2011 Seattle Mariners: Can the Streaky Mariners Make a Run in the AL West?

Not too many people gave the Seattle Mariners much of a chance in the American League West division this season, and with good reason.  

This is not a terribly good or deep-looking team, and breaking camp with such baseball dignitaries as Brendan Ryan, Adam Kennedy and Jack Wilson looking to get significant playing time did not really seem to be a recipe for success.

Plus, Justin Smoak looked to be at least a year away.

And there was an excellent chance that the Seattle Mariners were rushing rookie Michael Pineda to the majors way to soon.

And who knew what would happen with Erik Bedard.

Or Milton Bradley.

Or Jack Cust.

In short, this looked like a team that was going to be watching to see if Ichiro Suzuki could collect 200 hits again, if Felix Hernandez could win the Cy Young Award again and if Milton Bradley would go ballistic on teammates/umpires/fans/what-have-you again.

Nevertheless, here on May 24, 2011, the Mariners are only one game under .500 and are right in the thick of a surprisingly close AL West race, only 1.5 games back of the Texas Rangers.

But here is something interesting: As noted above, the Mariners are currently one game under .500, at 23-24.

And yet 14 games ago, the Mariners were also one game under .500, at 16-17.

What's interesting is what the M's did in between those two points. Beginning the day after the Mariners beat the Chicago White Sox to get to 16-17, they promptly reeled off six straight losses and lost seven out of eight games to drop down to 17-24.  

But no sooner than the M's dropped to that point, at which time they were in fourth place and 4.5 games out of first place in the division, did they suddenly rebound and rattle off six straight wins to get to their current record of 23-24.

The difference between those two streaks, by the way, is clear—it is the pitching.

In their six-game losing streak, the Mariners gave up 27 total runs. In their six-game winning streak, they have allowed just 10 runs, seven of which came in an extra-inning victory over Minnesota on Monday.

So, basically, the Mariners would appear to have the capacity to keep the AL West interesting this season.  

Whether they can play consistently, one way or another, remains to be seen.