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Seattle Mariners
Scouting Report
By the Numbers | Players To Watch | Projected Roster
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It isn't often that perennial Gold Glove winner and MVP
candidate Griffey doesn't run down a fly ball hit to
center.
(Chuck Solomon)
| As if we
needed further evidence that there is no place in modern
baseball for sentimentality, consider the case of
Mariners v.
Randy
Johnson. Over the past three seasons, the Mariners ace went 43-6;
won the '95 Cy Young; won the deciding game of the 1995
Division Series against the Yankees—surely the most
significant moment in the club's history—pitching in
relief on one day's rest; and
last year he won 20 games with a club record 2.28 ERA, twice
notching 19 strikeouts in a game. So how did the Mariners
show their appreciation? General manager Woody Woodward
spent much of his off-season trying to trade his
34-year-old pitching star for
younger, less-fragile talent. Nothing personal, mind you. Just
business.
Johnson, after all, has a history of back trouble,
including surgery to repair a herniated disk in 1996, which
limited him to only eight starts. That would make anybody
think twice about signing him to a long-term deal, as would
Johnson's asking price,
which is in the $10-million-a-year range. Since Johnson is
in the final year of his contract, the Mariners felt their
only option was to explore a trade before they lost him to
free agency.
A disgruntled Johnson arrived at spring training insisting
he would not talk about his contract situation, then he
promptly began answering questions about it. "What's
funny is that I know how important I am to this team, so I
thought I would get an
extension and finish my career here," Johnson said.
"But now they've asked me to get them to the
postseason again and then see myself
out."
Woodward admits that the primary reason that Johnson is
still with Seattle is that he could mean the difference
between the club winning and not winning the World
Series—if they should get that far. "We would only
have made a trade if it didn't hurt our
chances to win a title," Woodward says. "When we
couldn't get a top starter in return, we decided to stick
with the best pitcher in the game and try to win with him.
That puts a lot of pressure on us to reach our goal this
year."
Are these the inevitable growing pains for a franchise that
manager Lou Piniella likes to call "the new kids on
the block"? Having failed to make the playoffs in
their first 18 years of existence, the Mariners won the
American League West two of the
last three seasons. But they have yet to win an American League
pennant, thwarted last year in the Division Series by the
Orioles, who beat Johnson twice during the regular season
and twice in the postseason. "We worked so hard last
season to get on the big
stage, and then we got humiliated in front of the whole
country," shortstop Alex Rodriguez says. "We owe
it to ourselves to earn another chance. Who knows? This
could be a do-or-die season for us. This group might not
stay together much
longer."
Indeed, for new kids on the block, these are some ancient
Mariners. Designated hitter Edgar Martinez and lefthanded
starters Jeff Fassero and Jaime Moyer are 35. The team's
heart—centerfielder Ken Griffey Jr., Johnson, Rodriguez,
rightfielder Jay
Buhner, Martinez and catcher Dan Wilson—accounts for $28 million
of this year's $52 million payroll, and leftfielder
Glenallen Hill is the only player in the lineup not making
at least $1 million this season. How long will the Mariners
choose to keep the team
intact at those
prices?
Unfortunately, the franchise has mortgaged much of its
future by trading young prospects. During three straight
seasons of mostly fruitless deals at the trading deadline,
Seattle has disposed of promising young players such as
outfielder Jose Cruz Jr.,
pitcher Derek Lowe and shortstop Desi Relaford, leaving the
system so barren that the Mariners were believed to be the
only team to protect just one minor leaguer in the
expansion draft—and they still had nobody selected from
the farm system. Every
Seattle first-round draft pick between 1988 and '95 has reached
the majors, but only one of those players, Rodriguez, is
still in the organization. This is the first spring during
Piniella's six-year tenure that no rookies will make the
roster.
In his opening spring training speech, Piniella spoke about
"unfinished business." He didn't need to mention
the tight deadline. "I'm 35, and with each passing
year, that's one less chance to get to the World
Series," Martinez says. "Still, I think it's
too dramatic to say now or
never."
Maybe. But this distinguished generation of Mariners is
running out of
now and sliding inexorably toward
never.
—by Tim Crothers
Scouting Report | By the Numbers | Players To Watch | Projected Roster
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