THE FRONT ROW WITH JASON ELLIOTT: Thursday, July 6, 2016

At the start of the 2016 baseball season, if you were to have told me that the Seattle Mariners — despite only winning 10 games in the month of June — had a chance to snap their playoff-less streak this October, chances are that I might have laughed a little bit.

While they’re still not 100 percent, and who knows what direction they’ll go out of the All-Star break, they’ve got a chance, albeit a shrinking chance to find their way into the playoffs this season.

GRANTED, THE team has had to survive most of the past few weeks without Felix Hernandez going out and pitching every fifth game as he’s been sidelined with a hip injury. The good news is that he’ll return sooner than later, maybe even the week after the All-Star Game once he throws a couple of rehab games.

Seattle’s rotation has been bitten by the injury bug plenty this season, with Wade Miley and Taijuan Walker also spending some time out of the lineup. Miley, who recently returned to the rotation, pitched in Everett during a rehab stint in June. Hernandez could be destined for the same fate in Everett and Tacoma. He could even start a game against Spokane this weekend, though it will be across the state of Washington if you’re itching to see that.

Earlier in the season, it didn’t seem as if the Mariners could buy a win at home, getting swept by Minnesota and Oakland, a couple of the American League’s worst teams to this point. But, as it sometimes happens, they’ve shown signs of how good they can be, winning 2 of 3 against defending World Series champion Kansas City as well as Cleveland, who up until last Saturday, didn’t seem as if they’d lose another game this season with a 14-game winning streak that spanned from Father’s Day almost to the Fourth of July.

With the Mariners trailing Texas by nine games entering a road trip that includes stops in Houston and Kansas City before the All-Star break, chances are that this week will be a good way to get going.

AT SOME point, to get where they want to go, the Mariners will have to get through both teams — whether at home or on the road — to have some success.

Sweeping Baltimore — which leads the American League East — at home to conclude the first half of the season over the weekend should be enough to build the confidence they need to get some momentum.

While Hernandez won’t be with the team this week, he should be back within the next two, and the second half of the season is where a team needs to play its best.

If they can win 50 to 55 games in the second half, then chances are they will find a way into the postseason, whether that be the wild card or winning a division title.

Don’t forget, Seattle managed to stay afloat when Ken Griffey, Jr. wound up on the disabled list in May of 1995 until mid-August with a broken wrist. All the team did after that was go on a historic run and advance to the playoffs for the first time in franchise history.

It worked once.

Why not again?

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d’Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at (208) 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at jelliott@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JEPressSports.