Mariners open 2015 season with new faces, new expectations

A different Mariners team with different expectations will take the field Monday afternoon for their 2015 season opener.

BY SHANNON DRAYER

Apr 5, 2015, 10:40 PM Updated: Apr 6, 2015, 9:57 am

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Having followed up a winning season in 2014 with some significant offseason additions like slugger Nelson Cruz, expectations are high for the Mariners as they begin the 2015 season. (AP)

(AP)

In just a few hours we will no longer be focused on the Mariners on paper, or the spring training Mariners, or even the 2014 Mariners. In just a few hours a new Mariners team will take the field, and although there will be a lot of familiar faces, make no mistake, this is a different team. This team comes with expectations. Expectations that have been anything but quiet with a flood of national media, most of whom have picked Seattle to go far this season, coming through the clubhouse doors this spring.

“Honestly, I think we are kind of tired about hearing how good we can be, and seeing it,” Austin Jackson said last week. “I think we are ready to go out and prove it.”

Jackson has been there before from his days in Detroit. Those who have been here and only here have not. Perhaps their appreciation is a little deeper.

“Me and Kyle (Seager) talk about it all the time,” Dustin Ackley said. “Me, him and Felix (Hernandez) are the only ones who were here when we got here. You see all those times where we got kicked and were so far down and didn’t know what it would take to get to this point and now we are finally at this point where, okay, we can really do this. We just had a year where we almost made the playoffs and now we have added even more guys and everybody’s healthy. It’s like, man, this is one of those years [that] could be really special. I think that’s what everybody has been waiting for since we have been here.

“It’s crazy just to see how far we have come as a team.”

It didn’t happen overnight. What could prove to be the biggest step was taken last year. It was a confident clubhouse from Day 1 in 2014 but the confidence didn’t have a lot behind it. They were ready to take the next step, however. Manager Lloyd McClendon and his staff helped them take that step and this group learned how to win. A page was turned, according to Seager.

“We hear all the time, ‘It’s a young group, we’re going to be good, we’re going to be good.’ But last year to turn the corner and compete and be competitive and be a winning ballclub, it changes the mentality,” Seager said. “It erases any doubt you had in your head. We know that we can go out there and compete, we know that we can go out there and compete at that level and we can win. Then you have the offseason we did, you bring in the guys we did to go along with what we were bringing back, it’s something that there is a buzz in here. There’s something that’s hard to put into words but there’s a different feeling.”

It’s real. Players who have won have been brought in and those who have been here have finally experienced winning. As Seager said, they know they can go out and compete. They have something behind the confidence we have been seeing.

“I think basically it’s what Lloyd McClendon said. The attitude is that we are not the hunted anymore, we are the hunters,” Brad Miller said. “I really like that because it shows, hey, we are going to go out there and try to take it. We are going to try to win, not play to not lose.”

For all of the talk of expectations possibly being a harmful thing for the Mariners, one thing was missed in that thinking. These guys have expectations of their own. They know who they are and what needs to be done.

“We’re expected to be good and now we have a capable team to be really good,” Willie Bloomquist said. “On the flip side of that, we still have to go out and perform between the lines and do the things that we do to make us successful. I like our team a lot. We have a lot of guys that have a lot of potential to do some great things. Individuals and as a team we have the potential to do some real special things. I am excited about it.”

How high should the bar be set?

“I like what I see,” Fernando Rodney said. “All the guys come in good shape. They know they were close last year. Maybe they find the bat, maybe they find the pitch. I think we are looking good. I say, ‘Thank you, God’ if we stay healthy, we can go a far way.”

Robinson Cano is a little more specific.

“This year we look pretty good,” he said. “We have got a bunch of great guys and we are going to go out there and give it everything we got and we are going to try to bring the title to the city of Seattle.”

There is nothing more on the baseball field that the guy who takes the ball for Game 1 would want.

“We are hungry to win,” Hernandez said. “That’s what we are here for. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be good. We have got the team to go all the way. We look good on paper; we just have to go out there and execute and do our thing.

“Why expectations? We don’t need expectations. We just got to go out there and play.”