Don’t blame the Mariners. They would have made it if MLB played like Islander Middle School

Once again, the baseball playoffs are underway, and the Mariners are sitting at home.

The team made an incredible run at the end of the season, but they fell just short.

But!

They would have made the playoffs … if only Major League Baseball operated like some local schools do.

A baseball season is like a competitive school. All year long, you get tested, over and over. At the end of the year, only the top few teams get to graduate – into the playoffs.

And just like in school, if a baseball team struggles early in the year, as the Mariners did in May, it’s hard to overcome that.

Like in school, if you fail a test at the beginning of the term, it counts against you the rest of the way – that failing score pulls your average down for the whole term.

But not at Islander Middle School.

Mary Joe Budzius, the principal at Islander Middle School on Mercer Island, explained:

“Early work, where kids receive either a zero for not doing the work, or demonstrate that they don't know the skill yet – that work sits there and penalizes children for their entirety of their learning throughout the rest of that year, and they can almost never recover.”

She says that traditional grading system sends kids the wrong message: that it’s risky to try new things and be wrong – you might not recover. “We tell kids they should be perfect right away,” Budzius said. “Where else are we expecting people to be perfect, right away on every new learning opportunity? It just seems so counterintuitive to learning.”

So this year, Islander is trying a new grading system.

Students are only assessed based on what they’ve learned by the END of the term.

Just think: You could struggle early -- like the Mariners did in May, when they had a losing record -- and still get a top grade if you finish as strongly as the Mariners did in September, when they had one of the best records in baseball.

"Isn't that what you'd want?" Budzius said. "Wouldn't that make for the most exciting playoffs, is that you have those teams that are clicking the most, showing that they are ready to make an exciting and dynamic postseason?"

If only baseball were like Islander Middle School.

Students there get a second chance.

But the Mariners? They’re watching the playoffs from home, regretting those days back in spring, when they were not yet what they would become.