Step Back? Thanks Jerry!

 It’a gotten really, really, really bad in Mudvillle, folks.

It’s a times like this I wonder what we as Seattleites ever did to deserve the Seattle Mariners as our hometown baseball team.  It has to be payback for something.  The baseball gods could not possibly be this cruel by accident.

When Jerry Dipoto said this season would be a “step back year” for the bumbling boys in blue, he sold us a bill of goods.  This hasn’t been a step back year – it’s been a trip over your shoelaces onto a huge pile of dog crap with a garden rake smacking you in the forehead as you’re falling backward kind of year.  It’s one thing to be bad and to lose a lot of games.  It’s another thing to look like a hapless double A team in the process. The Keystone Cops weren’t this bad. If this were football, the 2019 Mariners would rival the winless Cleveland Browns of a couple of years ago for sheer, unadulterated, almost poetic ineptitude.

You know it’s bad when Rick Rizz – he of the singsong voice who never met a pig he couldn’t put lipstick on – waxes poetic about a rejuvenated Kyle Seager and his $19MM contract coming off the injured list to tear the cover off the ball with a blistering .219 average. Yes, the same Kyle Seager who went oh for seven in a recent game.  How is that even possible?

You know it’s bad when this clown-show of a club starts 13-2, gets everyone’s hopes up, then proceeds to lose 38 of its next 51 games to cause even the taciturn Scott Servais to blow his top by saying his team is “scuffling a little.” Where the hell is a little Lou Piniella when we need it?  Call it like it is, Servais -- this is an abomination, and you seem to abide it.

You know it’s bad when our shortstop throws a dart to home plate in a recent game to tag a runner coming down the third base line on a routine grounder, only to discover after the ball leaves his hand that our erstwhile catcher who can’t catch has departed for first base to back-up a throw that never was.

You know it’s bad when your outfielders can’t catch routine fly balls and some of our position players have enough innings to qualify for an ERA title.

You know it’s bad when the first stat you look at from last night’s game is how many errors the M’s committed because it’s one MLB record they actually have a shot at. 

You know it’s bad when you’re hoping your $22MM ace, the King (insert laughter here), comes back to the team and throws one good inning before being shelled by triple A batters because he refuses to take care of his body or actually work at his craft and the M’s only lose 7-2 instead of 14-1, 18-3, 11-0 or … well you get the picture.

You know it’s bad when the last time the Mariners went to the playoffs was when George Bush was president.

Let that one sink in for a minute.  The Seattle Mariners…our Seattle Mariners…have gone longer than any professional sports franchise – in ANY sport in North fricking America – without even sniffing the playoffs. Since 2001, for those at home counting. What did we do to deserve the rogue’s gallery of Jack Zduriencik, Jesus Montero, Robinson Cano, Dustin Ackley, Justin Smoak and the current gang of misfits who couldn’t shoot straight, let alone move a runner up in scoring position or lay a bunt down or close down an inning to save their lives?

Note to Jerry – this “step back” is an embarrassment to the city and to baseball lovers everywhere.  Thank you for this brilliant stratagem you’ve given us.

So I think to myself, what did we as fans do to deserve this?  What DID we do?  We built a new stadium, arguably one of the best in baseball.  We supported this team through thick and thin.  We told ourselves “our time will come.”  And now, we have a team that is not just A laughingstock, but THE laughingstock of baseball.  The only positive is that no one cares about the Mariners anymore.  I’m sure George Kirby, the pitcher from Elon University the M’s just drafted with their first pick is dancing a jig in North Carolina right now thinking he is going to this trash heap of an organization.  George, if you’re reading this, take your signing bonus, invest in real estate or a Taco Del Mar franchise, and kiss your career goodbye because you’re going to a club that doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing.

I bought season tickets this year, regrettably.  When I told the SUPER earnest and upbeat salesperson (no slight on him – it’s a tough job) that I wasn’t sure I wanted to lay out good money to watch a Triple A team play, he said, “I think they may surprise you!”

Well, he was right about one thing.  They have surprised me – they are worse than I could have ever, possibly have imagined.

We fans must have collectively done something really, really awful somewhere along the line to suffer through this kind of product on the field. And the sad thing is, Curly and Moe (aka Jerry and Scott) give us no reason to believe it will get better any time soon.

If there is such a thing as baseball purgatory, we’re in it, folks.  But at least Rick Rizz will tell us it’s just a little rough patch, so we’ve got that going for us.

Bring up every prospect who has a pulse and sit every veteran who isn’t producing. Eat Hernandez and Seager’s contracts. Find a GM who can get it right and a manager who has even just a tiny little bit of piss and vinegar in him.  It cannot possibly be any worse.

Oh wait.  This is the Mariners we’re talking about…it can always get worse.