2016 Seattle Mariners Preview

Another Mariner's baseball season is upon us. With it comes another chance for the team to captivate us for the summer and provide a community wide talking about. It will also bring another chance to leave local fans disillusioned and uncaring. Which will it be? Only time will tell but we can take a look at the team's makeup and make a guess.

Unlike the last two seasons are no new big name free agent signings (i.e. Nelson Cruz and Robinson Cano) to talk about. Instead the major change this offseason was in management. Gone are Jack Zduriencik and Lloyd McLendon. In are Jerry Dipoto and Scott Servais. Dipoto is the fifth General Manager since the club last made the playoffs in 2001, and Servais is the tenth Field Manager. The new guys didn't waste any time making their mark on the Seattle roster.

Catcher, first base, center field, and left field will all have players new to the Mariners starting the position on opening day. And three of the four bench spots are filled by players not on the team last year. Additionally, two of the five starting pitchers are new to the team. Although none of the guys are flashy they all appear to provide upgrades over the guys they are replacing. There are a lot of new names and faces to learn at Safeco Field.

For the Mariners to compete they are going to need their offense to consist of more than Nelson Cruz and Kyle Seager for the first three months. Last year the slow start of Cano and the complete black hole that was Mike Zunino coupled together to kill the team's chances out of the gate.  The Mariners were essentially irrelevant by mid-May. In all honesty there is a risk that this year's team could suffer the same slow season killing start. The biggest risks are catcher, shortstop and center field. Sadly these position have been problems for the Mariners for years.

New catcher Chris Iannetta hit .188/.293/.335 last year, which was better than Mike Zunino's line of .174/.230/.300, but still terrible. The hope here is Iannetta, who is 32, will bounce back to his career averages of .231/.351/.405. These aren't great numbers but they are light years better than what the M's got last year from the catcher position.

At shortstop the Mariners will be starting the season with Ketel Marte, who is a 22 year old second year player. In 2015, Marte put together a solid 57 games run to end the season. His production was good enough to convince management that he has what it takes to stick in the big leagues. They backed up this confidence by trading Brad Miller to the Rays and sending Chris Taylor back to AAA. Personally I think the young man has a lot of potential, I hope he turns into an everyday big league talent, but I am holding back until I see it a little more. There have been too many promising young Mariners shortstops that have flamed out.

During the offseason Leonys Martin came over to the Mariners via a trade with the Rangers. Martin will open the year as the starting centerfielder. Leonys is the kind of player that passes the eye test, but has just never really gotten it all together. He is fast and a great defender, but he can't really hit. His offensive ineptitude cost him his job in Texas. I don’t expect him to get better has he now has to play half his games at Safeco Field. Here is to hoping I am wrong.

On the pitching side of the team things look fine in the rotation. The Mariner's starters should give them a chance to win most games. Felix, Kuma and Walker are all back. With a whole major league season under his belt, I think Walker could have a huge year. An All-star appearance may not be out of the realm of possibility. The two new guys in the rotation, Karns and Miley, should be fine and if they aren't James Paxton is waiting in Tacoma. The pitching concern comes with the bullpen.

Last season the bullpen was an unmitigated disaster. New GM Dipoto decide to try ad fix this by leaning house and essentially starting over. All the bad players from last year are gone, but so are some of the few good ones (i.e. Carson Smith). There is a lot of risk with the guys brought in to hold down the later innings. Most of them are either old or injury prone. If things bounce the M's way they should be fine. But how often do things  bounce the M's way?

Overall I think the 2016 Mariners team should be better than last year's mess. On paper they improved or stayed the same at all the positions. Catcher and center field are the biggest positions of concern, but it is nice to only have two places to worry about instead of five or six. The starting pitchers should be among the league's best yet again. However, the bullpen could be their Achilles Heel. I find myself more interested than I have been in years. This team has enough interesting players that every game shouldn't be a snoozefest. However, I still don’t think the Mariners will beat out the Sounders for my summer sports fix.