After their sweep of San Diego, are the Mariners on the verge of turning their season around?

After totaling 12 runs in back-to-back shutout victories over the Padres, the Mariners head to Oakland for four games against the division's worst team. (AP)

It’s hard not to flip-flop with the Mariners. A few days ago, I wrote something about them being borderline awful. Today I feel different, not necessarily rosy but somewhat hopeful.

I still think they have too many holes to win the American League West or make it to the playoffs as a wild-card team. But when you look around at the other teams in the league and in the Mariners’ division, it’s not as if they’re trying to chase down a bunch of uncatchable juggernauts.

The division-leading Astros have won four in a row and just swept the Royals, the AL’s best team. But I’m guessing that Houston will be hard-pressed to keep up its current pace. I say that simply because the Astros have a lot of young players who have never been in a pennant race, and I’m guessing the pressure might rattle them in September. Short-term, Houston will have to play without center fielder George Springer, who’s headed to the disabled list with a bruised wrist.

But forget the Astros, who are 9.5 games ahead of the Mariners, and look at the wild-card race. The Mariners are only five games behind Minnesota, Tampa Bay and Toronto, all teams that are four games over .500.

The Mariners are 36-42 and now play four games in Oakland against a team that’s playing better but is still one of the worst in the league. And they might get a break. Sunday’s scheduled starter, Sonny Gray, might not pitch against the Mariners. He has spent two nights in the hospital this week because of a stomach ailment.

It’s easy to get discouraged with the Mariners because they’ve fallen woefully short of expectations thus far. When they lose, they often look terrible and make you wonder how anyone could have thought they’d contend for a World Series this year.

But when they play like they did against San Diego, sweeping and shutting out the Padres in two games, you think about the flickering possibilities.

What if Robinson Cano continues to hit like he did Wednesday afternoon, going 4 for 5 with three RBIs? What if Brad Miller keeps hitting like he has over the past five games? What if the Mariners just scratch out three or four runs a game? That might be enough to win in the games started by Felix Hernandez, Mike Montgomery and Taijuan Walker.

I’ve rowed out to Fantasy Island and thought about what the Mariners would look like in a wild-card playoff game with Felix starting, and the first two games of the divisional playoff with Montgomery and Walker starting and then Felix coming back to pitch in Game 5 if necessary. If they could somehow get to the playoffs, I’d take my chances with those three starters against any AL team and the Cardinals or any other NL team in the World Series.

But trust me, if they lose three of four to the A’s, I’ll insist that I never wrote what I just wrote and will turn that dinghy around and put a 90-horse Evinrude motor on that sucker and speed away from Fantasy Island as fast as I possibly can.

In the meantime, the Mariners sound like they’re going to promote Chris Taylor again. He was pulled from the Rainiers’ game in the fourth inning Wednesday night. I never thought he got a fair shot with only 63 at-bats in his first call-up this season. Taylor will improve the infield defense, and I still like the idea of Miller being the every-day left-fielder. Potentially, he could improve the outfield defense.

This is a huge start for Roenis Elias tonight. Hisashi Iwakuma is ready to return and will probably replace Elias in the rotation unless the lefty from Cuba is dazzling this evening.

I hope he dazzles because I’d rather see the rotation stay as is. I know Iwakuma’s been fantastic in the past, but in the more recent past, April of this year and September of last year, he’s been less than stellar. I’m not convinced that a healthy Iwakuma is a better option than Elias.

So we’ll see what happens in the next series. Maybe the Mariners looked that good in San Diego because the Padres are that bad. Or maybe they’re on the verge of bouncing back.