Being a Mariners fan hasn’t been easy as of late. Forget the fact that they’ve never even been to a World Series since they began play in 1977. They haven’t even been to the postseason since 2001, earning them the longest drought in baseball. They also haven’t ever finished 5th in their division, but have finished in 4th place in 9 out of those 14 seasons, existing in the purgatory where you aren’t good, but aren’t bad enough to snag top draft picks. There’s good news though! Payroll has been trending up! And, now, the Mariners are sitting on a 15-11 record, first place in the AL West, a 50.8% chance to make the postseason per Fangraphs, and a 53% chance per FiveThirtyEight.

When we talked about the Mariners’ offseason moves, the trade that brought Leonys Martin over to play centerfield looked like unquestionable win, given the Mariners’ situation there last season. Even with a .185/.264/.407 slash line, Martin’s game-robbing defense has propped up his value enough to keep him in positive WAR territory. There’s also room for a little bit of optimism at the plate, as well, as his power appears to have come back and with five HR he has already reached his HR total from 2015 in about a quarter of the games. Among qualified hitters, his 32.6 K% puts him in the top ten worst in MLB, but his .213 BABIP is the 15th lowest in the league. If he keeps on striking out in a third of his plate appearances, it’s going to be hard for BABIP normalizing to dramatically improve his overall numbers, but he’s never struck out this much in the big leagues before, so it’s something to keep an eye on.

Robinson Cano’s resurgence after a disappointing 2015 (by his standards) is the biggest lineup story so far for the M’s. With nine home runs to date, his power looks to be back as well. Obviously, a return to form for Cano at this point is one of the most important things that can happen for the Mariners as a team. No matter how you felt about the $240 million, 10-year deal in the 2013 offseason, it was imperative that Cano deliver in the early part of the contract if there was any way that it wasn’t going to be a complete and total bust by the time it’s over and Cano is 40.

In 2015, Cano’s walking less and striking out more and caused some folks to wonder if Cano’s contract could be the worst in MLB (answer: no), but, so far, he looks like his former self again this season with both his BB% and K% trending back towards his career percentages. The best part is that, his .238 BABIP suggests that we could actually see Cano improve this season. While he’s 33 and we can expect him to run out fewer grounders than in the past, it’s unlikely that explains an over 80 point drop from his career .322. With any luck, Seattle is looking at the player that perpetually gets MVP votes for at least another season.

While the expectations of Kyle Seager are admittedly lower than Cano, he’s around until at least 2022 and just a couple of years away from making $19 million a year, so it’s a matter of degree when it comes to expectations. Seager’s .181/.274/.436 slash line looks pretty ugly on its face, but there’s plenty of reason to believe that he’s going to improve. He’s actually walking more than he did in his 2014 All Star season (9.4% vs. 8.0%) and striking out less (15.1% vs. 18.0%). His power is higher than ever before (.255 ISO vs. .174 for his career). The culprit, once again, his BABIP: an astonishing .153, that makes him the second unluckiest player in all of baseball right now in terms of balls finding gloves. Where there’s some hope for Martin and reason to believe again in Cano, Seager is, by far the biggest outlier here, as he’s having his best season to date by peripherals, but is just having some unbelievably rotten luck. There’s simply no way this can continue over a full season.

At .267, the Mariners as a team have the 3rd lowest BABIP in all of MLB, and Martin, Cano and Seager account for a big chunk of that. The Mariners pitchers, both the rotation and relievers, have been comfortably in the top ten to date by most metrics. With a little more luck, some hits are going to drop and, if they do, Seattle looks like a good bet to get a little separation in the AL West and go on to their first playoff berth in 14 years.