The Mariners and Julio Rodríg...

Last year, it might have been Mitch Haniger, then the Mariners’ longest-tenured player. Or later in the season, maybe Carlos Santana, who only spent a few months in Seattle after coming over at the deadline but who arrived with postseason experience and the personality to command a clubhouse while serving as a conduit from the coaches.

Both those guys are gone now, leaving behind a young team in Seattle with plenty of dynamic potential and players who could get there eventually, but no current clear leader in the locker room.

So when the Mariners lost a lackluster game to a short-handed Yankees club to fall to 35-37 and 10 back in the division, it wasn’t a player who finally decided enough was enough.

It was Mariners manager Scott Servais.

They eked out just three runs across the first two games of a series this week in the Bronx, indicative of an offense that was 29th out of 30 teams in batting average, 20th in runs scored, and seemingly never got a big hit at the right time.

So Servais called a team meeting to express his frustration with what he considered non-competitive performances. The tone was stern. Some four-letter words were used.

“I think you've only got two or three bullets to fire throughout the course of the year,” Servais said the next afternoon about taking that kind of step to explicitly chastise his players. “I thought it was time to fire a bullet. I don't know. I don't know if it's going to resonate. You never know. We could go out tonight and do nothing again. But shame on me for not trying.”

That night, the Mariners scored 10 runs. A rookie starter, the team’s consistent strength last year and this one, no-hit the Yankees into the sixth inning. They won easily.

Seattle had magical 2022 behind Rodríguez

There’s a tendency in baseball to view the outcome of one-run games as kind of fluky. Sure, it’s the results that ultimately matter, but run differential is believed to be more reflective of true talent. Winning a bunch of games by just one run can seem like your team is a bad bounce or an untimely gust of wind away from having lost a bunch of games.

But winning close games is a hell of a lot more fun than losing them. And even if there isn’t science or stats to support this, having fun is helpful when it comes to surviving the six-month slog of slumps and streaks, bumps and bruises, mistakes and missed opportunities that constitutes even the best baseball seasons.

Where did Seattle's close wins go?

On June 20, 2023, the Mariners opened a three-game series against the Yankees. They arrived in New York 35-35, nine games back of the division-leading Texas Rangers, three out of a wild card spot. The standings compared to last year should have given them hope that the deficit was surmountable. And yet, it was hard to shake the sense that, around the clubhouse, the season was already slipping into disappointment.

“I feel like we’re getting the hits, we’re getting the good pitching. But we're not, you know, getting the big ones,” said catcher Cal Raleigh, who had become a hero in his sophomore season.

It feels like they’re not getting clutch hits or winning those close games because they’re not. The Mariners’ winning percentage in one-run games this year is just .364, .400 in extra-inning games. They’ve already had as many walk-off losses as they did all last season, and have just two walk-off wins. And when they’ve needed him most, Rodríguez has come up short, slugging under .400 with runners on base and just .262 when the game is “late and close.”

On a macro level, Rodríguez has been a bit better than league average. But if you’re looking for statistical evidence of pressing at the plate, it might look like this: The league average for swinging at the first pitch of an at bat is 29.5%. Rodríguez has always been more aggressive than that, but this year he’s offering at 42.2% of first pitches.

What Thursday night win in New York meant

I asked Servais if maybe what happened is this: Even the Mariners players who are only about as old as the drought itself felt like last year was the culmination of a long, slow climb. It ended just as things were getting good but with a clear sense that they would be back. They believed themselves to be better than a division series sweep and 2023 would be their chance to prove that. But, as is true for all teams, they showed up on Opening Day only to find themselves back at the bottom of the mountain — months away from where they feel like they left off — and without the sense that simply making the playoffs would be a heady accomplishment.

“It’s so true,” Servais said. “Everybody wants to just jump in; just get us back to that point. Whoa, you gotta earn it. You have to really earn it.”

Like Julio himself, the Mariners are finding that even the best rookie campaigns and magical seasons give way to a league that has adjusted around you — whether it’s in how you’re pitched at the plate or the expectations on a team.