It honestly feels like I could take the better part of the next two months off from Seattle sports blogging.  I went back, to see what I was doing at this point last year, and it was A LOT of Husky basketball stuff; I just can’t see myself doing that again.  This year’s Husky basketball team is a fucking broken record of mediocrity.  The only player worth a damn is Markelle Fultz, and I just feel sorry for him because he’s drowning in a sea of worthlessness.  I didn’t really get into the Seattle Mariners until March of 2016 as a result, but I think that’s going to have to change this year.

See, it really feels like Now Or Never with this franchise.  All our chips have been pushed into the middle of the table, and we’re ready to flip over our cards for the rest of the league to see.  This is it!  Either the 2017 Mariners make the post-season, or they don’t.  And if they don’t, who knows?  Maybe we try to run it back with the same vets in 2018; but that feels like a fool’s errand.  If we can’t get it done now, what magic potion would we have to drink to somehow be better NEXT year?  No.  This is it.  It’s either 2017, or we wait for the next big rebuild.  At which point, what are we looking at, another 5-10 years of losing before we can even get back to this point?

So, given the increased significance of this season, I’ll be kicking off my Mariners coverage a little early this year (in spite of my overall reluctance to be sucked into the ever-expanding baseball season; GOD GIVE ME BACK THE NBA ALREADY!), with my list of Very Important Mariners.  These are the players we’re going to need to play well this year, if we have any hope of breaking the curse hovering over this franchise.  In no particular order, I’ll devote individual posts to the following (feel free to bookmark this page and come back to it, as I’ll be linking to each as they’re posted):

• Felix Hernandez
• Robinson Cano
• Nelson Cruz
• James Paxton
• Kyle Seager
• Edwin Diaz
• Hisashi Iwakuma
• Drew Smyly
• Jean Segura
• Carlos Ruiz
• Danny Valencia
• Jarrod Dyson
• Dan Vogelbach
• Leonys Martin
• Yovani Gallardo
• Mitch Haniger

I’ll probably add to the list, as the 25-man roster becomes clearer.  So, yeah, look for that.