The Mariners have been promising a corner-turn for so long that the phrase has lost some of its meaning. A new prospect arrives, a new coordinator is hired, a new analytics philosophy is adopted, and the team’s faithful are asked once more to wait one more year.

This year is different in a way that is worth being honest about. Not different in the sense that a championship is coming. Different in the sense that the math has finally started to work.

The position player development pipeline, which was the franchise’s open wound for the better part of a decade, has produced a generation of players who can actually hit major league pitching. The bullpen, which was a coin flip year over year, has been reliably above average. The starting rotation has front-end stuff. None of those sentences could have been written with confidence five years ago.

What has not been answered, and what cannot be answered with prospects or processes, is the ownership question. Will this front office be allowed to spend like a club that believes its window is open? Or will the same patterns hold, with the same payroll ceiling, the same explanations about market size, the same losses in free agency to franchises that simply paid more?

The answer to that question will shape the next five years more than any single roster move. The math is working. The infrastructure is in place. What remains is a will, and a willingness, that the front office cannot supply by itself.

This is not a column about pessimism. The Mariners I am watching this season are the most credible team this franchise has put on the field since the early 2000s. I just want to be clear-eyed about what would convert credible into actually contending.

Spend.