The Mariners have played good ball lately, in case you've been on Mars, under a rock, with both fingers in your ears and your eyes shut. After winning the first game in the three-game series against the Baltimore Orioles, the Mariners have won 8 of their last 13 games.

This new tendency to win ballgames has led to an increased talk of the Mariners shomehow slipping into the AL play-offs. Well, this and the fact that so far this year the AL West has retreated to the AL Worst and no time, as of yet, has been able to take the divison by its cajones. However, any play-off talk concerning the M's at this point is incredibly premature, and should immediately be hushed. Regardless of how weak your team's divison in, when it's four games below .500 at any point in the season, play-offs are not something to be discussed.

Consider that if the Mariners are ana average team for the rest of year and play .500 ball, they'll finish with 79 wins. A great improvement over the past couple seasons, yes, but still short of play-off caliber. My preseason thoughts on the AL West is that whatever team that won 90 games would win the division. Which is a safe bet, even though I thought that team would be the Angels (HA!). For the Mariners to do that, they'd have to play at a level incredibly higher than average, and win games at a .595 clip, going 69-47.

Its not as if that's unheard of, but a lot of things would have to break the M's way: Beltre and Sexson would have to perform at least at their career averages. There would have to be no drop-off from Jose Lopez's production. Felix would have to find his inner King and at least be a replacemnt-level pitcher and not the groove-ball tosser he has become. Hargrove would have to stick with Putz as closer regardless of Guardado's contract. And less of Ute Bloomquist playing means more wins. All of these things would have to happen for the Mariners to have a fighting chance.

What put the Mariners in this position? We'd have to go back to Sunday April 16th to mark the doom of the Mariners' 2006 season. Yes, I know. It's early in the season, and it was simply a hard-fought 3-2 loss at the hands of Josh Beckett and the Boston Red Sox in Fenway Park, but that loss started a horrendous week of play by the Mariners. Before dropping that loss, the Mariners were a .500 team at 6-6. However, the next day after Beckett's dominant performance was the early-morning Patriot's Day game, in which Eddie Guardado gave up a two-ou two-run home run to Mark Loretta in a season-deflating 7-6 loss.

That loss put the Mariners at a 6-8 won-loss record as they returned home for a four game set against the Rangers, which they promptly dropped three of four from. The Mariners then preceeded to be swept at the hands of the Tigers and their dominating pitching staff. In told, the Mariners lost 7 out of 8 games, and the team that found themselves at Fenway Park with a .500 record now found themselves in last place with a 7-13 record an a .350 winning percentage. In fact, the only win keeping them from dropping eight straight required a go-ahead ninth inning home-run from dinosaur-lovin' Carl Everett.

During that week, (or should I say weak?) the Mariners hit .256, which could be considered average (their team average through today is .264) but left a whopping 91 runners on base and hit only three home runs, two by Everett. In fact, if you take out the 18-for-38 performance against the Rangers in their sole win, the Mariners hit .219 in their seven losses.

Adrian Beltre actually out-performed the team during that span, hitting .286. However, his troubles with hitting with runners on have all ready been noted in this blog, as he left nine runners on during the Mariners' horrible week. And, of course, he hit no home runs.

Very rarely does it appear that the fortunes of a season can turn on a single pitch or a single at-bat. It would require empirical evidence to have a data-based claim that play-off bound teams find an extra-drive from a clutch extra innings base-hit ot a strikeout with the bases loaded, perserving a close lead in late innings. However, there is a mental aspect to the game and losing negatively affects that mental side. It seems clear that Guardado serving up that two-run blast to Mark Loretta was the turning point of the Mariners' young 2006 season, and prompts two questions:

Will there be another turning point for the Mariners to put together a successful season? And why the heck is Eddie Guardado still on the Mariners' roster for, any way?