The Seattle Mariners start the second half of the 2012 season today with the worst record in the American League and as an afterthought in Major League Baseball.

More tellingly, or painfully, the team is once again in last place, or near last place, 29th or 30th, in key offensive categories: batting average (29th), slugging percentage (29th), OBP (30th) and OPS (30th). Fans are past the point of longing for the days of Griffey, A-Rod, Buhner and Edgar; we now long for the days of Randy Winn. My Kingdome for a player with a .350 on-base percentage.

Here are the offensive numbers of the first half of 2012:

Warning: the counting numbers are a little skewed (upward), since the M's have played more games than any other team in baseball. They're tied with three other teams at 87. Yet despite this statistical advantage, they rank no higher than 24th in any major offensive category.

Here's the question: How much of this results from Safeco Field, which as a reputation as a pitchers' park? How much better do we hit on the road than at home?

As it turns out, much better:

Warning: the counting numbers are skewed here, too, since the M's rank 26th in games played at home (41) and second in games played on the road (46). So our counting numbers are driven down at home and up on the road. Even so, what a surprise to find your 2012 Seattle Mariners second in all of Major League Baseball in road-game Total Bases.

But the percentage numbers are not skewed in this manner. They're skewed in the sense that we're a different ballclub at home and on the road. We're the Jeckyl and Hyde of teams. In slugging percentage, we're Alex Gordon on the road. At home, we turn into Dee Gordon.

But OPS is the true indicator of a team's offensive prowess, and the difference here is vast: .153. 11th to 30th. And not just 30th: 30th by a long shot. The second-worst home OPS belongs to San Diego, but theirs is .625 or 63 points above ours. The second-worst in the American League is Oakland's, but they're at .662. I'll let you do that math on that one.

Question: Has the discrepancy between the M's home and road numbers always been this bad? No, but...

The .153 difference between home and road OPS in 2012, if it holds, will be the biggest in the 13 full seasons the M's have played at Safeco. The previous biggest was .082 in 2000. Back then, the M's actually had the best road OPS in MLB. They ranked 23rd at home.

We've also had two seasons where we actually hit better at home than on the road, 2005 and 2008, but the difference there was marginal, and our MLB rank for each was more-or-less the same.

The column that most depresses me? Our MLB rank for OPS at home. In only one season, the 116-win season in 2001, did the M's finish top 15 in Home OPS rank. Every other year? We're second division. Bottom 15. Bottom feeders. We've finished 28th, 29th or 30th seven times in the last nine years. We've been dead last every year for the last three years.

And on the road? We've been dead last once, and 28th, 29th or 30th only twice in the last nine.

Of course these stats merely back up what most M's fans know intuitively. The major point is that never has the discrepancy between home and road numbers been so great as in 2012. The question is why. Statistical anomaly? The extra cold Seattle spring versus the super warm weather elsewhere? The idea that the doldrums of playing at Safeco is getting into the heads of these young players as surely as it gets into mine watching them?

One thing is certain: The team you're watching at Safeco is, year after year, and regardless of what they do on the road, one of the worst offensive teams in Major League Baseball. That's where the conversation begins.

Safeco 2012: As the runs have disappeared, so have the fans.