POLL RESULTS: Middling marks given to 2017 Seattle Mariners

Nary an A.

This week’s Seattle Sidelines poll asked readers to grade the Seattle Mariners’ 2017 season, in which the Mariners finished 78-84 and missed out on the postseason for the 16th straight year. Of the 201 votes collected, not a single one gave Seattle an A.

What marks did the voters give the M’s? Take a look:

POLL: What grade do you give the Mariners for the 2017 season? Full context here: https://t.co/vwl5PlAJfL

— Nick Patterson (@NickHPatterson) October 2, 2017

Add those two together and more than half the responders (54 percent) gave the Mariners a C. Unfortunately, the limit of four responses in Twitter polls meant I had to combine D and F into a single answer for half the poll, so 34 percent gave Seattle a D or an F. While I can’t break that down officially, D got nearly five times as many votes as F in the Polldaddy poll posted on the Herald’s website, so we can guess that a strong majority of those D/F votes were for D. There were 12 percent of responders who felt the Mariners deserved a B. And, of course, there were no A votes.

While no one thought the Mariners deserved top marks for 2017, it’s interesting that two-thirds of responders gave Seattle either a B or a C, which are passable grades. Given the Mariners were somewhat optimistic heading into the season, coming off a 2016 in which they went 86-76 and were in the playoff hunt right down to the wire, and given the offseason acquisitions of Jean Segura, Danny Valencia and Mitch Haniger to spark the offense, I wouldn’t have thought there would have been a high number of passing grades for an eight-game drop. But then there were all those injuries to the starting pitching, and there was little the team could do about that, which may have resulted in grading on a curve.

Now the Mariners have the offseason to try and sort things out so the team can end its playoff drought, and as we know Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto loves to tinker. But with the rotation in turmoil and with team leaders Nelson Cruz and Robinson not getting younger, it’s hard to imagine there being an increase in optimism for the Mariners going into next season from where it was going into this season.