THE FRONT ROW WITH JASON ELLIOTT: Saturday, February 27, 2016

It’s baseball season.

Or apparently it is drawing closer, with those Mariner Mondays on ROOT Sports soon being replaced with live games in the coming weeks.

Just how good this year’s version of the Seattle baseball team, remains to be seen.

WHILE IT might be a lot of entertainment to re-live some of those classic games from the 2015 season — Iwakuma’s no-hitter, Felix taking the mound, or Cruz hitting a game-winning RBI — it is almost as tough to watch.

If you’re a baseball fan, you can ignore that in some cases, they’ll skip ahead a few innings due to a lack of offense and nothing exciting happening until the later part of games.

Don’t get me wrong, baseball is baseball, and usually it’s worth re-living some of those games, but it’s really time to get down to the live stuff again.

Seattle has added plenty of pieces to its roster in the offseason in order to bring some more offense to the spacious Safeco Field surroundings.

The additions of Leonys Martin, Adam Lind and Nori Aoki should help bring the team some offense that was lacking a season ago. Martin and Aoki are more known for their speed than power, which is fine as they just need guys to get on base to set things up for the big three of Robinson Cano, Nelson Cruz and Kyle Seager.

And for the first time in a while, the Mariners have a little bit of depth in their starting rotation, with Wade Miley, Evan Schribner and Mike Montgomery competing for the final spot in the rotation.

Bringing in former Los Angeles Angels catcher Chris Iannetta could hopefully give the Mariners the lift they really need in the American League West, one they’ve needed for quite some time.

WITH A new manager, although unproven in Scott Servais, who knows exactly how things will turn out for the team this year.

Maybe the best thing that he’s done was keep hitting coach Edgar Martinez on the staff after the former Mariner took over toward the middle of the season last year.

If these guys have learned nothing else during the time in Arizona, hopefully it will be from THE best hitter in team history.

Baseball is a funny game sometimes, and you can’t help but can never underestimate a team with a reason to play hard during a season.

In case you’ve been without cable or newspaper service for the past couple of weeks, Seattle will celebrate the induction of Ken Griffey Jr. into Baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., this summer, and will celebrate him with a weekend full of events Aug. 5-7 at Safeco Field.

YOU NEVER know what exactly will motivate a team to find success in any given season.

Maybe it will be having the longest postseason drought in baseball?

It could be that this team is good enough, finally, to make a run at a division title.

Or maybe, it’s just motivation to give fans something worth watching coming out to see, outside of that weekend in August.

Whatever the reason, it’s just time to get back to baseball.

These reruns aren’t getting any easier to watch again.

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at jelliott@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JEPressSports.