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Originally Published: April 22, 2005

Mariners have reason to think tide has turned

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By Jim Caple
ESPN.com
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At this point last season, the Mariners hadn't exactly started reserving tee times at their favorite offseason golf courses but they might as well have. They lost their first five games and seven of their first eight. By late April they were so deep in the American League West cellar that they were able to write off the mortgage interest on their tax returns.

"When it kept snowballing and snowballing on us last year,'' second baseman Bret Boone said, "if we got down by four or five runs, we knew that we were going to lose.''

Jeff Gross/Getty ImagesJamie Moyer is showing plenty of life at age 42.

That's being charitable. When you lose 99 games, spend every day but one in last place and score fewer runs than anyone else in the league, you usually can sense you're going to lose whenever the national anthem ends.

This year, however, the Mariners are off to a much better start. Not only did they win on Opening Day, they found themselves in first place this week for a night.

"There's just a different feeling this year,'' Boone said. "You feel like every night you have a chance to win. It's not going to happen that way, you're not going to win every night, but just to have that feeling, is a big, big difference.''

There's more than just a feeling, though. The addition of free agents Adrian Beltre (the first marquee free agent in Mariners history) and first baseman Richie Sexson provides needed power in a lineup that was so quiet you could hear an infield fly drop. Opponents out-homered the Mariners 212-136 last season when rallies usually consisted of Ichiro singling, moving to second base on a groundout, advancing to third base on a flyout and then running into the dugout for his glove after a strikeout.

Sexson showed how much he adds by homering in his first two at-bats for Seattle while Beltre drove in a dozen runs in Seattle's first 15 games.

"They're huge,'' Boone said. "They give us home-run power through the lineup. Pitchers can't just key on one or two guys. Now everybody just has to do their job and play their own game. It takes the weight off the shoulders of everybody. The thing is, we're still not hitting on all cylinders but we're winning. We're going to be all right once everybody comes around.''

Thanks in part to the improved offense and much improved defenses (it's tough to pitch when you think you can't give up a single run and still win) the Mariners' pitching is improved as well. Last year Jamie Moyer won just one game after mid-June and allowed a league-high 44 home runs but he is off to a 3-0 start with a 3.00 ERA. The bullpen is also much better. The key is whether the staff can stay healthy – Joel Pineiro and closer Eddie Guardado are coming off injuries while promising starter Bobby Madritsch didn't make it out of his first start before going on the disabled list with a tear in his shoulder.

Seattle went from 93 wins to 99 losses in one year. It's doubtful the Mariners can reverse that this season. But they may not need to in order to stay competitive – with Oakland changing over its rotation and the Angels' starting rotation anything but imposing, the AL West appears wide open (1½ games separated first place from last place as of April 21).

Sure, it's very early, and as Sandy Alderson once said, gauging a team on a handful of games is like trying to decide whether the ocean's tide is coming in or out by looking at a couple waves.

So while Seattle fans can't tell yet where the tide is going this year, at least that's far better than last year, when they knew for a fact by the end of April that they had been left high and dry for the summer.

Jim Caple is a senior writer at ESPN.com. His first book, "The Devil Wears Pinstripes," is being published by Plume and went on sale March 2. It can be ordered through his Web site, Jimcaple.com.