925 runs, a total very few teams can accomplish. This Mariners team was popular: they had the most hyped prospect in the history of baseball in Rodriguez, a fan favorite in Martinez, a power bat in Jay Buhner, and the face of baseball in Griffey Jr. Playing in the enormous Kingdome in Seattle, the fan base started showing up and making the place a notorious bandbox, especially during Game 5 of the 1995 ALDS against the Yankees where the Mariners won and advanced to the ALCS off a historic walk-off double by Martinez. The Kingdome had plenty of issues, however, and in midseason of a mediocre 1999 season the Mariners moved into shiny new Safeco Field. Seattle won the wild card in 2000 with 91 wins, setting up an incredible 116 win season in Ichiro Suzuki's rookie season of 2001. The heavy favorite to win the pennant in the playoffs, they were eliminated by the Yankees in the ALCS.
That would be Seattle's last playoff appearance to this day, and although the Mariners won 93 games both of the next two seasons, they missed the playoffs and the feeling changed. Gone were Buhner, Griffey Jr., and Rodriguez, and the team character that stuffed the rowdy Kingdome had gone missing. Ichiro Suzuki was a perennial All-Star through all of this, but as time went on he became the only star remaining. After scoring 927 runs in 2001, the Mariners haven't scored even 800 runs since 2002. Adrian Beltre never lived up to expectations he set during a huge 48 homer season with the Dodgers in 2004, and a post-40-year-old Jamie Moyer served as ace until they had a better option in Felix Hernandez.
In 2007 the Mariners won 88 games, leading in the wild card race until a 10 game losing steak down the stretch doomed them. The team wasn't exciting enough to wake up the Seattle fans, however, ranking just 16th in attendance. A terrible season in 2008, with 101 losses, was followed by a surprising 85 win team in 2009. Signs of life came from this Mariner team; Ken Griffey Jr. returned to finish his career where it all started and hit 19 homers as a pleasant surprise. Felix Hernandez won 19 games and was an AL Cy Young Award finalist, all under new manager Don Wakamatsu. A new sabermetric obsession over fielding and range statistics enthralled the baseball stat world, and the Mariners were widely viewed as the best fielding team in the country. Stat gurus and baseball experts alike were starting to warm up on the Mariners to be the team to leapfrog the Angels in the AL West to win the division.
Picked by many as the surprise team in baseball, the Mariners didn't disappoint. They were surprising, for the absolute opposite reason. Mediocre for the first two months (18-31), an absolutely terrible June doomed their season. The Mariners went 6-22 in June, scoring on 75 runs or about 2.68 runs per game. Over the entire season they were shut out 15 times. Besides Ichiro's .315 batting average, they were led by Chone Figgins' .259. Russell Branyan led the team in homers with just 15, but he only played 57 games for the Mariners after being traded from the Indians. Milton Bradley had a minimal effect on the team, which was probably a good thing, but he essentially wasted his high salary and the at-bats he did get in 73 games. The team RBI leader was Franklin Gutierrez with a ridiculous 64. The Mariners finished last in Major League Baseball in batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, total bases, runs, hits, doubles, triples, homers, and runs batted in. This was a team that didn't have a chance to win unless Felix Hernandez was on top of his game and not giving up any runs, and the Mariners would be lucky to score two. Unfortunately for Seattle, the fans had nothing to be excited about except Seahawks training camp. The city forgot about the team last season, and the fans can't be blamed. Seattle forgot about the Mariners, and the Mariners did nothing to fix it.
Earlier today, Hernandez won the AL Cy Young Award. Holding a record of 13-12, average for sure, Hernandez had by far the least wins by any pitcher winning the award. How did he get so few wins? The offense. Hernandez had little to zero margin for error because if he wasn't going to shut down the opponent, the Mariners couldn't win. His 2.27 ERA would have suggested an 18-7 record or something similar. Looking forward, the Mariners need to address this problem. Safeco Field is a pitchers park and the franchise has committed to pitching and defense, but that doesn't work if all the players are defense-first and no one takes responsibility offensively. They also need offense for another reason: the fan base. Baseball traditionalists enjoy pitchers duels, but today's generation of baseball fans want to see some offense most of the time. With the bombers of the Kingdome in the late 90s like Griffey Jr., Martinez, Buhner, and Bret Boone the fan base got behind the team. This is a goal the Mariners need to focus on regaining the city that fell in love with them, or will remain in infamy.
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