Mariners Won't Fire Their Manager or General Manager

The Mariners announced yesterday that Manager John McLaren and General Manager Bill Bavasi will both be back next year.

McLaren took over in mid-season, the team was 40-41 under his guidance. 2008 will be Bavasi's fourth year as Mariners GM.

Out in blogland, they've been calling for McLaren's head since the M's went on a 15 of 17 losing jag, one of the biggest collapses by a contending team in baseball history. The main complaint: that McLaren was too hesitant to use young Adam Jones, who'd torn up AAA pitching.

McLaren instead decided to stick with his veterans, Raul Ibanez, Jose Vidro, and Richie Sexson. And as the season winds down, let's see how they did:

Ibanez: .290, 20 HR, 103 RBI.
Vidro: .382 OBP (that's only .13 less than Ichiro, or 3%.)
Sexson: .205, 63 RBI.

Yep, Sexson was a bust. But McLaren was right on two out of three.

McLaren also took heat for his management of the bullpen during the losing streak. Using Rick White, for instance, while J.J. Putz sat idle. These were infuriating decisions, but not troubling in the long run. The losing streak wasn't McLaren's fault, it was the fault of the bullpen.

And for that, we must turn to Mr. Bavasi, who engineered one of the most disastrous trades in Mariner history in the offseason, acquiring Horacio Ramirez for fireballing reliever Rafael Soriano.

The trade was made out of desperation. Bavasi had an impossible task this offseason--get three starting pitchers. He wisely steered away from granting massive long-term contracts to pitchers on the downslopes of their careers, (Mr. Zito), and instead tried to make do with trades and bargain bin shopping. The three players he got:

The mediocre:
Miguel Batista: 15-11, 4.33 ERA. Cost: 3 year, $25 million contract

The bad atrocious:
Jeff Weaver: 7-13, 6.30 ERA. Cost: 1 year, $8.2 million contract (probably ended up being more with incentives).
Horacio Ramirez: 8-7, 7.16 ERA. Cost: $2.6 million PLUS Rafael Soriano, who had a great year in the Braves 'pen.

Bavasi's strategy for acquiring starting pitcher was disastrous. Instead of looking for young, cheap, unproven pitchers, he threw good money and good players at pitchers who had nothing going for them other than major league experience. It couldn't have worked out worse, as the M's starters--as a group--have the 2nd-worst ERA in the American League, though they start 1/2 their games in pitcher-friendly Safeco Field.

The terrible starting pitching had a pernicious effect on the bullpen, which had to consistently pick up three or four innings per night because the starters--even the decent ones--didn't make it past six innings. By trading Soriano, Bavasi lost a guy who could've been a key cog in the 'pen.

We don't think it's too big of a stretch to say that had the M's kept Soriano, they would've made the Wild Card.

Bavasi's big offseason offensive acquisition--trading injury-prone outfielder Chris Snelling for Jose Vidro, was pilloried by fans. As we wrote at the time:

USS Mariner commenters, never a stable bunch to begin with, are variously threatening to murder, blackmail, and engage in sexual congress with GM Bill Bavasi.

As it turned out, this was Bavasi's best deal. Vidro had a good year, and Snelling, once again, missed most of the season with an injury.

The lineup scored nearly five runs a game, and if $15.5 million man Richie Sexson had hit as well as even an average first baseman, would've been among the best in the AL.

Were Bavasi or McLaren perfect? No. Not even close. But firing them would be a precipitous move, ushering in a whole new regime. That just not what you do when a team goes from 77 to 85 wins. Whether or not the M's improved in the stats (they actually allowed more runs than they scored), they won eight more games than they did the year before.

This may sound like Joe Morgan talking, but baseball is about winning games, and I don't see how you can judge them on any other basis.

I mean, if I sell widgets, and I sell 20,000 more widgets than the year before, you're going to come in and tell me that you looked at the number of sales calls I did, and, mathematically, I only should've sold 2,000 more widgets?

That's nuts. Bavasi and McLaren get one more year, and I hope they do something with it.

Let's go 2008 M's!