Rick, manager of the Rockfish Grill, spent over $150 taking his squeeze and friends to a recent Mariners game.
The Mariners gave up 10 runs in the first inning, leaving Rick’s crew the rest of the evening to buy pricey food and drink, engage in small talk and speculate whether major league baseball would ever return to Seattle.
While lots of M’s fans are wondering what to do with their expensive tickets in the face of the most dreary baseball season since early Kingdome days, Bavasi’s Mariners are providing a service to the rest of major league baseball.
On their recently completed six-game gambol through Detroit and New York, the M’s served up early inning wins to disappointing Detroit and the bumbling Bronx Bombers.
Unlike Rick’s crew, the fanatics in Detroit and New York stayed in their seats just long enough to appreciate the service the M’s were doing for their respective last-place clubs before retiring to other environs for merrymaking. By the time the seventh inning rolled around there were more vendors in the stands than fans.
So I guess you could say that the $117,666,482 player payroll expended by the Mariner organization is not all wasted. Fans in far-off places will welcome the opportunity to watch their ball clubs fatten won-loss records when the M’s visit.
But we locals are left to wonder what an owner on the other side of the earth is thinking about an investment whose reported net profit is roughly equivalent to the $15,500,000 annual salary of a firstbaseman who is hitting less than .200.
Or of starting pitchers Jarod Washburn, 2-6, 6.54 ERA, and Miguel Batista, 3-6, 6.47 ERA, who are receiving $9,850,000 and $9,500,000, respectively, for their efforts. This seems a mighty expensive hobby even for a reclusive Japanese jillionaire.
At the time of this writing the Mariners are playing .353 ball with 18 wins and 33 losses. They are firmly ensconced in the cellar of the Western Division of the American League and owners of the worst record in major league baseball.
Not bad for a team chosen by some pundits to win their division and enter the playoffs for the first time since 2001. Not bad, terrible.
Question: Where did the team which was seen as the capstone of Bill Bavasi’s five-year reign as GM go wrong?
Answer: Everywhere. Everywhere Bavasi’s fingerprints can be found.
But Bavasi alone isn’t responsible for the 2008 Mariners. CEO Howard Lincoln and president Chuck Armstrong shunned an Oakland-style rebuilding, instead demanding that the team remain “competitive” and rebuild on the fly. They’ve also rubber-stamped Bavasi’s free agent signings, trades and draft choices.
A recounting of Bavasi’s canny dealings with free agents and trades is a depressing litany of failures, overpaying and evidence that the GM did indeed fall off the turnip truck. Or, as another GM stated, “Dealing with him is like taking candy from a baby.”
It’s not original, but the phrase is sure descriptive.
There are demands and perhaps expectations that M’s manager John McLaren be fired. The players have rushed to Mac’s defense and Bavasi in turn has placed responsibility for the team’s putrid performance on the players. Naturally, McLaren and the Council of Elders who compose the rebuilt coaching staff are Bavasi choices, thus making Bavasi responsible for the absence of leadership on the field, on the bench and in the clubhouse.
Having Bavasi can McLaren makes no sense.
Having Hiroshi Yamauchi, the owner who has never attended a Mariner game, give Lincoln, Armstrong, Bavasi and McLaren their walking papers does.
A-Buzz may be contacted at .
