THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Once again, I'm here to calm your fears with answers

It was such a pleasant Easter weekend, and yet …

My inbox is stuffed with messages from folks who are unhappy, puzzled, even angry.

Many of these readers seem to believe the Mariners didn’t do enough to beef up the offense, and/or protect themselves with quality arms in case of pitching emergencies.

I’ve heard from panicked Zags fans who see useful players leaving via the transfer portal, and not exactly a flood of talent coming the other way.

Seahawks junkies are, for some reason, terrified of the coming NFL draft — in which Seattle has a boatload of picks, including No. 5 overall.

One common theme in those complaints has been that, having read about Jalen Carter coming to visit the Seahawks honchos, they’re going to draft the defensive lineman from Georgia in that early slot.

A lot of Hawks fans fear Carter’s character — he WAS drag racing in town earlier this year, a horrible mistake in which two people were killed.

Oh, and taking a purely practical view of things, some readers think Seattle should draft a quarterback, a future star to take over from Geno Smith in a year or two.

FINALLY, I’ve gotten some questions from Wazzu partisans, most of whom are asking if the Pac-12 will fail to get a decent media deal and the conference could collapse.

Might they left to play in the wilderness of the Mountain West Conference?

Ah, wait, I almost didn’t get to the bottom of the pile here.

I also have an email from a Kraken ticket holder who is naturally excited about her guys making it into the Stanley Cup playoffs.

But even she was worried about winger Andre Burakovsky, who was the team’s leading scorer until getting injured the first week of February.

Since NHL teams barely will even tell you what’s happened to a player — it’s either an “upper body injury” or a “lower body injury” — you know they aren’t going to spew out information on recovery times.

However, Burakovsky HAS been skating with the team (in a non-contact jersey) for the past couple of weeks.

So …

Maybe?

My guess is that Burakovsky will miss at least the first playoff series, which will locked in and announced next Monday.

NOW, IT should go without saying that I can’t dive into all of this fretting at once – except to say that I’m sorry everyone seems to be worried about something.

Being a sports fan ought to be enjoyable, no?

Sometime soon, though, I promise we’ll get around to addressing just about everything on that menu of doom that readers seem to be feeling.

In fact, unless something dramatic happens that can’t be ignored, I plan to chat on Wednesday about Mark Few’s rebuilding job at Gonzaga.

For now, I’ll just say that if you’re worried about the Zags tumbling back into obscurity …

I suspect your fear is misplaced.

More on Wednesday, OK?

Now, as for the Mariners …

There’s the argument that the club should have spent some money on free agents and landed, say, two professional hitters with decent resumes to fill out the back half of the batting order.

As it stands, you have Kolten Wong platooning at second base — with Sam Haggerty for now, but ultimately with Dylan Moore, who is recovering from offseason surgery but is getting closer to joining the roster.

I’m a fan of Jerry Dipoto, but I didn’t like that idea back when they traded for Wong — so, maybe I’ll be proven in error, but I like the plan even less now.

One caveat …

The Mariners are only 11 games into a 162-game season, so ALL of our early judgments can turn out wrong.

THE FLIP side of the 11-game look is that Seattle already has lost two critical pitchers to injury — Robbie Ray, who looked so good in the spring, and bullpen anchor Andres Munoz.

Neither appears to have a devastating problem.

Ray felt forearm soreness in his first start, and obviously has to rest, while Munoz is suffering from shoulder inflammation.

Scans and X-rays on both guys look fine.

Meanwhile, though, there’s a stud missing from the rotation, and the bullpen is thin enough (Matt Festa had to be sent down when he couldn’t throw strikes), that manager Scott Servais said, seriously, that if Sunday’s extra-inning game in Cleveland had gone any further, a position player would have been needed to pitch.

That’s pretty severe, and might even have brought down some fury from the MLB, because Servais was indicating that he would not use regular relivers Paul Sewald or Gabe Speier in any situation.

They’d be pitching three days in a row, it’s still April, and Servais refused to risk any more injury.

As it was, Justin Topa and JB Bukauskas — both having just been promoted that day — each pitched an inning and survived.

Vet Penn Murfee, however, could not keep the game alive after flinging an attempted pick-off throw into center field.

Short story: The vaunted bullpen that was responsible for so many of Seattle’s one-run wins a year ago?

Uh, we’ve had a cast change.

For what it’s worth, Speier and Topa (neither of whom made the club for opening day) both look very good, and might be key pieces going forward.

For everyone who wrote in about the offense and the perceived lack of spending on it, we’ll address that in depth on another day.

As for the pitching shortage, it’s temporary.

Remember, baseball is a marathon, not a sprint.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press four times each week, normally Tuesday through Friday unless, you know, stuff happens.

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”