M’S Make A Playoff Pitch Seattle Figured To Need A Trade To Shore Up Starting Pitching
As the clock was winding down toward Monday night’s trading deadline, Lou Piniella stripped the rose-colored gloss off the Seattle Mariners’ team picture and applied the stark tones of black and white.
“The pennant race?” he said, repeating a question put to him after the Cleveland Indians split in the Kingdome. “California has put itself a pretty good ways ahead of the rest of the division.”
Feel free to interpret Piniella’s assessment as a consolation speech. While his Mariners were winning two and losing two during the weekend, the first-place Angels were extending their lead over Seattle to a whopping 11 games. Ah, but thanks to some recent tinkering with baseball’s postseason infrastructure, a white flag raised in late July doesn’t necessarily mean all dreams have been scotched for the pennant flag in October.
The Mariners are the closest they’ve been to the playoffs in 17-1/2 years, and if they crash the party through a side door, so be it. As Piniella acknowledged Sunday: “We don’t care about the division. What you talk about is playoff contention.”
Welcome to baseball’s new world order, where old acquaintances in the standings are suddenly less relevant than wild-card contenders from a distant time zone. The Mariners need not occupy themselves with the Angels anymore; now, when they consult the scoreboard, they’ll learn to look at such teams as New York, Baltimore, Milwaukee and Kansas City.
Along the Eastern front, the Yankees and Orioles have girded for the stretch by making splashy trades. New York dealt some minor-league prospects to Toronto for right-hander David Cone, he of the resume that reads like a vacant billboard: “Rent Me.” Then the Yankees turned to Oakland and shipped malcontent Danny Tartabull for malcontent Ruben Sierra, a swap that was akin to exchanging a headache for a toothache.
Meanwhile, Milwaukee and Kansas City, representing the American League’s two smallest markets, seem resigned to winning and losing with the castaways who showed up at spring training, when baseball was on strike. The Brewers already have fit replacement player Brian Givens into their rotation; the Royals started pitcher Scott Anderson, another replacement player, on Sunday.
And then there are the Mariners, who seemed inclined to tread water until Monday’s trade for starting pitcher Andy Benes. Now they hope to swim.
The good news is, they just split a four-game series against the best team in baseball without calling upon Cy Young favorite Randy Johnson. The not-so-good news is, the 2-2 weekend precisely reflected the dearth of starting pitching required to assemble a winning streak. Enter Benes from San Diego.
“You’re not going to see everybody bunched up forever,” Piniella said of the wild-card derby. “Somebody’s going to get hot. It might as well be us.”
Indians shortstop Omar Vizquel, who still maintains an off-season home in Seattle and follows his former teammates, contends Seattle was a wild-card team with one gaping hole.
“They could use another starter,” he said. “The team seems more together now. Everybody’s talking to each other; it’s nice to see. They’ve got some good hitters, even with (Ken Griffey Jr.) out of the lineup. And they’ve got a pretty good bullpen. But they need one more pitcher.”
Enter Benes.
There is a temptation to equate the imminent stadium vote with a “Win Now Or Else” philosophy for the Mariners. But really, it’s not as critical as that. Seattle doesn’t have to win the pennant or even nail down a wild-card berth; it merely needs to stay in contention before the Sept. 19 vote. It merely needs to make a run and have some fun, to give fans a ride on which they’ve never been.
Griffey is expected to return some time within the month. Benes should strengthen a thin starting rotation.
The Angels may have dibs on the view from the top, but after the Mariners swung the 11th-hour deal for an arm, nobody can stop them from reaching for the sky.