FanPost Friday: Turning a page into CHAOS

When the Mariners swept the Rangers, who were fresh off an absolute dumpstering by the San Diego Padres, the reaction among fans was more like “Well, the Rangers are in worse shape than we thought,” instead of “WOOO WINNING STREAK!!!” Then the Mariners strolled into San Diego and won game one in convincing fashion against of the better teams in baseball, snapping San Diego’s 8-game winning streak. This certainly turned a few heads, and suddenly my Twitter timeline was full of optimism about the (/checks notes) ....Seattle Mariners?

Then Wednesday, August 26 happened and the Mariners and Padres decided to join many other teams across the NBA, WNBA, and MLB in striking out of solidarity for Jacob Blake and the protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin. It was absolutely the right move and I was in support of them striking for more games if only to bring further national attention to the severe systemic racism issues at hand in America. But, alas, the Mariners and Padres returned to play on Thursday with two 7-inning games against the Padres because that’s a scenario that happens in 2020.

And to their credit, the Mariners scored 15 runs in those two games and barring a catastrophic bullpen disaster at the end of game one, would have swept one of the hottest teams in baseball. As is, a sweep against a bad team and a series win (with 23 runs scored!) against a really good team in the Padres is certainly eyebrow-raising. And who do the Mariners play next?

Look, it’s chaos out there, I know. I’m not even ready to think about this, but here we go. Because I never bothered to entertain the thought of the 2020 Mariners making the playoffs, I had to look this up:

Eight teams is A LOT compared to what we’re used to for MLB playoffs. The Mariners are currently here at number 11 in terms of W-L record:

This could absolutely fall apart at any moment, but Detroit and Baltimore are really bad on paper. Before the season started, most LL staffers were resigned to thinking “oh well the Mariners cannot be worse than the Orioles or the Tigers, so there’s no way we’re getting close to Kumar Rocker.” Toronto is also not great. And the Astros have been extremely rocky at times, so they could also implode at any moment from the sheer force of having their heads up their own asses so intensely. WHO KNOWS?!

But really, it’s the AL West we need to focus on and against all odds, the Angels are completely shitting the bed and the Rangers have proven to have no pop in their lineup. If the Astros stumble some more, that extra second place playoff spot could somehow end up right in the Mariners’ lap, smoldering chemical fire of a bullpen none withstanding. I mean, the Mariners just traded Taijuan Walker for a PTBNL, so Jerry Dipoto’s plan could be taking a very unexpected (but fun!) detour in the next month.

I can’t believe I’m talking myself into this and I fully reserve the right to pretend this post doesn’t exist if the Mariners trip over their own feet against the Angels this weekend (gee that’s never happened before), but honestly, Team Chaos is having a career year in 2020 so we’ll just have to wait and see.

TO THE POLLS!

Photo by Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images