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Poll: %#$@ the heck, Mariners?

In which we try determine how many bees are actively buzzing in the Mariners' bonnet.

Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports

This poll isn't inspired by the Mariners firing scouting director Carmen Fusco, seemingly as the fall man for acquiring Josh Lueke in the Cliff Lee trade.

It's not about the team forcing out Bob Engle, the man who scouted Felix Hernandez and a widely respected international scout, for reasons that appear to revolve mainly around upper management politics.

The point isn't a general manager now on his 4th manager in his 7 year tenure, nor about the less than rosy circumstances that those managers leave the team.

The tipping point wasn't the team parting ways with analyst Tony Blengino. Nor the scathing, almost unheard of way in which he burned the bridge connecting him to Jack Zduriencik.

It's not a team that looks to spend greater than 50% of its payroll on two (albeit awesome) players. A payroll that looks to be veering towards ranking in the bottom 1/3 of the game, despite playing in a money making palace in an affluent city and now owning their own regional sports network.

It's not about a team that opens the offseason by outbidding itself for the services of Willie Bloomquist, a player who's miscast as utility player as he lacks almost all utility.

It's not about the team overspending for Bloomquist, ignoring glaring depth issues in the rotation all offseason and then losing Randy Wolf, a deeply flawed but very necessary starting pitcher, over pinching pennies.

It's not a team going into its 13th consecutive season with a roster openly, hilariously unfinished. A team built on the hope for the magical all-25 90th percentile projection that the franchise has seemingly tried to recreate ever since 2001.

It's not about Felix never pitching in the playoffs.

It's none of these things. It's all of these things. It's the team not just losing but alienating people at every turn. It's about how I feel when I put on my Mariners' hat.

I lost the ability to be angry a long, long time ago. Where passion and emotion used to thrive there's just an empty cavern of confusion.

As LL editor and resident speed talker Colin O'Keefe is fond of saying "Why look bad if you don't have to?" For the Mariners, apparently they just have to.