FanPost Friday: Breaks and deadlines
The Mariners have potential to coast in and out of the All-Star Break while padding their divisional lead and ideally adding key players to the roster
Hello and welcome back to FanPost Friday. Well, we all weathered the Canadian Invasion of 2024 with pretty mixed results on the field and now the Mariners have moved on to carry out a vengeful, spiteful carpet-bombing of the Southern California teams in some sort of misplaced expression of frustration perhaps. But, hey wins all count the same and the Mariners need as many as possible to ensure a healthy lead in the AL West over the Astros and Rangers.
Currently the Mariners are in the midst of executing a scorched-earth, nuclear Mickey Mop campaign against the utterly hapless Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. There might come a point where dumpstering that team becomes boring, but I’m not there yet. Full pettiness still engaged and I will attend their funeral to make sure they are actually dead.
Ideally, the Mariners will ride a 6-game winning streak into the All-Star Break, Logan Gilbert will get his fun trip to the All-Star Game and rub elbows with all the greats of the game while most likely not actually pitching (which is fine, let him rest!), and then the rest of the team gets some well-deserved downtime before opening up the latter half of the season against the Astros in Seattle. Remarkably, in some sort of twist of MLB scheduling karma, they play the Angels AGAIN and then the equally woeful White Sox. So, I see much potential for rest and padding the divisional lead, both of which will serve the Mariners very well in August and September.
And that will bring us to the MLB Trade Deadline on July 30. Hey, let’s go back a couple weeks and check out the poll results about what the 2024 Mariners need before the deadline.
The bats have it! Yes, this was a no-brainer, more or less. But, the PLAYERS SHOULD PLAY BETTER narrative has also been gaining ground, and justifiably so. This team simply cannot survive as constructed right now if Julio Rodríguez, J.P. Crawford, Ty France, and Cal Raleigh are all slumping at the same time. Luckily, all have showed signs of turning it back on this past week (especially Cal-Boy with multiple games of hitting homers from BOTH SIDES OF THE PLATE), so hopefully that continues for all four of them. Hey, you know what could help the team survive multiple top players slumping? That’s right, more quality bats and depth! Getting really tired of repeating myself on that one.
Make trades or die trying.
Conventional wisdom strikes again. Some food for thought, though.
Another dub for conventional wisdom. However, 24 of you are very devilish.
Since this is the last FPF before the All-Star Game, let’s do some ASG-centric prompts!
Prompt 1: If you went to the All-Star Game last season at T-Mobile Park in person or watched it on TV, what is your favorite memory of the game?
Prompt 2: What are you most excited to see in the 2024 All-Star game?
Prompt 3: What’s your favorite All-Star Game jersey or BP jersey/hat of all time?
That’s all! Let’s hope the Mariners continue to crush the Angels so badly they decide to self-relegate. Have a great weekend!