Seattle Mariners 2021 Mariner all over Houston Astros

Reports stating the boys are “in business,” per sources (Shed Long)

What are we supposed to do with this team, y’all?

I don’t trust ‘em - none of us should, but damned if they’re not making it fun to watch Mariners baseball right now. A sentence I genuinely did not think I’d write all season, but one I’m begrudgingly typing out tonight. Goodness knows they haven’t earned it. Their pitching remains as sturdy as a gaping hole in the floor patched up with carefully crisscrossed duct tape, and their lineup has anywhere from 2.75-3.28 major league hitters on it at the start of each game.

But those Yusei Kikuchi-pitching-four-hitless-innings tingles? The giddy, embarrassing-after-the-fact full-body reaction to Evan White’s solo homer in the eighth? The uncontrollable Ty-France-walk-off giggles? You can’t really help it.

I’ll confess, I feel a little ashamed about this burgeoning enthusiasm. I should know better than to be bamboozled by two weeks of late inning heroics and gleeful gallivanting. It’s impossible to get everyone on the internet to agree on something, but I really thought we’d all looked at this team and gone “Oh. No, no. No thank you. Not them. Not this year.” And no, it’s definitely still not their year. But I’d prepared for some truly unpleasant baseball, thinking that I could somehow gird myself against the inevitable misery. Instead it’s been anything but.

It can be hard to give in and allow ourselves to enjoy things - particularly things we’d been bound and determined to dislike from the start. But I hear sports are supposed to be fun, right? So I’m trying, and this team is, against all odds, helping. And lately, my internal dialogue has played out a lot like this:

The Seattle Mariners aren’t very go-

No, sorry, I just mean they’re probably pretty b-

No offense, it’s just early and maybe you’re getting too -

OKAY FINE MAYBE THE MARINERS ARE A LITTLE BIT FUN AT THIS MICROSCOPIC MOMENT IN TIME AND WOULD YOU PLEASE STOP INTERRUPTING ME NOW

Rapid-fire gamer wrap-up: The box score is tough on Kikuchi, but he looked perhaps unsurprisingly excellent through the seventh and was the victim of some unfair calls, Mariners defense and dinky Classic Astros hits. Anthony Misiewicz continued to look scztellar and Drew Steckenrider remained extant. Kyle Seager and Mitch Haniger did their best to demonstrate competent offense to the rest of the lineup, Tom Murphy mostly ignored them, they took a bunch of walks and yeah, Ty France mashed the walk-off.