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Q.  What is the probability of the M's making the postseason?  2%, or 5%, or what?

A.  According to MLB.com, it's 43%.  Flip a coin.  Your chances of calling it correctly, are about the same as the M's chances of gearing up for a big national TV game in October.

Of course, you have no feelings about the coin; you do have residual electroshock convulsions when you look at a Mariner logo.  Those were acquired from the last two horrible games.  But, as with dice and coins, MLB teams tend to forget what happened on the last toss.  

"Momentum is as good as that night's starting pitcher."  Again, the M's win a game or two, and all feels right with the universe again.  Ahhhhh, the bittersweet flavor that is the Human Experience.

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Q.  I'm a more casual fan.  Why would the M's win a tiebreaker?

A.  In this case it's head-to-head results.  The M's beat the Royals 5 of 7 games this season.  

That's not coincidental, exactly, since the Royals' run differential is a paltry +22 runs.  Their Pythagorean record is 76-72; they should be +4 over .500, not +14 over.

The Mariners, by contrast, are a full +100 runs to the good, the watermark for "legitimate contender."  And their Pythag is 87-61; they should be +26 games over .500, not +12.

So, theoretically, you have a 90-win team that is behind one half a game to a .500-ish team.  Hard to see where the "almost eliminated" sentiment comes from ... well, that's it, isn't it?  We have an "almost eliminated" sentiment, not an "almost eliminated" logic.

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Q.  But is this offense ever going to score another run?

A.  Time and chance happeneth to every man.  The Mariners collected 7 hits and 5 walks Sunday, but no runs.

True, it was 9 days ago that they last scored more than 4 runs.  But the Mainframe says that they are swinging the bats pretty good now, as opposed to the little 3-game blip they had of swinging too carefully.

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Q.  Do you really buy into this team?

A.  On a scale of 1-10, the M's offense is a 3 or a 4.  Its pitching is well-and-truly a 10.  Take the average there, and the team is a 6.5 to 7 out of 10.  Yeah, the offense is annoying.  But the pitching is a lot more good than the offense is bad.

The M's have an ERA+ of 124 and an OPS+ of 93.

The 2005 White Sox, who won the World Serious, were at 125 and 95.  Sure, the Mariners are feasible World Series winners this year.  Stay invested emotionally after a loss.  :- )  It makes the winning a lot sweeter.  

Hey, from where we sit, this season's ballclub went out there and fought like lions.  I'm proud of this ballclub win or lose.  ... and you know we'd be only too glad to scream bloody murder over a team that threw in the towel halfway along, as did the 2012 nimwits.

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Q.  The M's pitching is a 10 out of 10?!  What kinds of meds did they give you last week?

A.  Opiates and ketamine. We set some serious records, I think, but now it's back to whey protein and running stairs.  ... Buying into the 2014 Mariners as a hallucination, though?  The last AL team with a lower ERA was who, the 1974 Oakland A's?

Dr. D was taken aback to realize that the 2001 Mariners, the 116-win team, led the American League with an ERA of 3.54.  They had the amazing bullpen, they had Moyer, they had Drop Dead Freddy, they had 4 other good starters ... and they had a BABIP against of .273.  That defense was perhaps the best major league defense since they started keeping track of BABIP.

We're talking apples to apples, because both teams played in Safeco.  This year's team has an ERA of 3.01, without the benefit of team defense!

Granted, 2001 was the 'roid era, but still, the ERA+ is 124 compared to the 2001 squad's ERA+ of 117.

Yes, gentlemen, the 2014 Seattle Mariners are a very fine ballclub.  The Kansas City Royals, essentially, are not.  The M's do have 7 games with the Angels, which is the main reason that we've got a "Pick Em" call on this race today.

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Q.  How do the SP's line up for the 4-gamer in LAA?

A.  Thusly.  We skip Chris Young (whew).  They skip Hector Santiago, who had a 2.85 ERA his last 10 starts, and we miss their best pitcher, Garret Richards DL, who had a 2.61 ERA against the league and who had criminal charges for brutalizing the Mariners specifically.

We'd like to think that the most likely outcome would be 2-2, which would be just fine.

C.J., by the way, ran 135-150 ERA+'s in Texas.  Three years in LAA it's been 110, 100, and now 78.  He can still pitch, but he hasn't been an Opening Day starter for a while.  So we've got 3 Opening Day starters; they've got two.  They, of course, have a lineup that is miles better.  Angels for choice, but we're goin' to war.

Don't wuss out.  This kind of 4-game matchup is why we watch sports.

See you at the ballpark,

Dr D