They need to win more. :(

maybe instead of winning a bunch and then losing, they'll start out losing and end up winning!

Tell me about it....it all starts with pitching and we have none....our bullpen is working ok though......it's still early we'll see how it goes.....Bring up Campillo and King Felix and we're set!

O no they aren't! They've :bash:ed my precious Oakland As on more than one occasion, I think. :( Now of course you'll tell me the As aren't even worth mentioning & that the Mariners, while a hell of a lot better, do suck indeed ... :D

Yeah the A's and M's are both in losersville.

Swept by the Evil Ones. :(

yeah but on a positive note they hit well finally! 4 Homeruns

Yay they won.

Yup a nice blow out to get em going.

I knew they were about to break out! :D

Now the Giants are slipping into loserville also. We've lost three of our best players to the DL!

Any thoughts on the Sonics?

:(

Yay, 2 of 3.

Now they need to sweep the Evil Ones, to make up for getting swept in NY.

This is getting ridiculous.

Maybe those Ohmmmm's are jinxing them. :(

:no: Another lost season

Yay they won 3 in a row.

Maybe there is still some life left for a come back!

Yay, they won!

They've won 5 of their last 7. So maybe a turnaround is in the order!

Well, cheers and congratulations, guys! :cheers:

Youknowwho is still behind you, although things have been looking up a bit lately. :)

Well they're sucking so bad now I've given up on the Ohmmmm in my sig.

It obviously wasn't doing any good. :mad:

Boone gone now, they arent interesting to watch anymore.

Although I am moving to Seattle, I will always be a Cardinals fan.

Awesome your moving here, you're going to love it.

They swept the Angels!!! :banana:

The M's are back BABY!

Although I am moving to Seattle, I will always be a Cardinals fan.


egad...become a Ms fan. The world needs less St. Louis fans. :)

^^^^ Right, ReddAlert! :okay:

Go with the local team! :rock: Sentimental boosterism is allowed, though. ;)

^
Yeah when I first moved to Seattle in '88 I was a Red Sox fan. However it didn't take me long to become a Mariners fan, even though they sucked back then!

Art Thiel slams the pathetic M's (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/thiel/234140_thiel27.html)

As the Mariners lie in the ditch a second consecutive summer while the traditionally most feeble part of their baseball calendar, the midseason trade deadline, approaches, some larger facts only lightly discussed are worthy of mention today.

- In the long history of major league baseball, only six current teams have failed to make the World Series. Two of them, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays (1998) and Colorado Rockies (1993), are younger expansionists. The Mariners (1977) join the Texas Rangers (1961, as the Washington Senators), Houston Astros (1962) and Montreal/Washington (1969) as paradigms of pathos.

Even in the time since the Mariners reached respectability, former flops such as the Angels, Diamondbacks and Marlins (twice!) have become champions.

- Through the whimsy of pro-sports geography, the Mariners reside in baseball's smallest division, which means they are required to be better than just three teams to make the playoffs. The American League West includes two teams that must share a large market with a National League rival, and a third team two time zones away that plays the stretch drive in a climate best described as hell's exhaust pipe.

- The Mariners are MLB's monopoly operators in a five-state region and western Canada, by far baseball's largest market in area, which has created radio and TV contracts that are among MLB's most lucrative. As a signature feature in the region's capital (also the closest baseball city to Japan), the ballpark draws thousands of tourists to the world's best summer weather, where the schedule is guaranteed rainout-free.

That partly explains how the Mariners still average more than 34,000 fans, fourth best in the American League, despite 99 losses the previous season that are likely to be followed by at least another 90 losses.

- The Mariners operate in the most expensive baseball-only stadium ever built, whose funding was more than 80 percent public, and have a sweetheart lease that creates no financial burden. They have been profitable in each of their full seasons in Safeco, even by their own narrowly defined accounting to the Public Facilities District.

As a partial result, Forbes magazine in its annual valuations of MLB franchises has the Mariners, at about $400 million, trailing only the two New York teams, the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

None of the foregoing represents breaking news, but the facts together are useful to buttress a small, obvious point:

Virtually eliminated by Memorial Day two consecutive seasons, the current Mariners operation, relative to its resources, is a civic sporting embarrassment.

For all the providence, natural and man-made, attendant to the franchise, the Mariners lineup this week features a 42-year-old catcher hitting .200 (which is 50 points better than the catcher of the future), a trio of starting outfielders whose combined home-run production is exceeded by 59 individual major leaguers entering yesterday's games; an offense that is last in the league in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, runs and homers; and a starting rotation whose two youngest pitchers have been dragging the word "potential" behind them for so long that it shines like the nose of the Pike Place Market brass pig.

They have a passel of young pitchers at major- and minor-league levels, perhaps none of whom, for various reasons of recent injury or under-performance, can be considered a fixture (not a star, but a fixture) for the next few years.

Never mind the absence of a World Series appearance. The most mortifying feature of this collective deterioration is that, after engaging three general managers in six years, and three field managers in four years, and after turning over the roster several times since 1995, the Mariners are still being outsmarted by the division-rival Oakland A's.

The low-budget, low-rent, low-crowd, no-account-stadium A's, who over the past six years have, for money reasons, jettisoned stars such as Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada, Johnny Damon, Mark Mulder, Tim Hudson, Jason Isringhausen and Keith Foulke, and still averaged 95 wins. This season, they had won 30 of their past 39 games and seven in a row entering last night to lead the AL wild card race and begin a challenge to the division-leading Angels.

The Mariners, meanwhile, dropped five of six on a road trip to Toronto and Cleveland to fall to 42-55 and end whatever meager prospects they had for the wild card. In a season in which 11 of 14 AL teams are at least within a game or two of .500, the Mariners have fallen to the discard pile with Kansas City and Tampa Bay.

In a time when the retro look is trendy nationally, the Mariners have thrown back to their bad old days of the 1970s and 1980s, when the trade deadline meant unloading veterans for prospects. The difference in the past couple of seasons is now they can afford to pay dead money to former players Bret Boone, John Olerud, Rich Aurilia, Kevin Jarvis, Jeff Cirillo and Quinton McCracken.

The mistakes and misjudgments that have produced this nadir have been much discussed and too lengthy to rehash. The question is whether there is a plan going forward.

Manager Mike Hargrove insists there is.

He had a similar experience in Cleveland, when his first three years as manager were losers, followed by six winners, including five consecutive AL Central championships and World Series appearances in 1995 and 1997.

"The plan here is similar," Hargrove said this week, "only we want it to be shorter (than three losing seasons) in Cleveland.

"We're going to be aggressive, but not so much that we make mistakes."

Sounds good, except the Indians created success out of signing good young players to affordable, long-term contracts. They didn't tie up big money in free agent veterans, as the Mariners have with Richie Sexson and Adrian Beltre.

Worthy as were those moves, as long as Mariners ownership runs the franchise as a for-profit business and not as a hobby, the strain of big salaries will stretch out the recovery beyond next year.

Already in their division they have a baseball hobbyist in Angels owner Arte Moreno, whom they are unlikely to outspend. In Oakland, the past six years have demonstrated they will not outsmart A's GM Billy Beane.

Unless they alter course, the Mariners will be in a battle of wits annually with the Texas Rangers for third place in a four-team division. Oo-ee. Hang on to your seats.

A second bad season was long ago in the books. To hold it to three, there's no point to more incremental trade-deadline deals for compost such as Jose Offerman or Doug Creek.

If that means trading popular, productive players such as Eddie Guadardo, Jamie Moyer and Randy Winn, at least it will provide ownership a chance to show there's a plan to get out of the ditch.


__________________________________________________________




He is spot on about everything except: Unless they alter course, the Mariners will be in a battle of wits annually with the Texas Rangers for third place in a four-team division. Nope. The Texas Rangers with their stable of young potential superstars & GM John Hart (who built Grover's Cleveland squad) will leave the M's in their dust. Mariners management is pathetic.

Cant we ever field a good team, dammit

^
Yeah when I first moved to Seattle in '88 I was a Red Sox fan. However it didn't take me long to become a Mariners fan, even though they sucked back then!

Seems they still do. :(

On the other hand, I'm quite proud of our local A's, who used to scratch the dirt with the Mariners at the bottom of the barrel for quite a while.

Without wanting to jinx anything I want to add: but look at them now! :banana:

So you see: nothing is impossible, so take heart! :horse: There's always tomorrow and another game! :cheers: