FanPost Friday: A Playoff Push Grab Bag of Goodies

Looking at last week’s polls, plus hot takes on Mariners uniforms, magic numbers, and more!

Hello and welcome back to FanPost Friday. It’s been a wild and woolly week of Mariners fandom and baseball. The team at first appeared to completely face-plant out of the gates for a stretch run where they could conceivably and legitimately win their way into the playoffs, only to rebound with a series of comebacks and incredibly clutch hitting to avoid a sweep in Houston and then sweep Oakland in two games. Now they’re back home to face a completely cratered Royals team where the Mariners themselves will likely be their own worst enemy as they’ll need to NOT play down to their competition to ensure at least a series win. Chaos Ball is not dead yet, y’all.

For this week’s post, we’ve got a real variety grab bag for you. Let’s start with reviewing last week’s initial polls about the playoff push, which yielded some pretty interesting and wide-ranging results.

Let’s look at the initial BELIEF CHECK on these 2021 Seattle Mariners:

I see a lot of very healthy skepticism here, but also quite a bit of I BELIEVE THAT WE WILL WIN mixed with some casual belief (typo aside) a’la “let’s just see how this all shakes out, man.” Only 25 people said they absolutely refuse to believe this team can make the playoffs and I think that might be the most interesting facet of this LL temperature check because it tells me that despite all the years of disappointing seasons and late-season collapses, we are still, at our core, a mostly optimistic (but realistic) fanbase.

One of the other questions from last week yielded some fascinating results to me:

This topic came up in the LL staff slack channel and most people also chose Marco Gonzales, so it seems that I am definitely in the minority in thinking that Kikuchi or Flexen would be the better choice in a one-game playoff. Given the run of poor outings Kikichi has been on at this point, though, it definitely remains to be seen if I would be feeling the same way by early October. I mean, if the playoff game was tomorrow, then yes, given recent results I’d be absolutely on-board with Marco taking it.

Photo by Alika Jenner/Getty Images

Moving on, I’ve got a few new polls for y’all, plus a chance to update how you’re feeling about this whole PLAYOFF PUSH thing. Let’s get into it!

This tweet from Nate Alexander came along earlier in the week and I found it very gratifying. I am on record as being a huge fan of the teal uniforms and I love the fact that they’ve been wearing them on the road occasionally this year.

So the Mariners are an incredible 12-1 while wearing the glorious teal uniforms. This begs the question:

Now if you did not enjoy that question, you can skip this one, too:

Photo by Bob Levey/Getty Images

And finally, let’s get another VIBE CHECK among the LL community on how we’re feeling about this playoff push:

And for the gambling and/or mathematically-inclined, how many more wins down the stretch do the Mariners need?

Looking forward to seeing how these poll results fare. Please feel free to elaborate on your choices in the comments. Let’s have another good summer weekend and please, Mariners, do not let the Kansas City Royals piss in your Cheerios.