M’S Are Winning Without Having That Magic Touch

Prediction: Junior will break Roger Maris’ home-run record.

Oh, not this season. And not that Junior.

In case you hadn’t kept abreast, Jose Cruz Jr. has 23 homers in just 84 games of this, his pledge year. Extrapolating those numbers over a full season - and I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’ve warmed up properly - we come up with 44 home runs in his first look at major league pitching.

Or six more than Ken Griffey Jr. hit in his first two full seasons in the bigs.

By comparison, Mike Timlin - the relief ace Seattle cannily wrested from Toronto in exchange for Cruz - has three blown saves in four opportunities since joining the M’s.

Extrapolating that over a full season, we come up with a jury letting Lou Piniella walk on a verdict of justifiable homicide.

In 1995, the Seattle Mariners gave an entire region Pennant Fever.

In 1997, they have given us Pennant Dread.

Yes, the M’s will be champions of the American League West, though their input in the matter has been minimal. In all frankness, the issue is currently being decided by the Detroit Tigers and Minnesota Twins - the Tigers because they can beat the Anaheim Angels at will, and the Twins because their pitching staff is a bat-rack aphrodisiac.

By happy coincidence, the M’s are currently holed up in the Metrodome and now own a fat five-game lead on the Angels, who are finding it difficult to get around on fastballs because of that big fork sticking in them.

After months of searching, the Mariners have finally found that fast track to the playoffs, where anything can happen - though what is sure to happen is Heathcliff Slocumb loading the bases after being summoned from the pen.

This should be sigh-of-relief time. Except, of course, that the Mariners don’t dare, being terminally shy of relief.

But you don’t toss back home runs just because they don’t reach the third deck. A flag is a flag, no matter how many bullet holes from battle.

Any 20-year Mariners fans out there totalling up style points?

I didn’t think so.

Still, I think we’ve reached a consensus that even if the M’s make it further than they did in ‘95, this one hasn’t been nearly as much fun.

There was magic that first time. And not just because it was the first time, though that was certainly a factor.

Remember, the Angels had to take gas two years ago just as willingly as they are right now for Seattle to pull it off. But then there was the thrill of the hunt, the inevitability of Griffey and Edgar Martinez and Jay Buhner coming up with the clutch hit, the incredible novelty of management actually allowing money to be spent for mid-season help and Piniella rolling sevens on every trip to the mound.

All that made you love these guys before the TV ads told you to.

Now we hardly know these guys.

Before the roster was expanded Monday, 12 of the 25 Mariners hadn’t worn the uniform a year ago. That says something about management’s willingness to change lanes and go with the traffic flow - or about its unwillingness and inability to patch the obvious gaping pothole until it threatens to swallow the car. The turnstile in the Mariners clubhouse may also have something to do with the team’s inability to put down the hammer and sustain a winning streak, at least until the Twins so eagerly obliged.

But transience is now as much a part of baseball as the pitch a foot outside getting called a strike. This is more of a karma deal.

Having perfected the cliffhanger rally in ‘95, the M’s this time have made an art form of the deflating come-from-ahead defeat. They are baseball’s finest purveyors of the blown-save-by-committee.

Some of this must be laid at Piniella’s feet - an occasionally maddening insistence on adhering to baseball’s beloved book of percentages. When left-hander Paul Spoljaric gets the leadoff hitter out in the ninth, Lou, there’s really no law that says he has to come out just because the next two guys up bat right-handed.

It is bad karma when Piniella challenges Buhner to bring his batting average up to a reasonable .260 in the final month - to make contact when it counts - and to have Buhner grumble and swing from his heels anyway. It is bad karma to see your ace stupidly slap at a ball and injure his pitching hand. It is bad karma to see the hurts pile up - Russ Davis, Alex Rodriguez, Martinez.

Mostly, it is bad karma to panic, and there is no other description for the deadline trades that purged the M’s of more of their future - Cruz, Derek Lowe, Jason Varitek - and brought Timlin and Slocumb.

It is one thing to bring in talent that other clubs can’t afford. It is quite another to bring in talent other clubs simply don’t want. The only difference between the Mariners now and before the deadline is that Piniella has bigger names available to blow saves.

It is interesting that the White Sox could afford to let Roberto Hernandez go - not to the M’s, who just couldn’t pull the trigger - and then hand the ball to a nobody named Matt Karchner, who already has more saves since deadline day than any of the closers who changed teams.

Truly, the M’s had to do something - the window of opportunity and all.

But like we said, it’s a karma deal. And two years ago felt like the beginning of something big. First place or no, this doesn’t feel like the beginning of anything.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review