In 2007, the Ms won 88 games, a 10-game improvement on 2006. They traded for Eric Bedard and went into 2008 with widespread optimism -- they won 61, (a 27 game swoon). In 2009, with modest expectations, the club leapt back into contention with 85 wins, (a 24 game spike!). So, after adding Cliff Lee, swapping out Silva for Milton Bradley, replacing Beltre's missing bat with an OBP machine in Chone Figgins, optimism is once again the concensus mood in the great Northwest. And this is not just rampant homerism -- the pundits on ESPN and MLBN are all giving Seattle high marks for the rebuilding ... (ahem) ... BUILDING effort the team has shown over the past year.

It HAS been a great off-season. The club has tweaked and pruned and fiddled, and the end result is without a doubt a better team ON PAPER than the one that began 2009. Even with the uncertainty of precisely what the final determinations will be with PT at 1B, DH and LF, the rotation is stronger, the bullpen is stronger, and the lineup has certainly buffed its OBP, even if it did suffer a bit of a power loss with the depature of Branyan. But, the Ms offense is currently aspiring to become a mediocre NL offense, with an eye toward achieving AL mediocrity in 2011 or later. Most of the pundits and projections have the club "improving" to about 85 wins, ascribing 5-10 of the 85 wins in 2009 to blind luck.

Unfortunately for Ms fans, most of the pontificators are taking a "good will stay good" approach, assuming the best parts of the 2009 Ms will continue producing - with the upside being generated because the low-production parts from 2009 have been tweaked, and so improvement is not only likely because these 2009 parts were so bad - but because the replacements are objectively better, too. The problem here is that Ichiro and Griffey are both on the wrong side of 34. Felix is coming off his FIRST sub-3 ERA, (which means there is not YET any evidence that he can repeat it). Aardsma is also coming off a career year. Guttierez has exactly one season of full-time play to base future performance on. Heck, about the only guy on the club who could legitimately be pegged to repeat his 2009 performance is Jose Lopez, (who many feel should've been traded).

The 2010 roster is oddly extreme (compared to typical contenders), with a major chasm between old-enough-to-worry veterans and not-yet-proven youngsters. About the only guy in the middle is Jack Wilson. Okay, one could throw Milton Bradley into that bin, (if he'd ever been healthy enough to deserve the label of MLB regular). But guys like Kotchman, Garko, Snell, are not exactly the "reliable" veterans that winning teams typically seem to carry in numbers. The "talent" is almost certainly better than the beginning of 2009. But, the level of uncertainty is also much larger.

In 2009, the club didn't know precisely what it would get from Guttierez, Branyan, Wlad, Endy and Aardsma, (not to mention guys like Jaku). The winners seemed to outnumber the losers, (and the losers didn't tend to hang around long, either ... at least not compared to previous management). But, because the downers were generally dropped, (Wlad, Jaku, Olson) with roughly 1/3 of a season input, the memory latches on to the upside guys, (Branyan, Gutz, Aardsma), and starts ASSUMING their performances were 'representative' seasons, instead of random points on a career wide range. The returnees could get better OR worse. And the new faces as likely to be pleasant surprises as bitter disappointments.

The reality is the standard rule of thirds that baseball is built upon is the safest to employ. In any group of 9 players, 3 are likely to exceed expectations, three will likely meet expectations, and three will fall short. Projections which over-emphasize winners (or losers), tend to miss their mark. You load up on 25-year-olds, and projection systems will project across-the-board improvement. You load up on 35-year-olds, you'll see projections of doom. The truth is in the middle. While young players are more likely to improve than older players, this does not work linearly. EVERY age 35 guy won't implode, nor will every age 26 guy break out.

The point I'm attempting to make is not that Ms fans should head into 2010 expecting doom and gloom. My point is that - just like 2009 - there will likely be triumphs (Branyan, Aardsma, Felix, Wash), and tragedies, (Beltre, Wlad, Yuni, Olson). What would 2009 have looked like if Yuni had ended Gutierrez' season, instead of Endy's? By all means, be optimistic. But, there needs to be some realism mixed in, otherwise a 2008-like morale meltdown could easily ensue.

The 2010 Mariners are a .500-ish team with a lot of wiggle room. But, a lot of the success of 2009 was built on a foundation of fear. Players, for the first time in ages, were AFRAID of losing their jobs -- and they worked HARD to keep them. Some worked too hard, (Beltre and Branyan playing way too long with injuries that needed to heal). Some let the pressure get to them, (Wlad, Saunders?). Fear is a survival trait - but overdosing on fear leads to petrification, which leads to death. Fear gets the ball rolling, but it's a tool that works short-term. Over the long haul, what you need is a culture of consistency of effort. That's clearly the foundation that Z is attempting to pour. But, what needs to be understood is that the IMPACT of the moves and decisions change over time, because they work in conjunction with the PRIOR STATE.

The clubhouse in 2009 was great (in part) BECAUSE the clubhouse in 2008 was so dreadful. A great clubhouse in 2010 is the SAME clubhouse as 2009, which does not mean it will generate the same positive results. Does watching T2 or Star Wars blow you away the same way it did the first time you saw it? The impact is a combination of what is ... and what was.

So, heading into 2010, the club made some major lineup changes. Lee, League, Kotchman, Garko, Bradley ... and there will likely be more. But, the results in 2010 are not just about the new guys. Humans are not strat-o-matic cards. They have ups and downs for all kinds of reasons. While there are reasons to be optimistic, here are my list of items that the Mariner fans should be concerned about in 2010.

1) Defense -- jumped from 26th to 1st (by a wide margin) between '08 and '09. There is an ASSUMPTION that the club is going to remain #1 in the AL. After all, Gutz returns in CF, SS is almost certainly upgraded with a healthy Wilson, and Figgins has gotten high marks as a 3B, (though certainly not as highly regarded defensively as Beltre). Problem is ... NOBODY understands defense really well -- at least not in any predictive way. Anyone releasing the DER projections for 2010? I didn't think so. But, historically, teams that make the giant leap in a single year, (see Boston and Tampa for former examples), slip the following season. Usually, the downward drift is not drastic, (Tampa slid from 1st to 4th in the AL from '08 to '09). Boston also slid from 1st to 4th from '07 to '08. Guess what. The smart money is NOT on Seattle repeating as the #1 defense in the AL -- but on sliding to 4th. This will require the pitching to improve dramatically to simply maintain its 2009 run allowance.

2) Bullpen -- there have been passing discussions in regard to the Seattle bullpen this off-season. Many have spoken glowingly about how great the 2009 bullpen was, considering them a significant part of the success of 2009. The perception is just flat out wrong. Based on FIP, Seattle's overall pitching ranked 8th (tied) in the AL. The starters ranked 6th, the relievers 9th. Save % was 9th. Seattle had 194 relief pitchers enter the game ahead, (and 70 with the game tied). That was also 9th of the 14 AL teams. Yet, Seattle led the AL with 30 losses by relievers, (Seattle's bullpen went 27-30), while the starters were going 58-47. The honest truth is that Seattle's bullpen was below average, by almost every measure one can use. The only exception is raw ERA, (where the defense makes them look much better than they actually were). Aardsma had a career year. Kelley wasn't the same after returning. Batista and White had far better results than their peripherals would support. And a lot of innings in the pen were taken by failed starters (Olson, Vargas, Jaku). The pen, was actually pedestrian leaning toward bad. There is hope that League will strengthen the pen -- but this assumes equal (or better) performances from the returnees. Many actively lobbied to trade Aardsma, because they fear an iminent implosion. Unlike many previous seasons, Seattle didn't produce the out-of-the-blue bullpen "fix" that's happened so often as to be deemed automatic.

In 2008, when EOF crashed, Corcoran stepped in an went 6-2 with a 3.22 ERA. But, his peripherals were a 4.5 walk rate and a 4.8 K rate. He avoided HRs, so his ERA was nice. But, it's REAL hard to maintain low ERAs with K/BB numbers under two. If the club doesn't successfully migrate a failed starter or two into the pen, then 2010 could easily turn out even worse. And it is not a pleasant thought to contemplate getting worse, when your bullpen led the league in losses the previous season. It's not just a bonus if guys like Cordero and Robles step up and contribute in 2010. It is a necessity.

3) Middle infield -- Just like 2009, the club will start the season with no ready-for-primetime talent in AAA for the middle infield. In 2009, Ronny Cedeno was the backup plan for Lopez/Yuni. When that plan failed, the club was forced to go scavenge for bodies at the unemployment office. With Jack Wilson taking over short, the picture is little changed. While the farm has some interesting bats to consider for the future, short is where the system is truly short. If the club gets a .700 OPS from short, it has a chance for the offense to be adequate. Should injury result in a Cedeno-esque sequel at short, it is unlikely that the club will dodge that howitzer a second time.

Most everyone else is concerned about the aggregate offense being inadequate, (it may be). And there is much fear about the back of the rotation, (said fear almost certainly overstated due to the extreme talent at the top). But, the above three items are the ones I see that cause me the most fear. The offense isn't going to be fixed with one big bat. If the club has 6 or 7 bats producing adequately, the offense will be good enough - (and THEN, adding a big bat can actually have the desired effect). And with quality defense and SOOOO many bodies available for the rotation, I'm not concerned there, either. (I think the masses perceive league talent in the 4/5 rotation slots substantially over what it actually is -- if you get sub-5.00 ERAs out of the 4/5 slots, then you're actually a big winner in the AL. I believe too many view a 4.50 - 4.90 ERA at the bottom of the rotation as failure. It's not. Not even close). I'm not overly concerned with the 7.47 ERAs of the HoRam and Silva days -- (at least not for any significant length of time).

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For 2010, the defense, bullpen and shortstop scare me. While each has the potential to be adequate, I believe each has an even greater potential to disappoint. For 2010 the optimism needs to be cautious.