GM Dipoto disappointed with Mariners: 'We have underperformed, truly'

When the 2017 regular season began this past April, the Seattle Mariners looked like a serious contender in the American League West after general manager Jerry Dipoto flexed his trade muscles and continued to add pieces to a team that finished 10 games over .500 last season.

But the Mariners have not lived up to their GM's expectations thus far, sitting fourth in their division at 43-47.

"We have underperformed, truly," Dipoto said, according to Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times. "Particularly over the course of the last couple of weeks. We just haven't played well, and we are at probably our most, the longest stretch of positive health that we've had since Opening Day, and we've played perhaps as poorly as we've played all year long over the course of the last two weeks.

"It's disappointing because we had a nice stretch in the schedule that set us up to do some damage before we head to the All-Star break. We haven't taken advantage of it. We came out flat. We didn't show up effectively."

The Mariners won six straight from June 18-23 and looked to be in a good spot to make up some ground in the AL wild-card race with series against the Philadelphia Phillies, Los Angeles Angels, Kansas City Royals, and Oakland Athletics heading into the All-Star break, but they ended up winning just four of 12.

Dipoto mentioned the team's pitching as a major reason for its inconsistent first half. Seattle has used 13 different starters so far this season and sit 11th in the AL in rotation ERA. Staff ace Felix Hernandez has only made nine starts for the club after missing time with shoulder bursitis, while the acquisition of Yovani Gallardo has not panned out (5.65 ERA, .273 opp avg).

"We have not carried that same level of consistency or impact on the pitching end, and that's just reality," Dipoto explained. "That is not something that we can solve by snapping our fingers. Like I said, it's been some combination of injuries, some level of inconsistency, and whether it's the number of bodies we've had to churn through, or the reasons we've had to churn through them."