Blanchette: World Series spot may be premature

SEATTLE –Lloyd McClendon sits in his Safeco Field office, surrounded by reporters, and parries a question about his lineup card, which shows that he has decided to play his designated hitter in right field in the second game of the season.

“There was no deep thought to it,” he says, finally.

This sort of explanation is not likely to pass without reaction out there in Analyticstan, the front lines of baseball’s ongoing revolution. Someone will produce a number verifying that Nelson Cruz should not so much as shag a fly in batting practice anymore, and for some chewing on that will be as much fun as actually attending a game.

To say nothing of considerably cheaper.

For the Seattle Mariners, the challenge this season is to make that sort of amusement not just tangential but pointless.

Or in other words: Standings, baby.

With the Opening Day delirium behind them and the security blanket that is Felix Hernandez stowed until Sunday, the M’s and their devotees settled into the “normalcy” McClendon pined for after the storm – chilly April nights, the ball-deadening marine layer, the grim struggle to produce runs.

Yes, already that’s a part of Mariners baseball, again.

On Tuesday night, the M’s got a snootful of C.J. Wilson, the Los Angeles Angels left-hander who has been an even bigger scalpel to their soul than Jared Weaver, who was thwarted on Opening Day. The Mariners managed all of two hits – singles by newbies Cruz and Rickie Weeks – off Wilson, who retired the last 17 batters he faced. Seattle starter James Paxton made a 396-foot mistake to David Freese, and the Angels had themselves a 2-0 victory.

One mistake. New and improved M’s, same narrow margin for error.

It is unwise to print playoff tickets or commit hope-icide on the weight of a single game – unless it’s game 162, of course. But this was not exactly how general manager Jack Zduriencik and McClendon drew it up in the offseason.

The acquisitions of Cruz, Weeks and Justin Ruggiano – right-handed bats all – were to produce helpful platoons and more pop against nettlesome lefties.

“That doesn’t mean it’s still not going to happen,” McClendon said. “It’s baseball. Guy pitched a hell of a game.”

The key, then, to Seattle’s season is how many times the manager has to say that.

So what else is new?

The Mariners are in a funny spot. They have never been to a World Series in their 38 years of existence. They have not made the playoffs since 2001. With Kansas City’s Cinderella run last year, only Toronto has now had a longer postseason drought. Last year, they had the next-to-worst batting average of all American League teams – an improvement upon the previous five seasons, when they were last.

And there are reputable baseball minds picking them to reach the World Series.

Why not? They were a game out of the second wild-card spot last year, and two behind the Royals, who lost to another wild card, San Francisco, in the World Series.

“That’s a little extra motivation, just because you missed by a game,” said M’s third baseman Kyle Seager. “You look at what they did and the potential of it. We felt last year, if we got into the playoffs with our pitching staff, we would have liked our chances. As long we stay healthy, that remains true this year.”

There are two ways to look at Seattle’s jump to respectability last year.

• Twice in the previous decade, the M’s had poked their heads above .500. On both occasions, they lost more than 100 games the next season.

• They learned how to compete.

“One of the keys, I think, was that we were able to make slumps or tough times not drag on,” said catcher Mike Zunino. “We’d make adjustments to get back to winning ballgames in a shorter period of time.”

At least until September, when after climbing to 15 games over .500, they lost 11 of 15 – including the Hernandez meltdown against Detroit that cost him another Cy Young Award.

What the M’s have done is add personnel – Cruz, Weeks, Seth Smith – with playoff experience, as they added Fernando Rodney and Robinson Cano the year before. None would seem to have reached the downhill side of their careers. Zunino insists that Seattle has “a complete lineup now – 1 through 9.” But in fact youngsters like himself and Brad Miller have yet to completely prove that, and center fielder Austin Jackson hasn’t even made anyone forget Nick Franklin.

It’s unlikely Hernandez and friends are going to forget how to pitch. But somebody is still going to have to do some fence-busting.

Guess it’s time for deep thoughts, after all.