Yea it appears that way. They've avoided the injuries this year, shades of 2022 with us, that's always welcomed to go the distance. .
Jose Altuve has the 2nd most HRs in the history of MLB postseason Jeremy Pena is a WS MVP Carlos Correa will be here Cam Smith will get better Yanier Diaz will bounce back Isaac Paredes just made back-to-back AS games Chrisitian Walker hopefully bounces back, but of this I'm less optimistic Our offense can play. We have 2 closers, as Josh Hader and Bryan Abreu are damn good. Our bullpen as a whole was great. Our rotation is the big question mark. Luis Garcia is such a huge blow when we already had to deal with Framber's free agency.
2nd slowest sprint speed in MLB with his 32nd steal of the season. Out of only 34 attempts. Incredible.
This looks like the same Mariners team that swept the Astros in the division deciding series in Houston a few weeks ago. They've gotten hot at the right time. Firing Scott Servais, promoting Dan Wilson, and then hiring the hitting coach from the Braves '21 WS team has done them wonders.
They have Pena, Paredes, Hunter and Abreu... those are the only guys with above average value (in terms of prime year/upsides, affordable, and actual tangible trade value). None of those guys making that much money either. Which makes the fact that they have a top 5-7 payroll all that more damning.... they're paying contender prices but not actually paying for the prime star players that compromise contenders. The rotation was already a huge question mark even before Garcia's third setback in 3 years. Most of the saved payroll from Framber will be to sign or trade for a starting pitcher that will likely not be as good as Framber was even last year (which was his worst season of the last 5 years). The 'unknowns' or 'optimistic bounce backs' are pretty much all they have right now... and yes, those things do happen in baseball so nobody should be selling their season tickets just yet.... but everything mentioned above this paragraph raises plenty of concerns for a team trying to go far (in a weaker league, mind you).
and the guy we wanted does it again, lol. I remember when our guys made teams pay for walking our guys....
