Most observers believe the Seattle Mariners missed the American League playoffs for the 16th consecutive season primarily because of a huge number of injuries suffered by their starting pitchers.

I’d go along with half of that analysis.

The M’s, to my mind, missed the playoffs due to foreseeable injuries suffered by their starting pitchers and because they were one of the worst fundamental teams in baseball.

The latter reason is more disturbing, because there may not be much management can do about it.

Despite incredibly generous official scoring at home, the Mariners were charged with 103 errors — 11th in the 15-team American League. They committed five errors in the first inning alone during a 10-1 loss to the New York Yankees in late August.

Compiling baserunning gaffes is a more inexact science, but it’s a cinch Seattle also ranked among baseball’s leaders in that dubious category.

The M’s possessed some defensive talent, but were woefully erratic in the field this season. Kyle Seager, for example, has regressed from being perhaps the best defensive third baseman in the American League to one of the worst during the past two seasons. Nobody, including Seager, seems to know the reason for the tailspin.

The baserunning blunders have been equally inexplicable.

In youth sports, the responsibility for fundamental mistakes usually falls on the coaching staff. That isn’t necessarily the case in major league baseball. By the time he reaches a major league roster, even a young ballplayer is expected to know how to play the game.

By the nature of professional sports, Mariner manager Scott Servais’ options to fix the problem are limited.

He can’t very well send Robinson Cano to the minors, for example, for inattentive baserunning. Levying a $100 fine against a player making $20 million per season is even more ludicrous.

When hired as Boston’s manager in 1967, Hall of Famer Dick Williams (later a Mariner skipper) took a “this-is-a-baseball” type approach to drill fundamentals into his traditionally underachieving team during spring training. The Red Sox unexpectedly made it to the World Series that year, but it’s logical to assume that type of condescending instruction wouldn’t fly with today’s athletes.

Meanwhile, much has been made of the injuries that sidelined pitchers Hisashi Iwakuma and Drew Smyly for the entire season and Felix Hernandez and James Paxton for significant portions of the campaign.

The M’s may have been unlucky with the magnitude and timing of the injuries. But all of the above-listed pitchers had a history of health issues, something general manager Jerry Dipoto might have considered when he assembled the roster.

Hopefully Dipoto doesn’t agree with a recent article suggesting that — with Paxton, Hernandez and late-season pickups Erasmo Ramirez and Mike Leake returning — the M’s have their 2018 starting rotation mostly set.

Paxton performed so well early in the season that he was even considered a Cy Young Award candidate. A strained pectoral muscle, however, put him on the shelf for much of the stretch run. Unfairly or not, the big southpaw from Canada has been unable to shake the public perception that he turns two-week injuries into two-month stints on the disabled list.

It’s clear that Hernandez’s body is breaking down due to the heavy backlog of innings he threw in his early 20s. At the age of 31, King Felix still has time and the talent to re-invent himself as a Greg Maddux-type finesse pitcher. But, in the wake of two injury-riddled seasons, his durability is a major question mark.

Leake and Ramirez are journeyman pitchers who were generally effective in limited action in Seattle but aren’t great bets for long-term success.

If Dipoto is smart, he’ll need to fill at least two slots in the rotation through off-season trades or free agent transactions.

Even with fewer mistakes and more reliable pitching, the Mariners weren’t a match for the younger and more gifted Houston Astros in the American League West this season.

It nevertheless was frustrating that the wild-card berth that was Seattle’s for the taking went to the Minnesota Twins, a 100-loss team in 2016.

The Twins, however, committed only 78 errors — second lowest (behind Cleveland) in the American League.

That reinforces a fundamental baseball precept: You have a much better chance of beating the opposition if you don’t beat yourself.