Wake up! MLB season begins with our Mariners-A's running diary

There is baseball today. Real baseball. Like, where it counts in the standings and everything. The Mariners and A's are in Tokyo for the first two games of the 2019 season, the fifth time MLB will open the season in Japan. The Mariners will begin their quest to end the longest playoff drought in the majors, after an offseason in which they lost or traded five of their best six players from 2018. The A's will begin their quest to prove last year's 97-win season wasn't a fluke and return to the postseason.

The strangest sight may be Marco Gonzales starting for the Mariners. This is the first time since 2008 that Felix Hernandez won't draw the Opening Day start for Seattle. He won't start the…