Hey, skeptics: These M's may be something special

CHICAGO — The Mariners' Miracle-Of-The-Night club did not convene on Wednesday, having apparently used them all up a night earlier.

Seattle's bullpen, summoned just once, was a veritable Club Med, rather than the sweatshop it had been for days, if not weeks.

The ninth inning was quick and uneventful, an event in itself on a trip which was threatening to invoke a new battle cry: "Last ups — so what?"

On a somber night in Chicago, the heavy-hearted Mariners, mourning the death of Jose Lopez's brother in Venezuela, fell 3-2 to the Cubs at Wrigley Field.

Hey, Ernie Banks was in the house. The Cubs had the karmic advantage.

It was one of those eye-rolling games of missed opportunities and near-escapes, and yet it didn't squelch the building sense that something special — dare we say magical — is starting to happen with this team.

If you've been watching lately, you've seen the signs. The improbable comebacks. The unexpected heroes. The crazy victories that bring to mind Jack Buck's famous call: "I don't believe what I just saw."

The initial temptation, of course, is to fight it, to believe it's all just an aberration, the surge before the storm. Cynicism is the natural off-shoot of three losing seasons, and skepticism its identical twin. Besides, have you seen those starters?

But the longer the M's hitters keep bashing, and the more the bullpen keeps escaping, and the tighter the AL West becomes, a belief is solidifying — within the clubhouse, anyway, where it matters most — that something is happening here.

What it is ain't exactly clear, not yet, but its byproduct is confidence, even entitlement. In sports, that's a good thing.

"Now we're starting to get a little swagger, and it's a good swagger," bench coach John McLaren said before the game.

"It's something where we feel good about ourselves. We play the game hard. We make some mistakes right now that could hurt us, and we need to correct those mistakes. We're talking about it, working at it.

"We have some intensity. We pull for each other, we laugh for each other, we pick each other up. That's the sign of a good team when you do that."

McLaren was a coach under Lou Piniella on the 1990 championship Reds team and on all his great Mariners teams, so he knows the feeling of a team finding its place in the baseball cosmos. He sees all the signs.

"It's a great feeling when guys pick up the slack when they're not really the big boys, so to speak," he said. "All those late wins, you get the confidence, like we're never out of it. We still got a chance.

"Teams in the past we've had around here, the good teams, we had that atmosphere. We had that attitude. And it rubs off on everybody."

Jarrod Washburn has seen it before, too, with the 2002 Angels, who started 6-14 and ended with a World Series trophy. He sees a Mariners' team starting to believe in itself. He knows the feeling is not universal. Not yet.

"Hopefully, it starts convincing other people in Seattle," Washburn said. "We knew we would have to come out and show everybody that we're as good as we think we are, for people to come back to the stadium and support us. But hopefully, we're opening some eyes and doing that."

And Washburn doesn't want to hear the usual addendum, that the Mariners' surge will be illusory if their starters don't step up soon and join the party.

He's well aware of their 5.55 earned-run-average as a rotation, and he doesn't need to be reminded of the toll that a succession of abbreviated starts (prior to Miguel Batista's seven-inning godsend on Wednesday) is having on the relievers.

"Yeah, it's the same thing you guys were saying in the beginning of the season about our offense," he said. "And we kept saying, 'Knock it off, they're going to hit.'

"At that time, we were pitching. Now you're saying it about us [the starters], and I'm going to say it again: 'Knock it off, we're going to pitch again.'

"I'll be the first to tell you, we're not pitching the way we're capable of, and the way a championship ballclub needs starters, a rotation, to pitch. We will turn it around and we will be more consistent, hopefully sooner than later."

The vision of an arm-bat synergy is enough to make any Mariners' fan salivate. For now, while provincial skepticism is still an issue, Washburn knows some other eyes are being opened: Their opponents.

"They think, 'Oh, these guys are playing good. They are going to be someone we're going to have to compete with this year.'

"Knowing the guys over in Anaheim like I do, at the start of the year they were saying, 'Hey, you guys have a good lineup. You have a good team. We think it's going to be you and us at the end of the year.'

"Then it was just up to us to go out and do that, because we thought the same thing."

Right now, it doesn't seem like such a crazy thought.

Larry Stone: 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com