Piniella Puts Positive Spin On Upcoming Season

When last seen leaving a baseball field, the Seattle Mariners looked beaten and tired and then they proceeded to lose Roberto Kelly, Paul Sorrento, Mike Blowers, Norm Charlton, Brent Gates, Omar Olivares and Andy Sheets.

So why was Lou Piniella smiling?

“We had the chance to do something special last year, we won 90 games for the first time in franchise history and then were beaten by Baltimore in the playoffs,” Piniella told a crowd of advertisers and media last week. “We’re a better team this February than we were last February.”

Piniella insisted the Mariners roster that begins spring training Feb. 13 is a deeper, more rounded group than he’s had in his first five years in Seattle.

And then he ticked off the ways:

A starting rotation likely anchored by Randy Johnson that will include 17-game winner Jamie Moyer, 16-game winner Jeff Fassero, young right-hander Ken Cloude and either Paul Spoljaric or Felipe Lira.

A lineup that may be as potent - and more flexible - than any Piniella has had.

“If I was going to make out a lineup today, Russ Davis, who hit .270 and had 20 home runs last year, would probably be hitting ninth,” Piniella said.

A veteran bullpen that includes right-handers Heathcliff Slocumb, Bobby Ayala and Mike Timlin and left-handed specialist Tony Fossas. Combined, none of them had spectacular seasons in 1997. Together, however, they saved 45 games.

A switch-hitting first baseman, speed on his bench, a left-handed hitting reserve catcher and a deeper group of reserves that should allow regulars more time to rest. “It’s a luxury we haven’t had here,” Piniella said. “It’s a long season, we travel more than most teams in baseball. With the reserves we have this year, we have more contact hitters, more speed - we have more dimensions, offensively, than the home run.”

For all that, when Piniella and general manager Woody Woodward and team president Chuck Armstrong fielded questions Tuesday, the first ones inevitably involved what most perceive as a team dilemma: the status of ace Johnson.

Did Piniella think Johnson, pitching in the final year of his contract, might become as big a distraction to the Mariners as Shawn Kemp was to the Sonics?, someone asked.

“If it is, I’ll be on the telephone with George Karl on a daily basis,” Piniella cracked. “This isn’t that unusual a situation. Roger Clemens was in the same situation two years ago in Boston and landed on his feet - he won the Cy Young Award last season.

“I won’t say we won’t have any problems with this, but I will say we won’t have many problems. The one thing everyone knows about Randy is that he’s a competitor. I don’t see that changing.”

Similarly, Woodward put a positive spin on the situation Seattle faces with Johnson, who is about to enter the final year of his contract.

“If Randy is with us all season, it’ll mean we’re contending,” Woodward said. “If we start the season with Randy, the only scenario in which he’d be traded would be if we were out of contention - then we’d trade him for young players who could help us down the line. That’s how we got Randy in the first place, a deal like that.

“If we trade him this spring, it won’t be for kids. It will be for players we know can help us win this year and next.”

That isn’t nearly as likely, Woodward said, as it may have seemed to some when Armstrong said last November the team would not offer Johnson a contract extension.

“The only surprise since then is that I thought there would be more teams interested,” Woodward said. “Altogether, there have been six teams at one point or another interested, and one of those teams had nothing we really wanted.”

And the others?

“We asked for top pitching back,” Piniella said. “We talked about Pat Hentgen in Toronto, Jaret Wright in Cleveland, Ismael Valdes in Los Angeles. The one thing we’ve said from the beginning is, we’re not going to move Randy cheaply.”

Is the team willing to keep Johnson all season, then lose him as a free agent in November?

“The only scenario in which that happens is we’re contending all season,” Woodward said. “In that case, our return would be the postseason.”

Both Piniella and Woodward said they hoped Johnson, who now lives in Arizona, would report with pitchers and catchers on Friday. Neither had spoken to him recently.

Piniella can’t wait for camp to open, or for the regular season.

“On the way here today, I drove by the new ballpark and got goose bumps,” he said. “We’ll see it progress all summer, and we have a team that fans are going to want to see play.”