Mariners are in the rare air of contention, but can they sustain it?

So, is this finally the Mariners team everyone has painfully waited to see most of the past 10 years?

After six weeks of fairly bad baseball to start this season, have all the hard work and tough lessons started to produce better at-bats and, now, a 30-27 record that puts them 1½ games out o

f first place in the American League West?

I’m not willing to say what we’ve seen the past few games is what the Mariners will continue to be the rest of this season, but their 7-0 victory tonight over the Tampa Bay Rays featured everything they’ll need over the long haul – pitching, defense and runs.

Well, there was everything except a hit by Ichiro Suzuki. Ichiro went 0-for-4 to spin his average down to .266. He has 63 hits this season and needs 137 more in the final 105 games to reach 200 for the 11th straight season. That’ll be something worth watching.

And so will the Mariners if they keep up their sudden ability to score runs. After averaging 3.4 runs in May, they’ve scored 15 in their past two games. That’s the most in a two-game stretch since they scored 17 in two games at Detroit in late April.

Power has been the major difference in the past two games; their three home runs tonight (by Justin Smoak, Adam Kennedy and Miguel Olivo) gave them seven in two games. That’s the most they’ve hit in back-to-back games since August of 2009 at Detroit, and the most in consecutive games at Safeco Field since the 2004 season.

Manager Eric Wedge seems to think what we’ve seen in the first two games of the Tampa Bay series is real, not an early June mirage.

“It’s a culmination of everything that we’ve been talking about, that these guys have been working on behind the scenes,” Wedge said. “It’s the conversations they’ve been having with each other or with (hitting coach Chris Chambliss), the work they’re doing in the cage. You like to see that trickle into (batting practice) and you like to see that work its way into the ballgame, and that’s what we’re seeing.”

Wouldn’t it be great for Mariners fans who’ve waited so long to follow a contender for this to be much more than a mirage?

Fun as it is, there’s the reality that this team leans on several young players. Talented as they are, and as well as they’re playing now, it won’t be easy for them to sustain this kind of performance for four more months.