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Seattle Mariners

Vince Grippi: Mariners have been on stomach-churning ride

Correspondent

The All-Star break is the de facto halfway point of the Major League Baseball’s season.

It isn’t a perfect mark, of course, as teams play a different number of games and, most importantly, the break always comes after the season is a game or two over the midpoint.

But, with no actual games on the schedule for a few days, baseball writers usually use the break to hand out midseason awards.

Awards? For the Mariners? A 43-47 team? We’re not going to give them any stinking awards. Not for this roller coaster of a season.

That’s what it’s been, right? Slow uphill climbs, quick falls, over and over.

A 2-8 start, then a slow steady rise back to .500 at 17-17. Then four consecutive losses – and 12 in 16 games. A hot streak, winning nine of 10 games, and its’ back up to .500 at 30-30.

Ten days later, they have fallen to 33-37. A six-game winning streak follows and the M’s are two games over .500 It’s June 23 and you can see the future.

Then the bottom falls out.

Since scaling the 39-37 peak, Seattle’s thrill ride has been mostly a fast descent. The M’s are 4-10 since. Nothing, not even Silverwood’s Timber Terror, has supplied more highs and lows this summer.

Or a more rickety ride.

There must be some sort of perverse enjoyment in all this for somebody. The players, maybe? Or general manager Jerry Dipoto? manager Scott Servais? It can’t be the fans. Even the ones with the cast-iron stomachs have to be reaching for the Dramamine right about now.

So who is in charge of this less-than-thrilling ride? We’re not sure, but have an idea where everyone is sitting.

In the front row, all by himself, is catcher Mike Zunino. You know his type. They have to be where the hills seem the steepest and the falls feel like Niagara. Heck, Zunino started the season falling like the Panic Plunge.

On May 4, the catcher was hitting .167 and was given a free ticket to Tacoma. Three weeks later he returned and skyrocketed – for a while.

From June 3 to June 23, Zunino was 23 for 63, a .365 average. He hit nine home runs and rove in 28. Talk about a quick ascent.

And then he fell. Even quicker. He’s 3 of 36 sine with two dingers and three RBIs.

We haven’t heard much about how he’s fixed recently, have we?

With Zunino dominating the front-row seat – he’s the guy in the souvenir picture with his hands up in the air and mouth wide open – the rest of the team has to find other places to sit.

In the back row, where the bumps don’t feel so bad and the ups-and-downs have a tendency to seem flatter, are the two veterans, Robinson Cano and Nelson Cruz.

They aren’t too excited. They never are. They’ve been on this type of ride before.

The back suits them perfectly.

Cruz is just doing what he always does, slugging the ball and playing through pain. His slugging percentage of .520 is a hair above his career average and his 17 home runs put him on a pace for 31, which isn’t as good as he’s done recently – he has 40 or more home runs each of the last three seasons – but is in line with career averages. Where the All-Star has excelled this season is driving in runs. He’s on pace for 126, which would be career best by 18.

And Cano? He hasn’t been as productive as usual, but there is a bit of a qualifier. He missed almost a two-week stretch due to injury and has been up and down ever since.

The duo are probably pretty comfortable in the back, waiting for the ride to level out and knowing there will be some sort of excitement just before the station.

Somewhere in between sit Servais and Dipoto.

It’s easy to imagine Servais as the guy who really hates roller coasters, but had to ride because, for some reason, his team got aboard.

He sites there, hands wrapped around the safety bar, knuckles white with dread. His eyes are closed most of the time and he’s silently saying a prayer asking for the damn ride to just end.

And Dipoto? he’s sitting next to his manager without a care in the world. His phone is out and he is furiously booking a fast-pass for the next ride.

He’s seeing how much room there is on Aftershock, because he’s heard it just keeps going up and up. After the multiple drops on this year’s ride, he’s hoping for something calmer, something a big more steady.

Aren’t we all?