GM Dipoto believes this is year M’s can break postseason drought

Published 6:30 pm Thursday, January 26, 2017

SEATTLE — It’s been a long, hard 15 years without playoff baseball for the Seattle Mariners.

But in the second season of his tenure, Seattle general manager Jerry Dipoto believes the organization has developed to the point where ending that drought is a reasonable expectation.

The Mariners conducted their annual pre-spring training media luncheon Thursday at Safeco Field, and the message was that the team is ready to win now.

“I’d like to make the playoffs,” Dipoto said when asked if the team needed to reach the postseason this season. “Win-now is always my mindset.

“We won 86 games a year ago. I feel like this team has the chance to be every bit that good and better.”

The last time the Mariners reached the postseason was 2001, when the team lost in the American League Division Series after tying the major-league record for wins in a season with 116. Seattle hasn’t been back to the playoffs since, the longest active playoff drought in Major League Baseball.

But the Mariners are coming off an encouraging campaign in which they went 86-76 and were in playoff contention until the second-to-last day of the season. With the core of the team returning, along with some high-profile offseason acquisitions, Seattle believes it’s right where it needs to be.

“I think that what we all realized is just how close we are,” pitcher James Paxton said. “We were one game away, and there’s a lot of games last year where we do one little thing different and we could have been there. So now we know how important each game is and how all those small things that we do on a day-to-day basis can make a difference at the end of the year. I think it should give this team a lot of confidence knowing we are that close and the possibility is right there for us.”

The foundation of Seattle’s optimism is the team’s four returning core players. The middle-of-the-order trio of second baseman Robinson Cano, designated hitter Nelson Cruz and third baseman Kyle Seager is coming off a season in which all three batted at least .278, hit at least 30 home runs and drove in at least 99. Then the pitching staff is led by Felix Hernandez, who’s been the Mariners’ ace for a decade.

But three members of the quartet have now surpassed 30 years of age, lending some urgency to the proceedings. Therefore, Dipoto made a number of offseason deals to support that core, most notably acquiring Jean Segura from the Arizona Diamondbacks to play shortstop. Starting pitcher Drew Smyly (from Tampa Bay), first baseman Danny Valencia (from Oakland) and outfielder Jarrod Dyson (from Kansas City) were also brought in via trade.

Dipoto believes the offseason moves upgraded the team’s speed and defense, and the new blood combined with the returning core might just be enough to push the Mariners over the line into the playoffs.

“Last year we were third in the American League in runs scored, we were third in the league in earned-run average,” Dipoto said. “We were a poor defensive club and we weren’t very good on the bases. We don’t think we robbed the first two elements, we feel like we’re still a team that can score runs. We’re now a team that can better prevent runs, and we can be exciting on the bases and defensively. Yes, this is a team that was built to win and to win now, but we’re not stripping the organization in the effort to win now as the only outcome. This is what we intend to be, a sustainable product to win year in and year out.”

Not that there aren’t concerns. Hernandez is coming off the most difficult season of his 12-year career, when he saw his walk rate climb, his strikeout rate drop, and he spent time on the disabled list because of an injured right calf. Hernandez is now 30 years old and his fastball velocity has steadily declined.

But the Mariners believe 2016 was an injury-related anomaly for Hernandez. Hernandez has been declared fully recovered from his calf injury, and he’s been active on social media with regards to his offseason workouts.

“I think the idea of the demise of Felix Hernandez is being grossly exaggerated,” Dipoto said. “He’s still a very good major-league pitcher. He had a lower-body injury last year, there’s nothing wrong with Felix’s arm. … Felix still has dynamic secondary stuff that ranks with the best of them. He still has the ability to go out and create soft contact, he’s always done that. He’s been an innings horse throughout the course of his career. My impression with the way the offseason has gone for Felix is that some of the fact he’s been questioned so heavily publicly has acted as a motivating tool for him to get himself ready to come pitch and show the world that he’s still Felix Hernandez.”

Another question mark concerns Segura. Segura is coming off a season in which he batted .319 with 20 home runs and 33 stolen bases, which made him among the National League’s 10 best position players based on wins above replacement. But that followed poor offensive campaigns, seasons that could have been affected by the tragic death of Segura’s infant son in July of 2014.

But Dipoto is confident that the 26-year-old Segura’s improvement is real and not a one-season fluke.

“In 2016 he was dynamic — not just good, he was fantastic, and he was fantastic for six months,” Dipoto said. “There was no variance in what he was doing, he made a real change in where he sets up and where he holds his hands, and as a result the launch angles of the ball leaving his bat changed and so did the velocity off the bat. Jean Segura made real changes that resulted in a real performance upgrade.

“I’d like to tell you we can plug and play the numbers he threw up at Chase Field in Phoenix right here to Safeco in Seattle, but it’s probably not realistic,” Dipoto continued “We will see some level of regression because it’s impossible for a player to sustain what he did over and over. … But we feel like he made real change, he’s a runner, he’s an explosive athlete and we feel many of the things he did last year are very sustainable. We’re going to find out.”

We’ll also find out whether it’s all enough to end Seattle’s postseason drought.

For more on the Seattle sports scene, check out Nick Patterson’s Seattle Sidelines blog at cmg-northwest2.go-vip.net/heraldnet/tag/seattle-sidelines, or follow him on Twitter at @NickHPatterson.