Mariners Have Will, Do They Have Way? Piniella Keeps His Seattle Players Battling In The Face Of Adversity

If the Seattle Mariners can stay close to Texas, California and Oakland until they get Ken Griffey Jr. back, they have a good chance to win the A.L. West title, manager Lou Piniella says.

“We’ve got some question marks,” Piniella conceded. “But I’ll tell you, if things fall in place for us and we can hang around until the middle of August, we can win this division.”

With Griffey sidelined since May 26, the Mariners have not folded. At the All-Star break, they’re in last place in the division with a 34-35 record, but they’re only five games behind Texas and California (39-30).

Led by the pitching of Randy Johnson and the hitting of Tino and Edgar Martinez, the Mariners have gone 19-23 since Griffey slammed into the Kingdome’s center-field wall and broke his left wrist.

Griffey, considered by many baseball’s best player, may be able to return to the Mariners by the middle of next month. He led the A.L. with 40 home runs in last year’s strikeshortened season after hitting 45 in 1993.

“It hasn’t been easy,” Piniella said. “But for the most part we’ve hung in very well.”

Trying to persuade the voters of King County to help build them a new, retractableroof stadium that will cost $280 million, the management knows how important it is for the team to win its first division title.

Seattle ownership is expected to lose $25 million this season. And their player payroll is $34 million, high for a small-market team.

So the Mariners’ financial constraints haven’t allowed them to go out and trade for a proven veteran offensive player to help them in Griffey’s absence.

They’ve had to hope that Jay Buhner could overcome the effects of a strained left hamstring, rookie Darren Bragg could hit major-league pitching and Mike Blowers could overcome a poor start.

“We’ve scuffled some offensively, but we’re still in this thing,” Piniella said. “We need a couple of our young kids to swing the bat and contribute because it doesn’t seem to me that we’re going to make any trade to help ourselves out.”

Three players have carried the M’s without Griffey: Johnson, Edgar and Tino Martinez.

Johnson, the left-hander with the 98 mph fastball, is 9-1 with a 2.88 ERA and leads the major leagues with 152 strikeouts.

Edgar, the 1992 A.L. batting champion and the Mariners’ designated hitter, leads the league with a .362 batting average, is second in hits (87), runs scored (58) and doubles (24), and fourth in RBIs (56).

At 27, Tino, the Mariners’ first baseman, is having a career season. He’s third in the A.L. in RBIs (58), tied for fifth in home runs (18) and is hitting a career-best .299.

Without Griffey, the M’s averaged 4.9 runs and hit .261 in 42 games. With him, it was 5.8 runs and 278 in 27 games.

It’s been a frustrating 2 seasons for Piniella, who managed Cincinnati to a World Series victory in 1990. Under Piniella, the Mariners were 49-63 last season after going 82-80 in 1993.

Piniella’s will to win has never been more apparent than this season. He hasn’t let the other Mariners players quit without Griffey.

“I told them just because you lose one player, albeit a great one, you can still pull together and get the job done,” he said.

In order for Seattle to win its division, Piniella needs a lot of things have to happen.

He needs Johnson to keep winning games and piling up innings, he needs the Martinezes to keep producing runs, he needs Buhner (.274, 11 homers, 46 RBIs) and Blowers (.226, six homers, 32 RBIs) to hit well during the second half of the season, he needs to come up with a dependable fifth starter to pitch behind Johnson, Chris Bosio, Tim Belcher and Salomon Torres, and he needs to get some help from the left side in his bullpen to go along with closer Bobby Ayala (13 saves), Bill Risley and Jeff Nelson.