Seattle Mariners: Why They're A lot better than Their Record.

Because it goes for every MLB power team, the middle of May is noticeably too early to gauge the success or failure for the season. For the Seattle Mariners, it's unknown whether they'll finish for the reason that surprise team of the entire year or cellar dwellers again.

But at this point, I'm venturing to state that this club is better than their 18-20 record and definately will challenge for a playoff berth.

The lineup has so much offensive potential that doesn't have clicked until recently, and the biggest issue is finding consistency and leaving runners on base. Manager Eric Wedge may be mixing up the batting order lately and that is certainly helped, but he tends to change it even following it works. Then ever again, the team has played well the year of 2010 when bench players usually are rotated in and out regularly.

While the offense continues its inner battle to obtain consistent success, the pitching staff has turned things around dramatically since the beginning of the season. The starting rotation contains a permanent five who have all settled in nicely and appear more comfortable on that mound, while the bullpen went from unpredictable to trusted, with the injury to be able to Stephen Pryor not hurting up to anticipated.

The main factors that cause the turnaround are Wedge's elevated confidence in his beginners and his in-game coping with. He's gotten more aware of his pitchers and their own situational capabilities, something he needs to improve on with their hitters.

Another factor which contributed to Seattle's deficiency of success early on was the amount of games they played and not using a day off. They enjoyed 29 games in May, more than any many other team. But now of which they've had four shut off days in May, they might be playing much improved snowboarding. We'll see what happens during the upcoming road trip, in the event the M's will play 9 straight games in two different cities.

If when Eric Wedge gets a full grasp of his hitters and where they are able to play in the field, the offense will have the ability to score four or five runs every single day and help the pitching people immensely, one that allows fewer than four runs per game.

The Mariners also hold the potential to drive inside exponentially more runs with the new power. Out health of their 40 homers this months, 16 have come with the bases empty. Part of that's misfortune, but part of it happens to be putting the wrong guys at the wrong spot in this lineup.

When you've got two American League management in ERA in Felix Hernandez and Hisashi Iwakuma, the hall for success is really high. The Mariners aren't packed with superstars and they don't have a $100 million payroll, but they've finally got the pieces available to make an underdog go to the postseason. As long as Eric Wedge and also the offense come around and the sum of games played levels released, things will be getting better in the Emerald City.