Fess up, Mariners. Did you boot Bill Krueger from broadcasts because he's too honest?
This is the year, or so it seems. Aside from 2001, I've never seen a season in which the Mariners had a better chance to end their World Series drought.
They appear to be a really good team, not a great team, but that might be enough to win the American League pennant, and even the betting sites lend credibility to that line of thinking. The Mariners are listed at 6 1/2-1 to advance to the World Series, just behind the two betting favorites, the Yankees and the Tigers.
If they make it to the World Series, you can make a case for them winning the whole damn thing after a weekend when they swept the Padres in San Diego and the lowly Angels swept the Dodgers. If the Angels can go 3-0 against the Dodgers, certainly the Mariners could hold their own against them too.
As you know they're on top of the AL West at 27-20 after winning the first four games of their road trip, a pace for a 95-67 record.
Plus they're doing it without so many injured players, including Logan Gilbert and George Kirby, two of their best starters.
But there's another absence that bothers me more. Bill Krueger's disappearance won't impact anything on the field, it just lessens the enjoyment I get from watching Mariners' games.
If you're a Mariners' fan, you watch or listen to most of the games. The broadcasters are fixtures in our lives as much as the players. They're in our living rooms or on our patios, front and center, describing or analyzing the action.
Krueger was the best of a very good bunch for one reason to me, and it's the reason he's no longer on the ROOT Sports broadcasts - he never sugarcoated his comments on the team.
There's nothing I dislike more on the broadcasts than the constant habit of blowing smoke up our skirts, so to speak. For instance, no one will ever say the struggling Donovan Solano should be cut from the team, but Krueger would have.
We see what's going on with different players yet we're told that so and so is just temporarily scuffling, surely he'll get going soon, we just need to be a little more patient or some B.S. like that.
I get it, if I were instructed to say it's sunny on a rainy day to keep my job, I'd hate it, but I'd do it. With Krueger, if it were raining, he'd say he's getting wet and he's sick of it.
I've never understood why local broadcasters aren't allowed to just call the games objectively and to be critical when warranted.
I always felt like I heard what Krueger was actually thinking instead of concocted statements designed to keep his bosses happy.
Yet that kind of approach seems to have cost him his job. I'm not certain of that, and neither is Krueger, but I can't think of another reason why he wouldn't have survived the changes this year when MLB took over the ROOT Sports broadcasts.
'There was no solid response as to why,' Krueger told Jason Puckett on his PuckSports.com podcast last week. 'They had no real problem with me. They had a beauty pageant, and I wasn't pretty enough.'
Krueger didn't learn of his dismissal in a direct conversation - he found out after the fact. That was the most disappointing thing.
'I deserved to have someone get a hold of me, to give their rationale then go on their way,' Krueger told Puckett. 'With broadcasters it's like anything, it's subjective.'
A former major-league pitcher himself, Krueger could give us details, drawing from his own experience on the mound and in the clubhouse. I also appreciated his no-nonsense approach that lacked the new age acronyms but was filled with simple baseball substance.
Krueger took a break but is back now on his own podcast, 'Old School Baseball,' most of which revolves around the Mariners. You can find out more about it on X at OldSchool_MLB.
'This could be a new phase for me,' Krueger told Puckett. 'Now I have the openness to express myself with how I think and see the game with unvarnished and not homogenized responses.'
It's what we should be getting on a daily basis on the ROOT Sports stream. Two things are obvious - the Mariners are thriving but they blew it by waiving Krueger.
Jim Moore has covered Washington's sports scene from every angle for multiple news outlets. He appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 10 a.m. on Jason Puckett's podcast at PuckSports.com. He writes a Substack blog at jimmoorethego2guy.substack.com. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) @cougsgo.
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