How often do bad teams win 14 in a row?
Let's look to the last 50 years of history to find out how teams that win 14 in a row during a single season fare. Hint: It's pretty good.
For the past 20 years, the Mariners have been best known as the franchise that wasted Felix Hernandez’s prime.
Well, that and Ichiro’s transcendence, but that fact is diminished by the reality that a not insignificant portion of the fan base in Seattle remained way too agnostic with regard to Ichiro’s abject excellence.
But the Mariners have announced themselves as a team to be reckoned with first by winning 14 consecutive games heading into the All-Star break and then with Julio Rodriguez putting on a laser show during Monday’s Home Run Derby. He didn’t win the thing, but he did hit more home runs than anyone else has ever hit in the competition. The fact he hit 28 more homers over the various rounds of competition than the eventual winner gives you an idea as the shoddiness of the measurements used to calculate the winner.
Yes, it’s a heady time to be a Mariners fan. There’s even a glimmer of possibility the Mariners could – maybe even should – trade for Juan Soto, the Nationals outfielder who is fairly certain to be one of the world’s three best baseball players over the two and a half seasons remaining on his current contract. Larry Stone of The Seattle Times wrote a wonderful column on that, and yes, count me among those who want to see the Mariners trade for Soto so long as the package:
A) Does not include Rodriguez (absolutely not under any circumstances)
B) Does not include both Logan Gilbert AND George Kirby.
See what I mean about this being a heady time. So perhaps it would be best to pause for a bit of perspective right now on this Wednesday after the All-Star Game, which is typically considered the slowest day of the sports year. What does history tell us about the kind of hot streak the Mariners on?
How rare is a win streak of this length?
Pretty rare. The Mariners are one win away from matching the franchise record of 15 straight wins set in 2001. But given how long it took for the Mariners to notch a winning season, maybe franchise records aren’t the best measurement here. Let’s take a broader perspective.