July 29, 2011: Mariners 0, Rays 8 (44-61)

So, it looks like the Mariners aren’t actually going to win all of their games for the rest of the year. They lost their game today. It’s a huge bummer, since it all but certainly indicates that the Mariners are a normal baseball team, and as such will not perform at inhuman levels and miraculously make the playoffs. It's over. Sometimes dreams have to die, and today is one of those times.

The 8-0 defeat that occurred today isn’t really worth talking about. The Mariners got soundly defeated, and not one single good thing happened to make the experience worthwhile. Not even Marylin vos Savant could rationalize any positivity out of this one. I guess the Mariners were nice enough to kill off all hope immediately, instead of lingering like an unopened Christmas present that turns out to contain asbestos. But that’s fairly small comfort.

However, if you are one of those people who really does feel awful about this for some ridiculous masochistic reason, I have good news: it’s not as bad as it seems. I know it seems like the last thirty plus years of Mariners baseball have been nothing but misery and failure, but that opinion is really only based on water-cooler misinformation, vague impressions, and half-remembered dreams. Human memory is imperfect. It builds narratives when nothing’s there, it overreacts to extreme events, sometimes it even just makes stuff up. But statistics… statistics are pure and solid. They are a simple record of the facts, and as such are wholly trustworthy. And the facts don’t actually bear out the whole “Mariners as pathetic losers” storyline.

Ok, so you’re sitting there thinking “Oh no, the Mariners are awful, they’ve never accomplished anything, wah wah wah.” Why do you think that they’re “awful”? What does it mean to be “awful”? The first thing you should know about “awful” is that it’s a relative term. If the Mariners are "awful", it means that the Mariners are bad in comparison to something else. In this case, “badness” entails failing to win baseball games. Who do the Mariners fail to win baseball games in comparison to? Other baseball teams, duh. Especially the New York Yankees. The New York Yankees win many more baseball games than the Mariners do. That’s the evidence for why the Mariners are awful: they lose much more than the New York Yankees.

Except, look at what the statistics say:

Just look at that. The Mariners and Yankees actually have pretty much even winning percentages, relatively speaking. The only real difference is that the Mariners’ win percentage is blue while the Yankees’ is red. Blue is a way better color than red, so score one for the Mariners. The statistical record is clear: quantitatively speaking, the Mariners are really no worse than the Yankees.

“But wait!” you say. “That’s not right! You’re just warping the statistics to prove your conclusion that you already decided on beforehand. The only person who said winning percentage matters was you. Quit building all these strawmen, and be a little bit intellectually honest. You know where I’m going with this: what matters is championships. At the end of the day, that’s all anyone cares about. It's the only true measure of success. The simple fact is, the Yankees have won way more World Serie than the Mariners have. That’s all there is to it. If you can disprove that, I’ll concede your point. You can’t, because it’s impossible, but I’d like to see you try.” And then a mockingbird pecks out the sparkly thread that used to be your mouth and you don’t say anything more. And then I refute your argument with the greatest of ease:

Basically the same. So buck up. Quit with the moping, ya saddo. The Mariners are fine, I’m fine, you’re fine, baseball’s fine, everything is just fine and maybe even also dandy. Just enjoy it. It’s baseball, bro. It’s all good.