Mariners’ pitching should be more steady, but will that be enough?

I was asked last week on “Bob, Groz and Tom” about the top five things I’ll be keeping an eye on in spring training. The answer came easily.

Pitching, pitching, pitching, pitching and pitching.

In truth, there will be plenty to keep an eye on, but with a solid lineup, added speed on the bases and what should be an upgrade on defense, heading into the season it would seem we are looking at a this-team-will-go-as-far-as-the-pitching-takes-it kind of year.

The rotation will be led by Felix Hernandez, question marks and all. Coming off two down seasons, both general manager Jerry Dipoto and manager Scott Servais sought last week to lessen the expectations on Felix while at the same time express confidence that he has the stuff and ability to turn things around.

“Sometimes the worst thing is to be compared to the best version of yourself,” Dipoto said. “Felix has had a Hall of Fame career, and the fact that he has had consecutive years where he is not as quite as good metrically as he was in his mid-20s, that’s not shocking. That’s the way it goes.”

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In 2016, Felix posted his highest ERA since 2007 and career-worst walk and strikeout rates. His anything-but-normal season included seven weeks on the disabled list with a calf injury and a continued drop in velocity. After returning from the DL, Felix had a 4.48 ERA in his final 15 games, with the opposition getting on base at a .341 clip. He also gave up 13 home runs and 39 walks in 90 innings.

While he didn’t finish strong, he perhaps finished determined as he told reporters in his final interview, voice shaking, that this was not him. The King would be back.

Felix’s offseason work will be unveiled in two weeks in Peoria. Dipoto is optimistic about what we could see.

“The big thing for Felix at this stage of his career is to take this new version of himself and to re-craft it, and I don’t think that is out of the question,” he said. “He’s a very smart pitcher, he knows how, his secondary weapons are as good as they have ever been, and his presence is still real. He’s two years removed from being the hardest pitcher to hit in the AL, he’s never exceeded a hit an inning as a major league pitcher. We are counting on him to go out and do what he normally does, which is something in that 200-inning, 32- to 33-start range, sub-4 ERA. If he does that we are going to be very happy.”

The weight – and fate, for that matter – of the 2017 season will not be put entirely on Felix’s shoulders. It will be distributed among all five starters, a group Dipoto labeled perhaps best as “stable.”

“There is strength in the group,” he said. “We feel like we have five major league starters who are all middle-of-the-rotation up. If one has a resurgence, if one has an exceptional year, but if minimally all five just do what they usually do and what they have been doing for the last few years, we think our rotation is pretty stable.”

I am not sure “Stable Five” is something you would put on a T-shirt, but Dipoto is not concerned about flash.

“In this game, if you have a stable rotation and a bullpen that’s versatile, and in our case what we think is pretty good, that gives you a lot of advantage,” he said. “Night after night, if they can get us into and through that sixth inning, we don’t need the seventh, eighth, ninth to be magic for us in the starting rotation. Last year we needed that. This year we feel like we are in a little bit different spot. The depth that we are creating behind our starting five, we feel better about. We don’t want to start running the bullpen out in the fifth inning, so it was important for us to get competent, experienced major league starters that can get 18 outs a night, and we feel like this group absolutely can do that.”

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The bullpen that the starters will hand games over to should be improved. Like the rotation, if everyone remains healthy, there really aren’t a lot of questions to be answered in spring training. Edwin Diaz will close, and Nick Vincent and Evan Scribner should set up until Steve Cishek returns from offseason surgery to repair a torn hip labrum. They have lefties in Marc Rzepczynski and Ariel Miranda and power arms in Dan Altavilla, Shae Simmons and Tony Zych. Behind them, young arm depth.

A year ago, the Mariners were scrambling to fill out the pen at the end of spring training after losing Scribner and Ryan Cook to injury, acquiring Vincent in the final days before the opener. Joel Peralta was brought in as a non-roster invitee and ended up pitching high-leverage innings. Joaquin Benoit was hurt in spring training and his availability was never certain. The weakened pen was thinned out even more in season as they were leaned on when the starters struggled. The pen eventually sorted itself out and, for a time in late summer, it was electric. The inconsistency throughout the 162-game season, however, was costly.

Stable starters should help a better pen, and depth behind both should help keep the Mariners out of long periods where they have to lean too much on either group. Should The King find his crown, or another pitcher in the rotation have a peak year, we could see fireworks. We will find out at the end of the year if fireworks are necessary, or if steady-as-you-go is enough.

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