I was seeing some news about the 2025 baseball hall of fame ballot, and the only sure-fire, slam dunk guarantee on it is Ichiro, and the real question is if he’s going to get a unanimous induction, or if this will be another year where some anonymous BBWAA tryhard deliberately doesn’t vote for him for the sanctity of the Hall of Fame, and then goes into hiding so they don’t have to take any criticism for their, most likely in the case of Ichiro, racism because there’s absolutely no metric or no logical rationale why he isn’t worthy of unanimous induction.
I don’t particularly care for the overly-nationalistic disparaging remarks he’s made about Korean baseball throughout his career, but there’s absolutely no way to deny the fact that he’s was a legendary player, but I digress and will save these bullets for the midseason for when he inevitably gets 99.76% of the vote and one voter who will successfully remain anonymous, goes into hiding afterward.
But Felix Hernandez is also on the ballot for the first time, and I think he’s up for debate on whether he’s Hall-worthy or not; the man has a Cy Young and pitched a perfect game. He doesn’t have the 3,000+ strikeouts, and he started his decline phase at around 32, but at the same time, his major league career started when he was 19, so he still enjoyed over a decade in the big leagues.
He also didn’t win a World Series, but the thing is, and the impetus of this entire post, neither has anyone else in Mariners history, no matter how talented or legendary of players have played for the team.
It really got me thinking, how have the Seattle Mariners sucked so much throughout history? Sure, they’ve only been around since 1977, way younger than teams like the Braves, Phillies, Reds, Yankees and Red Sox, but still, in the team’s entire history, they’ve only made the playoffs five times, and have collectively gone 15-22 in those appearances. They’ve never made it to the World Series, and there was one year in which they set the modern record for regular season wins, winning an astonishing 116 games, only to get bounced out of the playoffs unceremoniously by the Yankees in the ALCS.
There was a stretch in time where the Mariners had a prime Ken Griffey, Jr., a Cy Young winning Randy Johnson, and even a young and rapidly rising Alex Rodriguez. All were gone by 2001, but then there was a stretch when Ichiro came to the United States, and by 2005, Felix Hernandez arrived and was routinely one of the best pitchers in the game. In between these eras was Edgar Martinez, who is a Hall of Famer in his own right, and was beloved in Seattle that the street near their ballpark is named after him.
Like, with all the talent that has been in Seattle for long swaths of time, really begs the question, how have the Mariners actually sucked?
Yes, no single player can carry entire teams, but that logic is nowhere less than it is in baseball, where single players have managed to carry entire teams on their backs for small stretches of time, and usually talented players often inspire other talented players to want to come play with them, making the teams richer in talent when it happens.
It’s just incredible to think that even with such legendary talents such as Griffey and Ichiro, Johnson and Martinez, and even A-Rod and King Felix, the Mariners just could never put things together and see any success. Like, after the 2001 season where they won 116 games, the franchise went 20 years before they saw the playoffs again, and frankly that’s mostly on account of the fact that they added an extra round which let a non-division winner like the 2022 squad even have chance.
As good as Ichiro was, after his mind-blowing rookie season where he won RoY and MVP, 2001 was the only time he ever saw the playoffs as a Mariner. Felix Hernandez, as good as he was, never pitched a single post-season game in his entire career. Griffey and Randy Johnson played in two of the Mariners’ five playoff appearances, Alex Rodriguez played in three, and Edgar Martinez played in four of them, since he played until he was 62 years old.
Things don’t really look like they’re going to get any better any time soon, especially in today’s MLB ecosystem, but I’d have to wager that after all this time, the Seattle Mariners franchise’s perception has become reality – they’re simply a squad that will never win, no matter how talented of players emerge and play for them, they either fizzle their careers out in Seattle, or they go to other places and win championships, like Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson did, Kyle Seager very recently, and even old vets like Jamie Moyer and Freddy Garcia.
Because when some of the greatest players in history couldn’t do it while they were there, sometimes concurrently, then I’m not going to wager that anyone will. Most know that there’s no crapshoot like there is in baseball, but the Mariners are plagued with something completely else.
