CLAY MOYLE AND SON CALEB
Here it is July 22 and the Seattle Mariners actually hold a two-and-half game lead in the race for the final wild-card spot in the American League. Who would have thunk it at the beginning of the season?
But, I keep hearing about the impending trade deadline and how they could really use another right-handed bat, and I can’t help thinking about a terrific right-handed bat that used to belong to the M’s that is currently roaming center field for the Baltimore Orioles.
ADAM JONES
Back in early 2008, the prize prospect of the Mariners minor league system was a six-foot-two athletic 22-year-old centerfielder by the name of Adam Jones. He’d hit .314 with 25 home runs and 84 runs batted in the previous season in Tacoma and looked like a star in the making.
But, Seattle thought they had a contending team for the coming season if they could add a quality arm to their pitching staff and Erik Bedard was available. The Baltimore Orioles were in a rebuilding mode and Bedard had posted a record of 13-5, with a 3.16 ERA and 221 strikeouts in 2007.
The Mariner’s general manager, Bill Bavasi, was convinced Bedard was the missing ingredient. If they were going to have to give up Jones and four other prospects in a five-for-one deal to acquire him, well, it was worth the risk.
When the trade was announced, Bavasi said the addition of Bedard gave the Mariners as good a five-man pitching staff as there was in the game. At the time, it included 21-year-old Felix Hernandez, Miguel Batista, Jarrod Washburn, and Carlos Siva in addition to Bedard.
You probably know the rest of the story. Bedard never again matched his 2007 pitching performance. He didn’t pitch badly in 2008, going 6-4 with a 3.67 ERA in 15 starts for the Mariners, but his gameness and attitude were called into question on a number of occasions.
Then, he developed shoulder trouble that bothered him for the next two seasons and ultimately lead to surgery. Over the next four years, he never won more than six games in a season and ultimately finished with an overall record of 15-14 as a Mariner.
By the end of the 2011 season, Bedard was pitching for the Red Sox. His past three seasons have been ineffectively spent with the Pirates, Astros and Rays.
Meanwhile, Adam Jones developed into the star the Orioles hoped he would. In his first full-season as a major leaguer, Jones hit 23 home runs and had 108 RBI’s while batting .270. The following year (2009), he won a gold glove while becoming an all-star for the first time. He went on to finish that season with 36 home runs and 93 RBI’s.
The news didn’t get any better for Mariner fans over the next four years as Jones continued to belt out 19-33 home runs per season while batting in the .280’s. Just yesterday, he knocked out two more two-run homers for the Orioles to increase his season total to 19 while leading them to victory over the Angels. At this rate, he should finish with somewhere around 30 home runs again by season end.
Oh yeah, the 28-year-old is also batting .300 and recently participated in yet another all-star game.
That right handed bat the Mariners are looking for, he’s been playing in Baltimore for the past six-and-half seasons now.
If the Mariners do add another right-handed bat before the trading deadline it will likely be in the form of a high-priced over-the-hill ballplayer in his mid-30s. If that’s the case, we can only hope he doesn’t end up costing us another prized minor league prospect that will haunt us as much as Adam Jones has.