This week, Mariners fans are grappling with the fallout of heightened expectations. Following up a historic, cathartic, and playoff-drought ending season in 2022 with a hard-to-love yet not-unsuccessful season that ended with the Mariners flipping the counter on the “Seasons since the Mariners made the playoffs” sign over to “1” was a bitter pill to swallow for fans. Who set the high expectations? There are more nuanced answers out there, but when the team releases a promotional video with this image in it, it’s pretty simple to point the finger at the organization as a whole.
:format(webp):no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24980155/Screenshot_2023_10_05_at_11_42_54_Seattle_Mariners_on_X.png)
I remember feeling rather incredulous about that part of the video since it followed an offseason where the team clearly failed to make the kinds of moves to turn a Wild Card winner into a team that could make a deeper playoff run and ideally, um, “win it all.