Goodbye, Baseball!
By Doug Farrar
The Yankees� 11-3 Friday night demolition of the Seattle Mariners was just the latest in a series of harrowing and humiliating reversals of fortune for the Emerald City�s baseball club. Ex-Mariner John Olerud�s 2-run single, which was the deciding factor in the Yanks� 6-4 win on Saturday, didn�t really help either. While Yankee fans prepare for another greased bobsled run to the postseason and Red Sox fans confidently await wild-card status, Seattle sports fans have much less to keep them occupied these days.
Unless you�re a Seahawks diehard, in which case you�re spending more time reading training camp reports than you are paying attention to a team which has been dismantled by what is quite possibly the stupidest, most arrogant, most inexcusably clueless front office in the history of baseball.
How bad is it in Seattle? Well, if you look at the numbers, you see that in both 2002 and 2003, the M�s finished the season with identical 93-69 records, not good enough for the playoffs in either year due to the brutal division they play in, but certainly nothing to sneeze at. In 2004, the Mariners (who stand at 43-73 as I write this) are on pace to lose over 100 games (actually, they�ll probably lose more than that, as they�ll finish off this disaster of a season with the rest of the AL West beating the living snot out of them while fighting for postseason berths). It will be one of the worst (and most likely the least excusable and most avoidable) collapses in the history of major league baseball.
How bad is it in Seattle, I ask again? Let�s look at some of the worst single season collapses in MLB history, and the reasons behind them:
1915 Philadelphia Athletics, 43-109 (-56). After winning four pennants and three World Series in five years, the Athletics set the standard for misery. Connie Mack's decision to dismantle his famed $100,000 infield as well as his pitching staff cemented their demise. The A�s finished in last place for seven straight seasons, five of them with at least 100 losses. Mack rebuilt the Athletics in the late 1920�s and early 1930�s, only to dismantle them yet again for as much cash as his players would bring.
1998 Florida Marlins, 54-108 (-38). The largest of the recent declines, the Marlins were gutted after their 1997 World Series victory. The departures of Charles Johnson, Jeff Conine, Bobby Bonilla, Gary Sheffield, Moises Alou, Devon White, Kevin Brown, Al Leiter, and Robb Nen virtually assured a last-place finish in 1998. The youthful Marlins improved by 10 games to 64-98 in 1999. Their resurgence to World Champion status in 2003 is made all the more amazing when you consider the fact that they�re owned by noted Expo-killer Jeff Loria.
1921 Chicago White Sox, 62-92 (-34). When eight of your players are banned for life after throwing the World Series, your team tends to suffer.
In the cases of the Athletics and Marlins, you�re dealing with salary dumps on a colossal scale (explain to me again how Bowie Kuhn was allowed to overrule Charlie Finley�s sale of Rollie Fingers, Joe Rudi and Vida Blue???). In the case of the �21 Sox, you�re dealing with the banning for life of eight players, including your best pitcher (Eddie Cicotte) and your best hitter (Shoeless Joe!). Now, THAT�S an excuse for tanking a season.
But when you�ve basically kept your payroll the same, you didn�t lose too many major players in the offseason and you�re one of the richest franchises in the sport�well, somebody has to be screwing things up on a truly colossal scale. The 2004 Seattle Mariners are on pace for a single season plummet anywhere from 35 to 45 games in one season. Who�s responsible?
Howard Lincoln (CEO)
Seattle�s Public Enemy Number One, and with good reason. Since asserting control of the team in the late 1990�s. Lincoln, in concert with longtime team president Chuck Armstrong, has endeavored to build the Mariners in his image. Problem? Howard Lincoln has no more business deciding what is good or bad for a baseball team than your grandmother. Actually, if your grandmother ever played any slow-pitch softball, she�d do a better job.
Lincoln was brought in by the M�s mostly absentee Nintendo-led Japanese ownership. His �qualifications� were that he had enjoyed a distinguished career in corporate law and that he had been large and in charge at Nintendo for a number of years. Impressive, but not exactly what you want in a guy making actual baseball decisions.
Lincoln has proven to have a number of major flaws in his personality. He is arrogant, closed-minded, autocratic, and seems to have a true gift for making a bad situation worse every time he opens his mouth. When Lincoln and former manager Lou Piniella couldn�t get along and Piniella asked to be let out of his contract in 2002, it was the beginning of the establishment of The Lincoln Way � shut your mouth and don�t EVER argue with management (the Yankees regained Jeff Nelson in 2003 solely because Nellie busted M�s management in the press for their chronic inability to act at the trade deadline). Lincoln can only handle working with malleable �yes-men�. As you can imagine, that policy leaves the most talented baseball men out of the loop.
While perceived as �cheap�, Lincoln�s real trouble is that he is not savvy enough to understand the value of true and intelligent diversity �in the front office or on the field. The M�s currently have a payroll of anywhere from $80 - $95 million, depending on who you believe. Lincoln himself would like the fanbase to believe that the organization is doing everything it can to acquire and keep talented players. Problem is, the proof is in the one variable he can�t control � the baseball diamond.
Even if the M�s payroll is actually south of $80 million, that shouldn�t matter. The last two World Champions had payrolls of approximately $60 million (Angels) and $50 million (Marlins). And since I�m writing this for a website called �YankeesSuck.com�, I�m assuming that you readers know that no matter HOW much money you sink into a team, it doesn�t really guarantee anything. If you�re just under $200 million in payroll scratch and your primary starter is Tanyon Sturtze for a time�well, you just aren�t too damn smart. With intelligent baseball men making the decisions, a third of the Yankees� payroll is more than enough to field a competitive team on a consistent basis. What do the Mariners have in their �braintrust�?
Pat Gillick (Former GM, Current Consultant), Bill Bavasi (Current GM)
When he stayed home in Toronto during the 2003 trade deadline and didn�t even work the phones, Pat Gillick was in for an earful from local fans and sportswriters. What we didn�t know at the time was that Gillick had been ordered by Lincoln not to pursue any deals of merit. There was a chance that Seattle might have acquired Aaron Boone, but the Yankees�well, you guys know that story.
In truth, Gillick was the primary architect of the team that won 116 games in 2001, pulling off skilled deals for Aaron Sele, Paul Abbott, Mark McLemore, Bret Boone, Arthur Rhodes and others. While Jim Coburn was primarily responsible for the M�s wresting Ichiro away from the Orix Blue Wave (and the Yankees, heh heh heh�), Gillick did his job well as long as he was allowed to.
When Gillick stepped down in 2003 (no doubt frustrated by the front office�s lack of anything resembling intelligence or aggressiveness), the M�s hired Bill Bavasi, formerly of the Angels and Dodgers. While Bavasi is sometimes given credit for assembling the Angels team that won the 2002 World Series, it was just as much the bush-beating of Whitey Herzog in the early 90�s that put that team together. In any case, Bavasi came on and immediately transacted some business that had many scratching their heads.
Bavasi let shortstop Carlos Guillen go to the Detroit Tigers.To replace him, Bavasi attempted to acquire the horrifically overrated and overpaid Omar Vizquel. Fortunately for all involved, Vizquel failed his physical. Unfortunately for all involved, the M�s took a pass on Miguel Tejada and signed Rich Aurilia of the Giants instead. History will show that Aurilia was so bad in Seattle that the M�s recently traded him to the Padres for a bag of Red Man Chewing Tobacco and three Mizuno bats. Now, Guillen, Vizquel AND the National League version of Aurilia are all out-producing 20 year-old Jose Lopez, the supposed wunderkind who currently mans the shortstop position.
Aurilia, Scott Spiezio, Dave Hansen, Raul Ibanez�every offseason signing by the team had a few factors in common. The Mariners seem to want to field a team with 25 interchangeable �bench guys�, believing that the intrinsic value of the collective will outweigh the excellence of the individual. Wrong answer! Chuck Armstrong�s incredible assertion that Dan Wilson and Ben Davis combined would equal the production of Ivan Rodriguez (another free agent the M�s passed on) is but the dumbest example of this. The Mariners do not want �boat-rockers� � they value what they call �veteran clubhouse presence� over all else, and it had better come cheap and without a long contract. The �nice-guy� factor outweighs a high OPS or a low ERA just about every time in Marinerland.
While Bavasi did score big in the Freddy Garcia deal, there�s little to suggest that he has what it takes to rebuild this team � and even if he does have the skills, there is absolutely no guarantee whatsoever that this front office will give him what he needs to do so. You have to wonder about the intelligence of a man who would accept this position when the M�s FO is notorious nationwide.
Even if Bavasi is nothing more than a �yes-man�, there�s no doubt where the REAL problem is here on a day-to-day basis�it�s the manager who makes Terry Francona look like Casey Stengel.
Bob Melvin (Reputed �Manager�)
Put simply, Bob Melvin couldn�t win a game of �Strat-O-Matic Baseball� if he was playing against himself with a pair of loaded dice. Bob Melvin couldn�t win a game of �MVP Baseball 2005� if he had the AL All-Star team WITHOUT Derek Jeter and he was playing the Kansas City Royals on the �Rookie� setting. Put simply, Bob Melvin is the worst manager in the history of the Seattle Mariners, and for a team that has called Maury Wills and the mummified version of Dick Williams �Skipper�, that�s saying something.
When Melvin (the bench coach of the 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks, quite possibly the most fundamentally incompetent team ever to win the World Series) was named the M�s manager before the 2003 season, I figured that either the team was also planning to get Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling from the D-Backs as well, or that Lincoln and Armstrong were a mite confused and had actually intended to hire DOUG Melvin.
Alas. We soon found that the M�s had indeed hired �The Brains Behind Bob Brenly� (HA!!!) on purpose. Why? Because Melvin is what is known as a �consensus-builder�. In other words, he knows what to kiss, whose to kiss and where to kiss it. He has absolutely no other qualifications to manage a big-league baseball team. If I had a young son, I�d start a riot if Melvin was made manager of his Little League team. He can�t manage veterans because he doesn�t command respect, and he can�t manage kids because he doesn�t know more than they know. Other than that, he�s great!
Melvin has two speeds � fast in the wrong direction, and asleep at the wheel. While he seems to be blissfully unaware of things like pitch counts and matchups, he does enjoy being proactive when doing things like insisting that Ichiro Suzuki take more first pitches. Right, Bob! Take the single most dangerous first-ball-fastball hitter since I Don�t Know Who and make him wait. Why? Beats me. But until Melvin rescinded his ridiculous edict and let Ichi-san go his own way, Suzuki was mired in a horrific �slump�.
What do you call a man who tries to destroy the greatest leadoff hitter since Rickey Henderson? You call him many things, and none of them are useable on this fine family website.
Paul Molitor (Reputed �Hitting Coach�)
Well, I thought this was a good idea at first. How could it not be? You bring on one of the best hitters of the last 50 years, a first-ballot Hall-Of-Famer in 2004, a man with gap power to teach players how to exploit the pitchers� park that Safeco Field is. Unfortunately, this is either a situation where the man�s too busy heading off to Cooperstown and getting things named after him in Milwaukee, Toronto and Minnesota�or perhaps it�s a case of �Those who can do, can�t teach�. The Mariner hitters Molitor inherited were never going to be mistaken for Murderers� Row, but what is truly worrisome here is the instant success enjoyed by any Ex-Mariner.
Next week: Goodbye, Baseball, Part Two. How do you, as a group of players, tank it so spectacularly all at once?
