Predicting Mariners' season record

ESPN Chalk's Joe Peta is sharing his season win total projections for every MLB team, including a reason for optimism and pessimism.

Plus, he recommends an over/under play, or a pass. This is the entry for the Seattle Mariners.

Seattle Mariners

Reason for optimism: Holes were patched on offense and the right balance now exists to take the division -- and home-field advantage for the playoffs.

Reason for pessimism: Year-to-year bullpen variance can be very kind ... or very cruel.

If you used only one indicator to reveal the possibility of a large swing in a team's fortunes from one year to the next, one of the best places to turn would be bullpen ERA in the prior season. Due to the nature of small sample-size results occurring in high-leverage game situations, bullpen ERA has an outsize effect on a team's results but doesn't correlate nearly as well from year to year as starter's ERA, offensive production or even team defensive prowess. There is no better poster child for this phenomenon than the Seattle Mariners in 2013 and 2014. With an ERA of 4.58, the Mariners had the 28th-ranked bullpen in terms of total runs allowed in 2013 (273 runs in 505 innings pitched.) Last year, they turned into the stingiest bullpen in baseball, allowing just 156 runs in nearly the same number of innings (498). That jaw-dropping decrease of 117 runs allowed accounts for roughly 13 games of the 16-game improvement the Mariners posted -- 87 wins last year versus 71 in 2013. (Approximately nine runs equal a win in the current MLB scoring environment.)

The problem with having the best bullpen in baseball is that regression to the mean cuts both ways. In 2015, at least the Mariners know bullpen continuity won't be a problem; of the seven relievers who tossed at least 40 innings last year, only Joe Beimel is no longer on the roster. Additionally, the collective skill set of the bullpen -- and frankly, from a skill perspective, the 2015 pen is helped by Beimel's departure despite his 2.20 ERA last year -- suggests league-leading talent. Still, even if Seattle regressed only to a top-five bullpen with a 3.00 ERA, that would lop a couple of wins off last year's 2.60 ERA performance.

That's the end of the cold water for Mariners fans. Even if the bullpen takes a step back from its fabulous 2014 performance, Seattle looks poised to score a lot more runs this year. The Mariners had, by far, the least productive group of outfielders and designated hitters in baseball last year. Per FanGraphs, only the Mariners had sub-replacement play from that group as a whole. The Mariners figure to improve on that greatly this year with the additions of 2014 home run champ Nelson Cruz, Seth Smith and a full season of Austin Jackson. At the same time, Seattle mercifully ended the Justin Smoak era at first base, which may finally allow them to get league-average production from the most important offensive position on the field. Logan Morrison is no All-Star, but he should provide more power than Smoak while getting on base more frequently. Morrison, though, is just a placeholder until power-hitting prospect D.J. Peterson is major league-ready.

With the new bats in the lineup surrounding the sublime Robinson Cano and 2014 breakout-star Kyle Seager, Seattle has the potential to increase its year-to-year run total as much as any other team in the majors except the Red Sox.

That's especially good news for a fan base that doesn't want to see another year of outstanding starting pitching come to an end in September. Felix Hernandez turned in his best season ever in 2014, which is certainly saying something for a player who has finished in the top five in Cy Young voting four of the past six years. Still, he was never better than last year, posting a 2.14 ERA supported by a career-high strikeout rate and a career-low walk rate, all while increasing his ground-ball rate to a seven-year high on the limited number of balls that were hit into play. After Hernandez, Hisashi Iwakuma posted good enough numbers to be the ace on a lot of teams. The rest of the rotation has some questions, but they work in front of a strong defense, and the M's hope that Taijuan Walker and James Paxton are ready to shoulder a full season worth of starts.

There are question marks, to be sure, and the Mariners reside in a very competitive division, but they finally established themselves as contenders last year. Expectations are high, but it doesn't appear that Vegas has fully factored in how much better the offense can be this year. If you believe, as I do, that the Mariners can score at least 50 more runs this year, then the team that had a plus-80 run differential last year has a very realistic blueprint in place to win more than 90 games in 2015, even with some bullpen regression. This makes for a juicy "over" call on the current 87.5-win market.

Despite the futures odds, it looks as if the Mariners, not the Angels, will win the AL West.

2015 projection: 92-70 (first, AL West)

Bet recommendation: Over