6/13/25: The Mariber Cool Zone

Interesting Times Dot MLB

Hello, friend. Once again congratulations are in order. Your many hours alone in the harsh and unforgiving wilds of modernity are temporarily paused, as you once again have arrived upon the verdant shores of Friday.

As you flop yourself down, lay on your back, and gaze upward into the hazy late-Spring air, chest heaving with lungfuls of sweet, free air, I hope you let yourself smile. There’s so much wrong out there, and we interact with it so constantly in our day-to-day life, I think it’s important to let ourselves enjoy the times when they are good. Even if just for a little bit.

Speaking of things that are wrong, whooooooooooooooooooo baby are our sweet children the Seattle Mariners going through it right now. I don’t want to belabor the point or make you feel worse about them than you undoubtedly already do, but we don’t make the news, we just cover it. Onward!

The Cool Zone is a modern term broadly used to describe a timeless (if irregular) aspect of human civilization: The process of living through the collapse of long-established institutions and social norms. It’s a period that will be much “cooler” to read and learn about once it’s over than to actually live through. When such a broad combination of unprecedented, de-stabilizing, and/or previously-thought-impossible events all coincide at the same moment in history all potential outcomes - good and bad for what it’s worth - start to feel possible.

Applying the term to our boys in teal and blue, the Mariners appear to be standing on the precipice of their own personal Cool Zone. The teams’ play the past month has been brutal, with an 11-20 record since May 8th’s off-day. The past three weeks have been especially bad, at 5-14 that is the worst 19-game stretch since April/May 2022, a season that took a franchise-record 14-game winning streak to salvage. While I acknowledge anything can happen, such a streak feels unlikely to replicate itself this season.

The failures, disappointments, and screw-ups are happening in such volume and intensity at the moment it’s growing increasingly-difficult to separate them or anything else about the team out of the muck. Even Dom Canzone owning his haters (i.e. me) by testing the structural integrity of Chase Field’s right field bleachers - an event that should have (and in better times would have) led to me being relentlessly trolled online - was quickly memory-holed with Josh Naylor’s walk-off grand slam a few innings later.

The thing about total collapse is that everything else is pushed aside by it. Cal Raleigh’s unbelievable 2025 deserves front and center daily acknowledgement and conversation. If a Mariner catcher had hit 26 home runs by early June back when I ran a daily Mariners website we’d have devoted a massive portion of our daily coverage to his exploits. Instead the thought of another season being sucked into the abyss pushed Cal to the periphery. Worse yet, his greatness can be used to further illuminate the ineptitude of the rest of the roster. (You really should not have a potential 10-win catcher and be below .500. And yet!)

As frustrating, painful, and all-consuming as this recent stretch has felt, it’s now until the All-Star Break that could tip the 2025 season from “just another mediocre Mariners season” into a true Mariber Cool Zone. The team is playing 29 games in 31 days. Twenty of those are against teams tied or ahead of them in the American League standings, and another three are against the Chicago Cubs, one of the best teams in the National League AKA “The Varsity”.

It’s going to be an incredibly difficult run of play, and the team will most likely have to do it with a still partially-patchwork starting rotation. George Kirby’s annihilation of the Angels last week was potentially a hugely positive data point for his play moving forward, but Bryce Miller should not be counted on for the rest of 2025. Logan Gilbert has yet to prove he’s over his injury concerns. Bryan Woo, while still excellent, is starting to show cracks.

The Mariners have overcome so many recent roster issues thanks to one of baseball’s deepest and best rotations being incredibly healthy and productive. Now they are staring at the at the cruel fangs of the season’s most difficult and arguably most crucial point, and they will be starting games with Emerson Hancock and Logan Evans*.

In the modern era of Mariners baseball (2021-present) the team has had plenty of moments where the season appeared on the brink. I distinctly remember the 2022 team being 29-39 and fully calling the rebuild a failure. It was not and I was wrong. The team has managed four consecutive winning seasons, one of the most successful runs in franchise history.

Time and again the Mariners players and coaches have managed fill the gaps, find their footing, and avoid total collapse. This moment, now until the All-Star Break, may be their greatest challenge to this point. Anything close to the play of the past month moving forward will see the season in ruins, the roster poised for sell-off, and plenty of difficult questions about the team’s future.

Oh, by the way, did I mention the team is currently tied with literally the Los Angeles Angels in the standings? Cool Zone indeed.

*The Light Bat supports both Emerson Hancock and Logan Evans’ baseball aspirations and exploits. Citing them in this way was not designed to denigrate them, merely to outline the precipitous state in which the team’s starting rotation currently finds itself. If you are related or personally acquainted with either, please know I think they are fine, and will be rooting for their success.