By Rick Anderson

For the Grays Harbor News Group

Even as long as I’ve written about sports, there are lots of things I don’t understand.

I don’t understand, for example, why professional franchises are prohibited from tampering with prospective free agents, but it’s apparently OK for pro basketball players to recruit their buddies in the interest of forming “super teams.”

Despite some explanations from authorities on the sport, I’ve never understood why 50 or more cyclists finish with exactly the same time on some stages of the Tour de France.

And I don’t fully understand the infatuation with a pitching “opener” in baseball.

I do understand, however, that the opener isn’t working for the Seattle Mariners.

Long a pet notion of baseball’s sabermetricians, the opener concept began gaining traction at the major-league level last year.

It involves beginning the game with a pitcher who would ordinarily be part of the relief corps. He works an inning or two, then gives way to a traditional starter or long reliever. The latter ideally pitches through the seventh inning or so before the manager begins employing his standard setup men and closer.

The presumed advantage of this tactic is that a short-inning specialist may be better equipped than the traditional starting pitcher to dispose of the opponent’s best hitters at the top of the batting order in the first inning — statistically, baseball’s highest-scoring frame.

That also minimizes the number of occasions the multi-inning hurler faces the opposition elite. Presumably there would have been benefits to the Mariners had erstwhile Seattle ace Felix Hernandez been confronted with his arch-nemesis, Angels’ slugger Mike Trout, one less time per contest.

Short on starting pitching, the Tampa Bay Rays used this concept successfully in making a surprising playoff push last season. Other clubs, most notably the Oakland Athletics, followed suit with mixed but generally good results.

Since manager Scott Servais and general manager Jerry Dipoto are both dedicated sabermetricians, it was inevitable that the Mariners would jump on the opener bandwagon this season — usually employing it in games in which Wade LeBlanc or Tommy Milone would ordinarily start.

In this case, however, the experiment has blown up in their faces.

The latest example came on Seattle’s final game prior to the All-Star break.

Matt Carasiti, one of the latest in a long line of faceless Mariner bullpen specialists, got the ball to open the game against Oakland. Six batters (but only one out) later, he was headed for the showers.

By the time LeBlanc put out the fire, the Athletics led 5-0. That was the difference in a 7-4 Oakland triumph.

This was far from an aberration. Seattle’s team earned-run average in innings in which it has used an opener is well into double digits.

Near the end of the classic disaster-movie parody “Airplane!,” the hard-bitten retired pilot played by Robert Stack delivers a free-form soliloquy to the lead character played by Robert Hays.

“Do you know what it’s like to fall in the mud and get kicked in the head with an iron boot?,” he ask at one point.

Mariner fans must feel a similar sensation whenever they see an opener trot to the mound.

As Servais may have learned by now, the dark side of the concept can be summed up in seven words.

It doesn’t work without a decent bullpen.

While Dipoto has neglected several immediate team needs as part of his “step-back” rebuilding strategy, Seattle’s relief pitching was particularly gutted.

An opener might have been effective at times for the M’s last season. Alex Colome, the hard-throwing veteran that the Mariners acquired in midseason to serve as a setup man for Edwin Diaz, seemed particularly suited to an opening role.

But like most of his bullpen brethren (including Diaz), Colome is toiling elsewhere this year. For the record, he is toiling pretty well, having already racked up 20 saves with a 2.02 ERA as the closer for the Chicago White Sox.

While it might comfort Seattle fans for Servais to acknowledge that the opener isn’t working, it is doubtful that it has cost the M’s many victories.

Regardless of whether they take the mound in the first or second inning, the likes of LeBlanc and Milone are destined to be lifted after approximately 90 pitches. That still places the onus on Seattle’s bedraggled bullpen.

In other words, if the Mariners don’t blow those games in the first inning, they are likely to cough up leads in the seventh or eighth.

At least with the opener, the agony is over earlier. That probably beats being kicked in the head with an iron boot.