One thing I’ve found since I began doing weekly Seattle Sidelines polls is that there seems to be a general sense of fatalism whenever I do a poll regarding the Mariners. I suppose that shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the Mariners’ history, which includes 15 straight seasons of missing the postseason.

This week, with Major League Baseball on its All-Star break, I asked about whether the Mariners could make s second-half push for the playoffs. At 43-47 Seattle has no real chance of catching Houston in the American League West, but the Mariners remain just four games back in the wild-card race.

Well, there wasn’t much optimism from responders. This week I decided to include polls both on Twitter and in the original blog post. Here’s how the two went:

POLL: Will the Mariners make a second-half surge and claim a playoff spot? Full context here: https://t.co/srYo3WqAYz

— Nick Patterson (@NickHPatterson) July 10, 2017

As you can see, the responders in both polls were strongly on the negative side. Add the two together and there are 76 “No” votes against just 34 “Yes” votes, which equals 69 percent to 31 percent. So “No” won in a landslide.

Therefore, if the Mariners end up rallying to earn a playoff berth they’ll do so against most fans’ expectations.