{"id":2698,"date":"2017-05-30T21:39:21","date_gmt":"2017-05-30T21:39:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=2698"},"modified":"2017-05-30T21:39:21","modified_gmt":"2017-05-30T21:39:21","slug":"trader-jerry-has-changed-the-faces-of-the-seattle-mariners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=2698","title":{"rendered":"Trader Jerry has changed the face(s) of the Seattle Mariners"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

TERRY MOSHER<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
JERRY DIPOTO<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When you make changes it takes a while to get comfortable with them. And that applies to just about anything. It just makes sense, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

And when you make a lot of changes there is a lot of comfort to get used to.<\/p>\n

Take the Seattle Mariners. General manager Jerry Dipoto has become the master of change. He is baseball\u2019s modern version of Frank Lane who gained fame and various nicknames \u2013 Trader Lane, The Wheeler Dealer, Frantic Frank and Trader Frank \u2013 for his many transactions (more than 400, including 241 with the White Sox) during his seven years as general manager with that team. Trader Lane once tried to trade future Hall of Famer Stan Musical when he was with the St. Louis Cardinals, but was foiled when owner August Busch got wind of the proposed deal.<\/p>\n

I have lost count of the many transactions Dipoto has made just after two months of the 2017 season. It\u2019s 100 or more and counting. It seems like every day there is a player coming from and going to the team\u2019s triple-A club in Tacoma. Injuries and poor performances have necessitated all these moves, at least Dipoto believes so.<\/p>\n

Most of the team\u2019s starting pitchers have been placed on the disabled list, including King Felix and the ace-of-the-staff in waiting, James Paxton, who is injured so much he likely has earned a medical degree by now.\u00a0 If Paxton goes on the DL again with a hang nail I\u2019m going to scream. He is scheduled to come off the DL May 31 (Wednesday) and hopefully he will remain healthy long enough to give the Mariners a chance to get back into the race in the American League West for second place (Houston appears to be running away with the division).<\/p>\n

The main point here is that it\u2019s extremely difficult to build good team chemistry with so much change taking place. If I\u2019m one of the star players like Nelson Cruz I\u2019m probably not surprised to see new faces when I show up at the park each day.\u00a0 But new faces take getting used to and finding a comfortable zone with them, and that makes it hard to build that good chemistry.<\/p>\n

So I\u2019m not surprised that the Mariners have struggled to win. They are currently 23-29 and 13 games behind Houston. It\u2019s a minor miracle they are that close to .500 considering all the injuries and shuffling that has gone on. Until things settle down, if they ever do, the Mariners will find it difficult to vie for a wild card spot to the playoffs.<\/p>\n

For years the Mariners were criticized for being cheap. Justifiably so. I was there for the early years when the team was bad and it took almost an act of Congress to buy paper clips. That is no longer the case. They are 13th<\/sup> in payroll this season at just over $154 million (the Dodgers are No.1 and are paying out $242 million).<\/p>\n

Howard Lincoln and Chuck Armstrong, the architects of \u00a0many of those years when the business of baseball in Seattle was doing well but the business of baseball on the field was not, are both retired and the new management (along with a new majority owner) are looser with the pay strings and you can\u2019t blame them for the losing.<\/p>\n

But attendance at their games has dropped off. The Mariners are 11th in the AL and 21st<\/sup> in baseball at just over a half-million through 22 home games (24,500 average). I was shocked, though, during the last home stand when I took my granddaughter and 21-year-old son to the Bremerton Ferry Terminal so they could catch an afternoon game and discovered a line of people curving all the way down Washington while waiting to get on the boat.<\/p>\n

It turned out the boat became filled before they could get on so I had to rush back and hurry them to the Bainbridge ferry so they could catch the game. So something was going on for that game that was unexpected.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve railed plenty against our increasing use of social media because I believe it is destructive to society. \u00a0What I mean by that is just about everything that is done these days can be found somewhere on some social network and I believe too much information is just as destruction, maybe more so, than too little.<\/p>\n

It also chips away at \u201creal\u201d media \u2013 the Washington Post, New York Times, LA Times, etc. \u2013 because any fool with a computer can post whatever they want on a network somewhere and it is difficult if not impossible to know whether it\u2019s true or not.<\/p>\n

The big downside to all of this in sports is that an athlete can\u2019t say or do anything that used to be discreet because every move he makes, every word he says, can be posted online somewhere for the whole world to experience.<\/p>\n

So a guy like talkative Richard Sherman has to be careful because his every move whether intended or not is going to be noticed by millions. Or does he have to be careful? It\u2019s probably that Sherman, who is a Stanford graduate so he\u2019s no dummy, knows exactly what he is doing. I don\u2019t pretend to know why he does what he does, but he certainly has moved the meter on the airwaves \u2013 radio and TV \u2013 and on the Internet.<\/p>\n

The problem as I see it is that Sherman has become a problem for the Seahawks because his antics distract from the team\u2019s focus, which is winning. It\u2019s that old chemistry thing again. When does too much Sherman impact in a negative way that focus?<\/p>\n

I saw an online-story that ranked Sherman No. 7 among NFL cornerbacks. (Former Washington Husky Marcus Peters, by the way, was ranked No. 6 in this poll.) That is good, but it\u2019s not like Sherman is the best of the best. He has slipped some even while his tongue has gotten sharper.<\/p>\n

My point here is the same: Social media makes a big deal out of nothing, but can at the same time be extremely dangerous because it is often believable enough to get a lot of public play and have unintended consequences.<\/p>\n

So the bottom line is that Sherman should resist his outburst and concentrate on helping the Seahawks to the playoffs and a possible Super Bowl. And if he can\u2019t keep his mouth shut, then I would get rid of him. Even intelligent people can be fools sometimes.<\/p>\n

Finally, congratulation to North Kitsap baseball for making a great run to the state 2A semifinals in baseball. I thought the Vikings had a real good shot at winning the school\u2019s second state baseball championship (NK won it all in 1988).<\/p>\n

Same congratulations to the Olympic High School girl\u2019s 800 relay team that not only won a state 2A championship but broke the all-time Westsound record in the event with a time of 1:43.23.<\/p>\n

And how about South Kitsap\u2019s Nolan Van Amen. He won the state 4A shot put championship (his second one in his for-year career) and placed second in the discus (he won three state championships in the event in his four years).<\/p>\n

That\u2019s about it. Now it\u2019s time for fun and sun. Hope you have a lot of both this summer.<\/p>\n

Be well pal.<\/p>\n

Be careful out there.<\/p>\n

Have a great day.<\/p>\n

You are loved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TERRY MOSHER When you make changes it takes a while to get comfortable with them. And that applies to just…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mosher","category-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2698"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2700,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2698\/revisions\/2700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}