You can pick any game.
The one with the rookie ump and the joke of a strike zone? That's a game lost.
Any of Rodney's blown saves? One less and we'd be in the playoffs - or at least the playoff for the playoffs.
Early season road losing streak or late one, poor home record, too many losses to bottom-feeders. One more hit, one less run scored against us, and we're there. We had 60+ games with 0-2 runs scored. We lost 27 games by one measly run. One run.
Over 162 games, it's a quirk of the game, a less-than-lovely happenstance in this case, that we got 1400+ of innings of baseball this season and 5000+ at bats, but the playoffs came down to one out on one of those games.
This is not a thread of recriminations. A better DH, one fewer injury to Saunders or LoMo, a better ankle for Ackley, a stray pitch here or there and the season has an extra game or two in it and we all feel better about the season. But I feel pretty good about THIS season. I would have loved for these guys to be able to give me a JUST a little bit more - but realistically, in most cases they gave us everything they had to give, and I love em for it.
This season was full of amazing pitching, from the probably-Cy-Young-winning King to the rawest rookie arms. It began with the acquisition of a HOFer to buttress the lineup, saw the development of another MOTO hitter at third base, and finished up with a couple months of really good hitting by two club-controlled bats, one that we drafted and one that we traded for.
It held a catcher who dropped bombs into the seats better than any Mariner catcher who came before him, and caught a tremendous pitching staff all season. We had a bunch of youngsters in the pen throwing lasers, while an erratic and eccentric closer set the team saves record and shot bushels of arrows in the process.
And most importantly for this fan, the Mariners were playing important games from Opening Day until the curtain call. 162 games and every one of them mattered. It's been forever since that was the case. In the end, it's not about coming up an hit short or an out too late, it's about playing the game the way your fans deserve to see it played - to play it with joy and with determination, to refuse to buckle when the road got rough, and to fight to the last day.
The kids had their moment of learning what it's like to play 6 months of Real Baseball. Next year they'll need to be just that much better. Next year they'll start in April dreaming of playing Game#163, and working every day to make that a reality. And all offseason, we'll be dreaming about the same.
But for this season? The team exceeded what I thought they were capable of with the things that went wrong. If you'd told me before the season that Smoak and Hart would both be terri-bad busts, Saunders would miss half the season, Zunino would bat under the Mendoza Line and Miller would be replaced at SS halfway through the season by the rookie Taylor, I would doubt our offense could hold up. And with both Paxton and Walker missing most of the big-league season and Erasmo imploding, I would have doubted our staff as well.
There is lots to be positive about going into next season, but the 2014 season will still put a smile on my face when I think about it. Baseball that matters finally returned to the Northwest.
You can pick any game. :-)
~G