It is that magical time of year where it is hard to think up meaningful posts. The Mariners season is essentially over. They have assured themselves a better record than last year (woohoo) and would have to really fall flat on their face in the last week and a half to stumble past 90 losses. The Mariners, in all likelihood, will have a losing record that is not catastrophically memorable. The tale of their season has been written.
The Mariners just finished up playing the Orioles, a team in playoff contention. Baltimore had gone over a decade since being relevant. A winning record would have been an accomplishment for them, but they have come out of nowhere to legitimately challenge the beasts of the AL East. Could the Mariners pull a similar trick against Texas and Los Angeles of Anaheim (and dare I say Oakland?)
It is clear enough that the Mariners are not good enough to contend as is. How far away are they though? I decided to investigate this question by adding up
WAR totals. I looked at American League teams with a better than
50 percent chance of reaching the playoffs and compared their starters to the Mariners. All numbers in the table below are WAR totals. For the Mariners, these are simple sums. For the contenders I calculated WAR totals for each team and then averaged them. All players are sorted by season WAR totals. Below are the results:
