The difference was the 2015 Mariners were put together by a bumbling fool and these Mariners were put together by design and this set of circumstances was in the acceptable results window.
Meg Rowleythis is a flawed comp because the pitching was much, muchhhh worse, and the whole deal more boring, but sometimes watching the 2026 Mariners feels the same way watching the 2015 Mariners did, which is to say, pretty bad