Ichiro Suzuki

Solid pitching and waiting for the A’s to implode—such has been the formula for success for the Mariners in their first two games this season.

The first part of that equation was Jason Vargas’ impeccable performance on the mound Saturday night that kept the M’s in the game. Showing impressive command of his pitches, Vargas nearly rivaled King Felix’s gem Friday night. He mixed his different pitches with success and kept the A’s off balance all night.

Entering the 2011 season, the Oakland Athletics bullpen was projected to be one of the deepest and most solid relief cores in baseball. After the first two games of the season, the bullpen looks anything but what was projected.

Saturday night the Mariners roughed up the Oakland bullpen for the second night in a row to give the A's an 0-2 start for only the second time in their past 12 seasons.

Solid pitching and waiting for the A’s to implode—such has been the formula for success for the Mariners in their first two games this season.

The first part of that equation was Jason Vargas’ impeccable performance on the mound Saturday night that kept the M’s in the game. Showing impressive command of his pitches, Vargas nearly rivaled King Felix’s gem Friday night. He mixed his different pitches with success and kept the A’s off balance all night.

Saturday night, Ichiro Suzuki connected on a pitch from Oakland reliever Brian Fuentes to surpass Edgar Martinez for the Seattle Mariners' franchise lead in total hits (2,248).

It's no surprise; throughout Ichiro's career, he has been a record-setter for the Mariners.

Everything looked a bit different on Opening Day today as I watched the Mariners after six months of waiting. Maybe it was because of the new ROOT Sports look instead of FSN. Maybe it was all the changes the M’s had made to their team in the offseason.

Maybe it was the fact that we were missing Dave Niehaus and his sweet, sweet voice...I found my eyes misty as I watched the pre-game Opening Day introduction narrated by Niehaus.

Every year the Mariners come out with a new set of five or six commercials in which they feature their most exciting players.  This year we got to meet Larry Bernandez and watch Ichiro hit tic-tacs.  The marketing team always comes up with something pretty clever.

Here's a look at some of the best:

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It is not that I don’t like these outfielders; it’s just that I feel like their ADPs (courtesy of Mock Draft Central) have them going a little bit earlier than I’d prefer to call their names:

About a month ago, I wrote about some bold predictions for this upcoming Mariners season. In it, I said that Ichiro will win a batting title.

It really isn't an insanely bold prediction since this is something entirely possible in any given season with Ichiro. That doesn't make it something that is a lock, though, either.

I'll expand on that prediction a bit, and give five reasons that show he can still do it.

How do you fix a team that has lost 100 games twice in three seasons?

That's the glaring question that general manager Jack Zduriencik and manager Eric Wedge are tasked with in 2011.

After a few nice trades and additions propelled the team a giant step forward in 2009, they took another giant step back in 2010. Though most assumed that '09 team overachieved, the additions to the club last season led those same pundits to believe we'd at least see a similar outcome, perhaps even a better one.

It's time we all take a breather from worrying about the sports themselves and focus on the players involved. This article is written with the intent of recognizing that there are bigger things that we should be focusing on at this time in the world rather than sports. On 3/11/2011 an unprecedented 8.9 earthquake rocked the country of Japan. It brought devastation, injuries, life loss and widespread panic but that was only the beginning.