By Terry Benish<\/p>\n
Special to The Sports Paper<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Senior ESPN baseball writer Buster Olney is saying the Mariners appear destined to sign a big-name starting pitcher and the reborn blog Lookoutlanding is saying \u201cOne of the three most prominent free-agent starting pitchers–Ubaldo Jimenez, Ervin Santana, Matt Garza–seems bound to wind up w\/Seattle.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to repeat myself, but the whole thing is revelatory. Let\u2019s parse some phrases and words first. The phrase \u201cappear destined\u201d is the first clue. Translated, it means Olney has not spoken to the Mariners.<\/p>\n
Once that is understood, the rest is just correspondent as shill for a player\u2019s agent or multiple agents. While Olney can be truthful about what he is reporting, the way to tell when an agent is lying is when sound comes out of their mouth. So there is just no way to think it is credible.<\/p>\n
I assess the now, sort of Zen and Mariner speculation, concluding that all the silly talk about signing a new manager and staff and the retirement of club president Chuck Armstrong has left the Mariners stuck in the mud.<\/p>\n
The pertinent question is why this has happened?<\/p>\n
My people have tried to line up an interview with club CEO Howard Lincoln or general manager Jack Zduriencik, or both, but they tell me their phones are very quiet.<\/p>\n
Lincoln says they have all kinds of money to spend, but they took to long to tell Jack that, or if he knew weeks ago, nobody wants near his toxicity if there are options. Surely top flight free agents have options a plenty. Lots of people already have signed.<\/p>\n
Toxicity you ask?<\/p>\n
Almost certainly Jack will be fired by the new team president at year\u2019s end for next season. The Mariners will not pay for two general managers in same season. That we know.<\/p>\n
The Mariners also have to convince player free agents and prospective general managers that the team is close.<\/p>\n
Just to follow that through, no free agent wants to sign with a team only to be traded when the new general manager comes in and blows up team \u2011 again. Perhaps I misstate, perhaps like Olney said earlier this week as well as ESPN\u2019s Jim Bowden that there are guys who love where the Mariners are and are chomping at bit to take over for Chuck.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n
What is behind Olney\u2019s speculation\/agent talk is he believes the only way to compete for the M\u2019s is pitching, pitching and more pitching. The stated need for right-handed power hitters was due to the terrible results the team had against left handed pitchers. The slash line against left handed pitchers is really, really poor: .229 batting average\/ .293 on base\/ .364 slug for an OPS of .657.<\/p>\n
Last year the M\u2019s had three switch hitters and two right-handed hitters and Brendan Ryan, who is in effect a pitcher playing short stop. Mike Zunino\u2019s OPS against left handed pitchers was .650. Justin Smoak\u2019s as a right<\/p>\n
handed hitter was .548. Nick Franklin\u2019s was .599. Mike Morse\u2019s was .667. Kendrys Morales was .794. Jesus Montero .531.<\/p>\n
That is pretty boring reading\/bad writing, but there it is.<\/p>\n
With more time some of the M\u2019s younger guys might improve. Montero\u2019s numbers are in a free fall from his brief exposure as a Yankee. Normally this is where I would lose control and rant about an un-scouted player traded for, Or I would rant how the M\u2019s have as bad a player evaluation as I\u2019ve ever, ever seen.<\/p>\n
So pitching it might be. But for the Mariners, if the past three years are prologue, this might just be a bunch of head faking as in Fielder, Hamilton stuff where the Mariners used the press to create an illusion they were signing important players.<\/p>\n
It is charitable to ponder their actions as sincere, but there it is from me.<\/p>\n
It might be possible I could be wrong, but my funny bone is twitching and it is not the great blizzard of 2013 that is supposed to hit on Monday.<\/p>\n
One of my other favorite correspondents, Ken Rosenthal of FoxSports \u2011 the fictional center \u2011 tweeted last week the Mariners are now desperate.<\/p>\n
Again that is not reporting, but it certainly suggests that.<\/p>\n
If not, it will play out as great theater.<\/p>\n