Mariner Farmhands Learn the Gospel of Good Enough

Mariner big leaguers are feeling good with the team at 13 games over .500, but if they belonged to an M's farm team, they'd be expecting a pink slip.

Future Mariners, you see, aren't supposed to try to win too much. So says Greg Hunter, the Mariners' director of minor-league and scouting operations:

A good gauge is .500. You want your clubs to be somewhere around there, whether it's a few games above or below. You don't want to win so much that you foster an attitude of overconfidence.

So, if we're following, the M's don't want players who've experienced tremendous baseball success. This certainly sheds light on the Rafael Soriano for Horacio Ramirez deal.

We suppose this is some method of ensuring that players are always being challenged, but it sounds stupid to us. Teams that play well together are rewarded by being broken up? Not a good message.

When Griffey was coming up, the M's loaded his teams with their best players so he'd at least experience some winning, with the hope that he'd bring a winning attitude to the M's. And that worked out pretty well.

Evidently, organizational policy has shifted.

In keeping with this change, Hunter is in the process of rewriting some of history's most inspirational quotes to fit with "The Mariner Way." To wit:

Bob Marley: "Get up, stand up / Stand up for your rights / Get up, stand up / Don't give up the fight."
Mariner Way: "Kind of squirm around in your chair until you get your rights, and if you don't, no biggie."

Winston Churchill: "We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields, and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender!"
Mariner Way: "We'll fight on the beaches, sure, but the landing grounds are a really long drive. And the fields? I mean, come on!"

Theodore Roosevelt: "Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat."
Mariner Way: "Win or lose, you'll get your per diem."