John Blanchette: Seeds of discontent present during M’s win in home opener

SEATTLE – Think of it this way: as customer incentivizing goes, the Seattle Mariners have not yet dipped to United Airlines levels.

Ugly as they were, the 1-6 start to the season and blowing a six-run lead in the ninth inning the other day are not dragging a ticketed passenger off the plane by his wrists and turning his face into a bloody pulp.

Still, those bummers may have contributed to Seattle’s 2017 home opener on Monday coming up short of a sellout – the crowd of 44,856 being the smallest first-day-at-Safeco-Field crowd since 2013, in fact. But more than that, for all the beach-party vibe clubs like to inject into opening day, it wasn’t hard to recognize some treacherous undertow, too.

Maybe you heard it over the TV.

“Booooooo!”

Hey, the Mariners are celebrating their 40th anniversary this season. Boos on opening day – that must be a sure sign Seattle is finally a baseball town like New York or Philly.

The jeers resounded at the end of the fourth inning of what would become the Mariners’ 6-0 blanking of Houston – the home nine having loaded the bases with no outs, and then following up with strikeout, strikeout, lazy pop fly.

It was akin to setting Safeco’s retractable roof in motion to block out blue sky and welcome sun.

And manager Scott Servais, for one, was not surprised – or especially peeved – at the reaction.

“I think our players know it’s been a rough week,” he said. “Obviously our fan base is on it. They’re watching everything we do. They’re fired up about the prospects of the team and coming out the way we did, it’s disappointing.

“It’s disappointing to everybody.”

If you listened closely, there had been some isolated boos earlier – during the pregame ceremonies and the introduction of reliever Casey Fien, who precipitated Sunday’s core melt against the Angels, when the M’s couldn’t make a 9-3 lead stand up. This, clearly, seems to be a fan base that’s fed up, that’s taken the many preseason guesses that the Mariners are a playoff team this year not just as a reason for optimism but as a demand for payment due.

And, yeah, 16 seasons removed from MLB’s playoffs, the M’s are more overdue than The Dude’s rent.

But here’s the thing: against the Astros, who took three of four from Seattle last week, the Mariners dug in the very next inning after that fruitless fourth and pushed across three runs. James Paxton bottled up the Astros for the second time in six days – 13 scoreless innings to start the season. The Three Big Sticks – Robinson Cano, Nelson Cruz and Kyle Seager – went from hitting a collective .156 to banging out six hits and accounting for five runs.

And when the Astros loaded the bases in the eighth and everyone went all acid flashback, reliever Dan Altavilla bowed his back and ginned up a called third strike and a weak foul pop.

“I wasn’t going to give in, no matter what the score was,” said Altavilla.

Well, it was a six-run difference, just as on Sunday – “and a few things were going through my mind,” admitted Servais. “Everybody’s mind.”

All day – even before the flight home on Sunday – Servais had done his best to empty his cache. He met the press gaggle at Safeco on Monday morning declaring it “Opening Day” – and not just home-opening day.

“It’s been a long spring-training,” he cracked.

This is the flipside to first-week catastrophe on the road: you can declare a mulligan. The shank off the tee might still go on the scorecard, but a new attitude can produce birdies on the ensuing holes.

It did not show immediate dividends. The M’s – 9 of 57 with runners in scoring position through seven games – went another 0 for 7 before Cruz’s sharp bases-loaded single knocked in the first two runs. There was also leadoff hitter Jean Segura straining his right hamstring and leaving the game after three innings – an ominous sign for a team trying to get by with a three-man bench.

But now the M’s power trio has raised its batting average 171 points in one afternoon. Paxton, who’s shown flashes of promise over four seasons, looks more locked in. And the M’s may have a find in rookie right fielder Mitch Haniger, who has three homers and a .918 OPS in his first week of steady work – and a veteran’s deaf ear.

“I didn’t pay much attention to it,” Haniger said of the brief bout of boos. “Eventually people will see we’re a good team. Our record doesn’t show it now, but I think it will at the end of the season.”

He’s not saying the sky’s the limit. Or even promising the friendly skies, for that matter.

But 90 more of Servais’ opening days wouldn’t hurt.