A Confederacy of Dunces

Bill Bavasi has to be the least popular guy in Seattle right now; the way things are going in his first year as GM, fans wouldn't even accept a demotion to hot dog vendor. And this is no mean feat: despite an impressive string of 90+ win seasons under his belt, outgoing GM Pat Gillick was routinely savaged for his inability to pull the trigger on deadline deals. And after two consecutive 93-69 seasons where the team failed to make the playoffs because of strong AL West competition, fans got it right by running Gillick out of town.

ESPN posted this discouraging bit a few days ago under the header "New GM Watch":

Paul DePodesta, Dodgers, 22-11, .667 [last year .525]
Dan O’Brien, Reds, 17-17, .500 [last year .426]
Bill Bavasi, Mariners, 12-22, .353 [last year .574]

To be fair, O'Brien is inheriting a team on the upswing of a rebuilding phase; the record hints that he's done a decent job of keeping the team treading water...or maybe even a little bit better considering the fire sale that occured during the last half of '03 and Austin Kearns's freak injury. I can't say enough good things about what DePodesta has done in his short tenure with the Dodgers; the turnaround owes a little to luck and everything else to his offseason moves. Bavasi, though, came in with an awful lot to work with (the Mariners are #12 in league payroll this year) and had a disastrousoffseason. He made moves to shed payroll and compete for a middle of the pack finish. You understand the temptation here: the Mariners lost Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey and Alex Rodriguez and bounced back nicely. But Bavasi's in denial...it's time, right NOW, for the Mariners to enter dealing and rebuilding mode.

I don't even know where to begin when it comes to pinpointing the locus of frustrations, though Sunday's box score is illustrative of exactly what kind of team the Mariners are: Pineiro tosses his best game of the season, scattering 5 hits over 8 innings but the team loses 2-1 with the only run coming off of a Scott Spiezio solo shot. Pineiro and Gil Meche have struggled mightly this season and the middle relief corps (outside of Eddie Guardado) is shaky, but the pitching's good enough to keep them in games. This team can not score runs, though. Take a look at the BA/ OBP/ SLG splits for the regular line-up:

Ichiro Suzuki .317/ .363/ .371
Raul Ibanez .254/ .320/ .464
E. Martinez .248/ .350/ .387
Bret Boone .248/ .287/ .426
Randy Winn .244/ .314/ .315
Rich Aurilia .240/ .290/ .298
John Olerud .246/ .364/ .331
Scott Spiezio .268/ .317/ .446
Dan Wilson .319/ .343/ .447

Dan Wilson, the catcher, has the highest OPS (on-base percentage + slugging average, perhaps the best indicator of total offensive productivity) and rbi totals of the lot. Ibanez, Aurilia, and Spiezio aren't validating their off-season contracts and everyone else seems to be having an off-year. Even Ichiro Suzuki, who Alan Schwartz describes as a player in rapid decline in his excellent and thoughtful analysis on ESPN.com today.

The starting line-up is a giant black hole right now, akin to fielding an entire team of Brad Fullmers. Worse, there's no way Bavasi could right the innumerable wrongs by mid-season. There's nothing to trade in AAA Tacoma, currently populated by a handful of career minor-leaguers and major-league rejects. And one of the oldest teams in MLB just broke a tie with the Mets to slide cleanly into 2nd place (mean age of 31 years, just behind the Yankees) with the addition of 41 year old catcher Pat Borders. The team ranks in the bottom third of all MLB teams in team ERA and almost dead last in team batting. No team not named the Mets can be this bad, but a sub-.500 finish is almost guaranteed. Poor Bob Melvin...it's going to be a long, cruel summer.