As well as the Mariners played all season -- and make no mistake, they were tremendous -- their lack of a real threat in the bottom three or four in the order was a problem in the postseason, and became more so when Edgar and Boone stopped hitting.

And so the most successful summer in Seattle baseball history ends in late October just in time for the cold autumn rains to return to the city. The Mariners won an AL-record 116 games during the regular season and four more during the playoffs and none of it mattered because they still finished three victories short of the World Series. The final loss was Monday night by a 12-3 score at Yankee Stadium, the same site where their season ended last October.

Better make that a triple-tall this morning, Mariners fans.

For much of the season, this city's giddy fans celebrated the best team in baseball, stuffing All-Star ballot boxes as if they were on old Mayor Daley's payroll, cheering a 5-foot-10 MVP candidate, falling in love with a 160-pound batting champ and filling a half-billion dollar stadium until it overflowed like a cup of Arabian Mocha Java left unattended at a Barista espresso machine.

As the victory total piled so high that Jon Krakauer no doubt wanted to write a book about his futile effort to climb it, I kept looking at the box scores and wondering how the Mariners were doing it. Granted, no one had a deeper starting rotation or better bullpen. The Mariners also had Ichiro leading the league in batting, Bret Boone leading, unbelievably, in RBIs, and Edgar Martinez doing his usual thing as the game's best DH. But a team with Dan Wilson, Mark McLemore, David Bell, Al Martin and Carlos Guillen frequently in the lineup leading the majors in runs? It didn't make sense.

Whether it made sense or not, the Mariners kept scoring and kept winning. Game after game, Seattle played superb defense behind excellent pitching and shrewd managing while hitting in the clutch again and again. They did it so often that they inspired a new Seattle marketing phrase -- "Two outs ... so what?" By late August I finally gave in and became convinced that yes, there was something special going on here, that this truly was a team significantly better than the sum of its parts.

And then came the postseason. And it all ended. The Mariners scored 14 runs in Game 3 Saturday and scored only 10 in their five losses this postseason. Boone and Martinez slumped badly and without them, the final four spots in the order looked very weak indeed. Meanwhile, Piniella could do nothing to salvage a victory other than issue his terrific and wildly entertaining Game 6 guarantee. If only his hitters could have backed up his confidence.

When did the 116-win Mariners jump the shark? It's tempting to say when the season ended but I think the problem happened earlier, back in July when they failed to add another proven hitter to the lineup.

It's easy to see why they didn't. They led the division by 19 at the break and led the majors in runs. There was a feeling that it was best not to fix something that wasn't broken, to upset the marvelous clubhouse chemistry.

Meanwhile, Oakland went out and traded for Jermaine Dye.

General manager Pat Gillick has done a great job in two years in Seattle, signing Ichiro, John Olerud, Bret Boone, Aaron Sele, Kazu Sasaki, Jeff Nelson and Arthur Rhodes. That's an extraordinary track record -- seven prominent free agent signings and they all worked out even better than expected.

The problem is he's done nothing to fill the club's needs during the season. Last year after the Yankees added David Justice and Denny Neagle, Gillick's July addition was awful Al Martin ($5 million a year), followed in August by backup catcher Chris Widger, who has batted 11 times while earning more than $2 million. This year he added no one in July, then signed double-secret backup catcher Pat Borders and third baseman Ed Sprague.

As well as the Mariners played all season -- and make no mistake, they were tremendous -- their lack of a real threat in the bottom three or four in the order was a problem in the postseason, and became more so when Edgar and Boone stopped hitting. Yes, nearly everyone slumped at the same time, but that's often the way it works in the postseason when the best pitchers are giving everything they have. And the better bats you can send against them, the more times you could hit someone like Dye, the better chance you have.

We'll never know how a midseason addition might have helped Seattle this October, just as we'll never know whether any of the three home runs hit in Game 4 would have cleared the fence had the wind not picked up in the eighth inning. All we know for sure is that despite setting a record for victories, despite winning their division by 14 games, despite leading the majors in runs, despite leading the majors in fewest runs allowed, despite scoring 300 more runs than they allowed -- despite everything -- the 2001 Mariners and their fans will watch the World Series from the same spot as very Seattle team ever has. The living room couch.

One hundred and 16 victories ... So what?

Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com.