The jobs of General Manager Bill Bavasi, field manager Mike Hardgrove and most of his coaches
could be in serious jeopardy as the Seattle Mariners a franchise who only five years ago won 116 games and a Western Divison title is on the way to a last place finish for the third year in a row.
The month of September could decide the fate of some people in decision making positions.

By Amaury Pi-Gonzalez

Underachieving is the key word again in Seattle
this season. A team with a player payroll almost twice of the first place Oakland Athletics has no
chance in this Division. We can see it again. It is not how much you spend, but how you spend it and what kind of talent evaluation you get from your top people on how your organization performs.
If it was left to the total amount you spend, then the
Yankees should have won the World Series every year since George Steinbrenner bought the team.

The 2006 Mariners season can be summarized in
one sentence: “They (Mariners)beat everybody, including the National League but nobody in their own division”.

Click below for more of Amaury’s analysis.If the Mariners would just have split their games against the Oakland A’S (1-15) and against the rest of the Division, they could be
today 3 games out of first place with 25 games left
and 3 games left against the team that is in first.

Somehow, somewhere the Mariners are going to have to find out the formula of ‘how to beat’ Oakland,Anaheim and Texas. Mariners attendance
is not growing, althought they are ‘the only game in town’ in The Emerald City. Lucky they, there is not a Major League team in Portland, lucky they, they have great fans, lucky they, they play in a wonderful place.The positives here outweight the negatives.

In today’s www.world people do not have much
patience. When a team finishes in last place one year…two years….then three years in a row ? These fans in the Pacific Northwest are the best fans an owner could wish for, they show up, they root their team,they do not complaint,the keep
hoping against hope. But how much more
patience they have left ? The M’S hope they have much more, just in case…

Everybody loves Bobleheads,Towels,Calendars,
Magnets,Photo Day, Autographs and all promotional days and nights, but throught the years the best promotion still going is called
winning.
Major League Baseball is entertainment, it is like
going to the movies, but once in a while you expect to see a good movie. In a movie there are people
that get paid to review, they are called critics and sometimes critics are wrong. I am sure you and I have read many bad reviews on a movie but then
we go to see it and we like it ! However, in Sports
(baseball specially) a performace of any given team is measured in wins and losses. If a team is in last place every year it takes more than a “spin doctor”to convice the most naive of fan that it is a
good team.

The Mariners have young talent headed by 20-year old Venezuelan pitcher Félix Hernández. Hernandez
was given the name of “King Felix”in Seattle prior to the start of the season. He might yet be a King but is more like a Prince as of the conclusion of the 2006 season. He still learning, he is 20. Think of what were you doing when you were 20 years old ? Thank you.

The bullpen is the one department where the 2006 Mariners have improved over last season. Because
of the early failures of reliever Eddie Guardado, the
Mariners found out that J.J Putz was ready to throw strikes and close games, with a 98 mph and a 90 mph splitter he has become “the savior”. While most people in the American League will look at
Mariano Rivera of the Yankees or Francisco Rodriguez of the Angels or Jonathan Papelbon of the Red Sox, look at J.J Putz numbers and he is right there with the best of the best in that category.

The MVP of the 2006 Seattle Mariners is none other than Raul Ibanez. A quiet solid professional player who is already having the best season of his career.
Ibanez began his career in Seattle but under then manager Lou Piniella never really became one of his “favorite” young players. So he went on to Kansas City, became a established star in K.C.
In 2002 with the Royals Ibanez finished with a
.294 average 24 home runs and 103 runs batted in.
Begining September of this year. Raul Ibanez has better numbers. But there is more to Ibanez than his stats. He is a great role model, specially for the young Latino stars on this ballclub. Ibanez who was
born in New York and raised in Miami of Cuban parents is a neighbor of Cuban-born Mariners
shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt. Yuniesky looks for Ibanez as his mentor in the Major Leagues. Specially during his first full season playing shortstop Betancourt (who has been flirting with a
.300 average all season) and making all the plays
at this key position works out with Raul Ibanez in
Miami during the off season. Ibanez involvement with the community in the Seattle area is self
evident,one of the fan favorites. I saw him in action during his yearly golf tournament in Seattle for the benefit of Cystic Fibrosis. Raul Ibanez is a great asset to the Mariners organization.

Ichiro is on his way to another Gold Glove(finishing the season in center field,where manager Mike Hardgrove says he should play the rest of this
season) Another over .300 season for one of the great hitters in the game today. A complete ballplayer, easily the best athlete on this team.

The Mariners have not gotten the offensive productivity they expected from Adrian Beltre.
Nobody expected him to hit 48 home runs and
drive in 121 runs with a .334 average like he did
on his last season(2004)with the Dodgers, but a
higher average and around 30 home runs and 100
RBI…I think that was more like it. By the way,watching him play third base for the past
two seasons has been a treat. He can make all the plays that a thirdbaseman needs to make and then some.

Kenji Johjima, the first catcher from Japan to make it to the Major Leagues, is a good catcher with good hands a good arm and a very good bat with some power and that was definetely an improvement over the other 7 catcher the Mariners had last season. Johjima has a shot at hitting .300 in his rookie year. Only think I wish is that Johjima had a better sytem of blocking the plate, but I think that is the style in Japan. When somebody comes to the plate trying to score, Johjima doesn’t block the plate the conventional way(in front)but sideways.
On the other hand, maybe with that system he has been able to avoid serious injury and was able to win 7 Gold Glvoe in his native Japan. It is interesting that while in Japan Johjima and Ichiro
(who are now teammates)never got along very well, they played for different teams and Ichiro
thought then that Johjima was “too much of a
trash talker”. Today with the M’S they are good friends.

Jose Lopez played second base the whole season
(his first fullseason)and was selected to his first All Star Game. Jose is a good young player, strong arm, good bat with some power and he and Yuniesky Betancourt should be (should be) a very good double-play combination for the Mariners for the next 10 years or so. Betancourt is 24 years old while Lopez is 22. I predict that Yuniesky Betancourt is going to win a few Gold Gloves at
shortstop, he has as good soft hands as anybody in the American League maybe in all of baseball. In Seattle many tell me Yuni reminds then of a young Omar Vizquel.

At first base Richie Sexson is Richie Sexson, a player that usually gives you 30 to 40 home runs a year with 110 RBI or so with a .250 average and
140 strikeouts. He should be back next season.

The Mariners will need to solve the outfield problem for 2007. Aside from Ichiro and Ibanez, who will be the other outfielders? Mariners brought young outfielder Adam Jones but he didn’t looked ready so down to the minors he went. Jeremy Reed has been hurt half a season with a wrist fracture-injury and Chris Snelling is one guy that I think would hit at this level. Snelling is a left handed hitter with some power and he is only 23. In past he has been injury prone and hopefully he can finish the season healthy. I like this kid a lot, he knows what he is
doing at the plate and brings lots of energy and passion to the table. Hope the Mariners keep him. But the team could also sign an established outfielder in the winter, so Chris Snelling future is still up in the air. But if he doesn’t get the chance to play in Seattle he will play in the majors someplace.

The starting rotation: This is going to need some reconstruction. As of today, If I was a betting man I would say that in 2007 these starters will be back:
Jarrod Washburn and Felix Hernandez. Young arms like Mark Lowe and lefty Woods should be back.
However,the future of Joel Pineiro and Gil Meche might not be with the Mariners. Therefore, the team will have to look for other established pitchers to go into the 2007 rotation. Starting rotation is extremely important, if you have any doubts see why the A’S and the Angels have the
best records in this division…

Like previously mentioned, the bullpen might be
Mariners strongest department. Rafael Soriano(hopefully will recover from the shot to the head by
Valdimir Guerrero’s line drive a couple of weeks ago at Safeco)with strong arms like those of
Julio Mateo,George Sherill, J.J Putz and potentially young Colombian Emiliano Fruto. I think the bullpen is the less of the worries for the M’S.

There is good news coming from Seattle. The nucleus of this team is a young one, there is talent here but development of younger players in the farm system has to come to fruition. An organization has to hold to its young talent but sooner or later they have to develop that talent to play at this level or trade them for other players. there can be no “in between”.

Every organization regard their young prospects as the best. This is normal, they are in your system and so you believe they are better than the other teams, but there comes a time where management also has to be accountable, otherwise is like that old saying “the patients are running the asylum”.
I hope the good people in Seattle have a working plan for next year. Sometimes you have to trade some of your best young prospects so that your team can be helped. Look what the Oakland A’S
did, they traded Ethier(maybe the NL Rookie of
the Year)to the L.A Dodgers for Milton Bradley and
Eduardo Perez.