With a Wink and a smile, Mariners streak at 10

Jesse Winker returned from a six-game suspension with a new stance that's actually his old stance and a pair of homers that point to some second-half upside.

Being a Mariners fan means you’re always waiting for the but.

It has been that way from the beginning for a team that entered the American League in 1977, but didn’t post its first winning season until 1991. The Mariners had four future Hall of Famers on the team at the same time in the 1990s, but failed to win the World Series. The Mariners matched the record for regular-season victories in 2001, but haven’t made the playoffs since. See what I mean about the but? Maybe that’s the reason I find myself wanting to hang a qualifier on the Mariners’ current run of success.

Yes, the Mariners have won 10 in a row – the team’s longest win streak in 20 years – but all they’ve really done is dig themselves out of the whole they got themselves into. Sure, the Mariners have won 18 of their last 21 games, but the current run of sterling pitching isn’t all that sustainable.

Enough of that. Let’s cut the but off the excitement. It’s time to lean all the way into this because while the Mariners haven’t guaranteed themselves anything other than a chance to have a meaningful second half of the season, there are lots of reasons to think there’s more where this came from.

Let’s start with Jesse Winker, who returned from his suspension for being a Buffalo-born gangster with a new batting stance and a home run in each game of Wednesday’s doubleheader at Washington. Here’s a video showing the difference: