M’S Caravan Carries Full Load

A youngster fixed Dave Niehaus with a low-angle stare and a high-comedy question.

“Are you Lou Piniella?” the boy wondered.

My oh my.

“No, I’m not,” the household voice - if not face - of the Seattle Mariners explained gently. “And I wouldn’t want to be. I don’t need his headaches.”

Lou Piniella didn’t join the Mariners Caravan for its final stop in Spokane on Friday, so we didn’t have a chance to ask the man who once had Seattle on a string how it feels to be dangling at the other end of it.

A scant few weeks from the beginning of spring training, the M’s manager doesn’t have enough starting pitching, doesn’t have enough relief pitching, doesn’t have enough speed or defense, doesn’t have enough owners with a vision of what it takes to win and doesn’t have a general manager creative enough to work around the budget limitations.

On the upside, he no longer has to burp Randy Johnson.

As much as anything else, the 1999 Mariners season will be about dealing with the scars of the club’s ugly divorce from baseball’s most dominant pitcher - well, the most dominant between April and October, anyway. The Big Snit will be missed only every fifth day, but management’s tortured mishandling of the dilemma only intensified the necessity that something healthy come of it.

Not that there’s any pressure on Carlos Guillen.

Nah.

All the Mariners are expecting from this 23-year-old Venezuelan with all of 39 major-league at-bats is that he:

Learn a new position and solidify a suspect infield,

Become a leadoff hitter for the first time in his career and thus set a tone for the entire lineup, and

Make everyone forget the high-altitude rodent with the 98 mph fastball ever existed.

And if Guillen succeeds at that - or even if he doesn’t - quite possibly he gets to do it all over again in two years.

It was Guillen and two fellow minor leaguers, pitchers Freddy Garcia and John Halama, who Houston signed over to the M’s in exchange for Johnson last July - the only option left to Mariners management after the Yankees and Indians were done playing chicken.

All are fine prospects. The problem with prospects is that the payoff is hypothetical.

And the M’s have only managed to exacerbate that problem by making him Joey Cora’s replacement - now.

For Guillen’s only experience at second base and in the leadoff spot in the order came during a brief 34-game audition with Tacoma and Seattle last summer. When he tore the posterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in September, the audition was over - along with any chance of Guillen resuming it in winter ball.

He showed up with the Caravan here proclaiming his knee to be “about 90 percent” and admitting to being “a little nervous” about this urgent experiment.

“It’s a new position for me - I’ve never played second,” he said. “I’ve never hit leadoff. Maybe 15 or 20 at-bats in the minor leagues. So I feel a little pressure.”

So do the M’s, probably, but they don’t have many choices.

They do have David Bell, a journeyman infielder with no speed - but they may need him at third base if Russ Davis can’t find a cure for the common error. Re-signing Cora was never an option because of safety - and liability - concerns for fans sitting in the line of fire behind first base. Farmhands Jeff Berblinger and Giomar Guevara aren’t the answer.

The fact is, Guillen proved his worth just getting injured. He’d sprinted perhaps 100 feet behind second to a catch a popup against Oakland.

But range is only part of the issue.

“The big thing is making the double play,” he said. “I’ve been working hard with Smitty (coach Steve Smith) and I feel more comfortable. It’s still middle infield, but it’s different angles and footwork.”

But it’s just an adjustment. Guillen’s glove is good enough to let him play anywhere. Indeed, if Davis straightens himself out and if Jay Buhner recovers quickly enough to go back to right field and let David Segui play first again, this could be the best M’s infield in years.

Then again, Russ could be Russ and Buhner’s arm may never take the strain of a throw to second base from the rightfield corner. But at least the middle seems solid.

Just how Guillen takes to batting leadoff is more problematic. So, too, is his durability. In addition to last year’s injury, he missed the entire 1994 season and all but 29 games in 1996 with various hurts.

But the consensus among baseball scouts seems to be that the M’s got themselves a good player - to say nothing of insurance at shortstop if Alex Rodriguez decides to split when his contract expires in two years.

“I can’t let pressure be a problem,” said Guillen. “The fans will want to see what will happen, but I just have to work hard and keep playing the game the way I’ve been doing.

“I’m excited. They traded the best left-handed pitcher in this league for me and Freddy and John.”

Until someone convinces him otherwise, it’s a compliment.