Making playoffs not off the table, but a Mariners turnaround needs to start soon

SAN DIEGO — In a perhaps fitting metaphor, the Mariners were met with gloomy gray skies upon arriving in San Diego for a day off from baseball.

Maybe Mother Nature, channeling the feelings of a frustrated fan base, decided not to reward them with a sunny and 75-degree off day based on their recent performance, which included an embarrassing series in Texas when they were not just swept in the three-game series, but handled.

“Those kinds of glorious days are earned not given.”

A day without a game means a day without strikeouts with runners in scoring position, a day without costly mistakes in the field and careless mistakes on the bases, a day for the pitchers to not have to will their team to victory by being almost perfect and, really, a day without a defeat.

The Mariners are 59 games into a season in which they talked of winning the American League West and building off last year’s return to the postseason.

And, right now, the goal of winning the division seems done and a return trip to the postseason is growing more difficult with each loss.

Yes, there are still 103 games left in the season, but don’t let the quantity of games provide an optimistic but unrealistic hope.

The Mariners fell to 29-30 with the three losses in Texas. Going into Monday’s play, they were 9 1/2 games back in the American League West and in fourth place behind the leading Rangers, second-place Astros and Angels.

Really, the Rangers lead over the Mariners is probably 10 1/2 games.

Why?

With the new MLB schedule change that feature every team playing each other, the number of division games has been reduced from 19 to 13. The Mariners have lost five of six to Texas, with seven games — a four-game set at T-Mobile Park and a three-game series at Globe Life Field — in the final 10 days of the season. That means the Mariners would have to go 6-1 in those final games to own a tiebreaker.

That seems unlikely to happen.

Let’s look at the reality of the situation.

It’s difficult to believe the Rangers will continue to score runs at such a prodigious rate (6.48 per game), which would put place more burden on the starting pitching and less-than-dominant bullpen, lowering their winning rate.

But let’s say Texas plays an even .500 for its remaining 104 games at 52-52 to finish 90-72 on the season. That would mean the Mariners need to go 62-41 over their final 103 games to get to 91-71 to finish one game ahead. Has there been any indication from the Mariners’ first two months of this season that this team is capable of such a stretch. The highest this team has been over .500 is three games. It defines mediocrity despite stellar starting pitching.

A closer look at the record shows that the Mariners have seven wins over the awful Athletics and a three-game sweep over the Rockies, who are battling with the Cardinals, Nationals and Padres for the worst record in the National League. Against teams with a current winning record, Seattle is 10-20. The Mariners have won eight of 19 series this season. Only two of those series wins have come against teams with a current winning record — the Jose Altuve-less Astros and the Pirates.

This example doesn’t even consider the Astros and their potential to overtake the Rangers.

Also, it’s logical to believe that the division winner — either Texas or Houston — will have closer to 95-98 wins, which means the Mariners would have to be that much better.

So what about a return to playoffs?

Well, that’s not necessarily impossible. But it shouldn’t be a given.

Obviously, the easy reference is to last season’s stunning reversal of their season. A year ago, the Mariners were worse off at 27-32 after 59 games. It would only get worse. They sunk to 29-39 on June 19. They were 13 games back in the division and had the fourth-worst record in the American League.

After an off day in Oakland, where many fans and some media members thought a sacrificial firing of someone in the organization was coming but didn’t happen, the Mariners beat the A’s on June 21. That started a stunning run of 22 wins in 25 games, including 14 straight going into the All-Star break, to catapult themselves back into relevance.

Even with their pitching prowess thus far, that sort of run doesn’t seem quite as possible. The Mariners currently have two rookies in their starting rotation and an offense that is one of the worst in baseball.

But they don’t need rip off a 30- to 40-game stretch of .850 baseball to be postseason-worthy. It can be a slower build over the next 60 to 70 games, which this team is capable of doing, despite current evidence.

The difficulty in snagging one of the three wild card spots comes from the strength of the American League and the changes to the schedule.

When the Mariners made their miraculous turnaround last season, there were seven teams with a record above .500 at the time. Coming into Monday, there are nine teams with a record over .500, including all the teams in the American League East, while the Twins (31-29) are the only team in the AL Central with a winning record.

The Mariners sit six games back of the third wild card spot, held by the Yankees, with the Blue Jays, Angels and Red Sox also in front of them.

It doesn’t seem like winning 90 games will be enough to get one of those spots. The Astros, Orioles and Yankees — the current wild card holders — are all on pace to win more than 90 games.

Because of the schedule changes, the AL East won’t cannibalize itself quite as much with only 52 division games instead of the 76 of last season. A year ago, the Orioles, who missed out on a wild card spot, went 34-42 in division games and 37-29 against the rest of the AL.

This year, the Blue Jays are 6-15 against AL East opponents and the Yankees are 10-10 in division. The extra 24 games against quality division foes might have made getting to 90-plus wins a little more difficult.

The Mariners have 62 games remaining against teams that currently have a winning record. They will need to play better than what they’ve shown.

The Mariners cannot keep digging themselves deeper into a hole and expect to pull themselves out of it with another run like season’s. Even if they were to replicate such a feat, it might not be enough to get them back into the postseason. And a new drought would begin again.