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The Mariners' pathetically worthless offense is on pace to make franchise history

In a bad way of course, because do the Mariners ever do anything in a good way anymore?

Bob Stanton-USA TODAY Sports

The Mariners have had a rough June, there isn't a whole lot much else to go on about that. Seattle entered June with a 24-26 record and are currently plowing through it with a 5-10 record for the month.

There were a couple of bad pitching games through there -- a rare stinker by Felix Hernandez and Roenis Elias getting thrashed over the weekend. Other than that, the pitching has been mostly-ish dependable sort of. The obvious culprit for the collective failure (and slow emotional decline of Matt via his recaps) has been a downright putrid offense.

How putrid you probably don't wish to ever know? I'm talking pretty putrid. I'm talking the time my roommate threw a salmon carcass in our rarely taken to the curb yard waste bin in the middle of August for four weeks putrid and when I accidentally kicked it I was awoken by the creepy crawl of maggots putrid.

The Mariners have scored a total of 37 of runs so far in June. They've scored less than three runs 12 times this month. If you take away the nine run outburst against Cleveland and the eight run outburst against Houston, the Mariners have scored 20 runs in 13 games. The Mariners' offense this month rarely leaves options for winning a baseball game.

Even though we are only halfway through the month of June, and the Mariners still have 12 more games to play in June, it seems like almost a sure thing that our no-longer really loveable band of misfits is going to set a franchise record for least runs in a month.

Here are the top 10 worst scoring months in Mariners history.

year month # of games # of runs
2015 June 15 37
1981 June 10* 37*
1981 March/April 20 70
2011 July 26 72
2014 July 25 73
1983 May 26 73
1988 June 27 73
1990 March/April 20 74
1983 March/April 24 74
1986 March/April 21 74

The Mariners have set their sights on making history in all of the wrong ways this month. 1981 has an asterisk attached because of the MLB strike, which hacked off a solid chunk of the summer games. So, realistically, the mark of futility looks to be the beginning of the 1981 season. But then again, the Mariners only played 20 games in April and March, so, let's go with July of 2011, where the Mariners scored a grand, grand total of 72 runs in 26 games.

We could also look at it a different way. The worst month the Mariners have had run-wise, one could argue, is July of 2010. That month, the Mariners scored a total of 75 runs in 28 games, for a lovely mark of 2.68 runs per game. 2.68 runs per game, or 72 total runs, those are our two different marks of futility.

Right now, the Mariners are averaging 2.46 runs per game -- so that record might go. For the Mariners to best (or worst) that mark, they would need to be held to 72 runs on the month. So to avoid that, the Mariners need to score 36 runs in their remaining games, or average three runs per game. That actually seems like an achievable goal until we remember how bad the Mariners have hit in June. Right now, our best hitter in the month of June is Austin Jackson.

Nelson Cruz's MVP-like start to the season has regressed back down to Earth with absolute authority. Cruz has zero extra-base hits in the month of June. Robinson Cano is still suffering from the terrible dreams that his 2015 season is. Mike Zunino is still Zunino and Mark Trumbo still appears to be dealing with the PTSD of actually being traded to Seattle. On one hand, it seems like the 2015 Mariners will go down in franchise history as having one of the worst hitting months ever.

It isn't all doom and gloom, however. Again, Jackson is showing some nice signs of life for the first time in his Mariners' career (never too late!). Kyle Seager is doing what Seager does, which is to remain frighteningly dependable on a team that generally lacks that quality in all facets. Seth Smith's BABIP is on a lucky tear but let's ride that wave. Logan Morrison has also had some nice pop as of late. As much trouble as the Mariners have had scoring over three runs per game this season, you can't help but look at the lineup and know deep down, somewhere, that they usually have four or five runs up some sleeve.

So we shall see. Hopefully, the final 12 games of the month won't be as crappy as most of the first 15 games of this month have been. And if they still are, at least we will have something to show for it.