The Seattle Mariners are one of the hottest teams in baseball, and they’re not just making a strong push to make the playoffs but could soon find themselves in position to receive a bye past the Wild Card round.
That’s apparently not enough to significantly move the needle with the national media.
The stats behind Seattle Mariners’ post-trade deadline surge
In rankings released this week, both MLB.com and ESPN.com had tepid reactions to the Mariners despite the team having won nine of 10 games since the MLB trade deadline, including seven straight.
MLB posted its weekly Power Rankings article on Sunday, so the voting by the outlet’s contributors presumably closed before the Mariners capped off a second straight sweep with their 6-3 win over the Tampa Bay Rays. But is that an excuse for ranking Seattle at No. 9, a jump of just one spot from the previous week?
Despite where the M’s sit in the rankings, writer Will Leitsch was pretty complimentary about their recent run.
“If you’re a Mariners fan, you basically just had the best weekend in two-plus decades: You saw the Mariners smoke the Rays three times, you got see Ichiro Suzuki get his number retired and you got to see Julio Rodríguez keep mashing,” Leitsch wrote.
As for ESPN, longtime MLB insider and regular Seattle Sports guest David Schoenfield wrote an article published Monday that broke up the league’s playoff-contending teams into tiers.
The first two tiers were labeled “The locks” and “Should get in.” The Mariners didn’t make the cut until Tier III: “Have work to do.”
I mean, sure, but you really couldn’t sneak the Mariners into Tier II? At this point, I think we could all agree the M’s should make the postseason based on where they sit, which is 1 1/2 games ahead of Boston for the first of three AL wild cards and just a game back of Houston for first place in the AL West.
This is really more of an argument over semantics, though. The other teams in Tier III are the Red Sox, Astros and New York Yankees, which are who the M’s have been jockeying with in the standings.
Schoenfield provided some constructive criticism for Seattle, by the way.
Answering “How they can make the playoffs,” he wrote, “Hit better with runners in scoring position,” while at the same time pointing out that the M’s now have a much stronger offense thanks to their big trade deadline plus contributions from a pair of younger players.
“The trade deadline additions of Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suárez, plus the gradual improvement of rookie Cole Young and the surprising production from Dominic Canzone, have made this one of the deeper lineups in the league,” Schoenfield wrote. “The Mariners rank 10th in OPS and second in road OPS – but they’re just 24th in OPS with runners in scoring position.”
After having Monday off, the Mariners return to action by starting a road trip at 3:35 p.m. Tuesday against the Baltimore Orioles. Seattle Sports radio coverage will begin at 2:30 with the pregame show.
More on the Seattle Mariners
• Salk: Believe your eyes – this Mariners’ lineup is legit
• Mariners’ Josh Naylor was snubbed for AL Player of the Week
• With ‘special’ home crowds, Mariners are doing ‘special things’
• Mariners hilariously roast HOF voter who didn’t vote for Ichiro
• Seattle Mariners’ Bryan Woo continues to wow with record streak
