Seattle addresses slump without panic

All the signs of a team in a hitting slump were evident Tuesday afternoon at Safeco Field.

On the field, Adrian Beltre and Richie Sexson took extra swings in a midday session of batting practice. Behind the dugout, other players filtered in and out of the underground batting cages. And on the clubhouse message board was an important notice: “3:45 hitters meeting in manager’s office.”

Mike Hargrove wasn’t ready to do anything drastic to shake the Mariners out of their offensive problems, but it clearly was time to pull the troops together and talk about it.

“We just talked about hitting, the fact that we need to relax and be the hitters we’re supposed to be,” Hargrove said. “We’ve got a bunch of guys who take a lot of pride in their abilities and they want to do well. Over the course of the last two weeks, more times than not, we tried too hard.”

The question is what to do about it. Hargrove said all a team can do is work through it.

“We had early hitting today and we had the meeting and we’ll continue to address it with them,” he said. “Baseball is a game of cycles. There’s good ones and bad ones, and the trick is to keep the good ones longer than the bad ones.”

Hargrove isn’t ready to juggle the lineup, although he knows it could come to that.

“Everything has its time,” he said. “If we continue to hit the way we’ve done the last two or three days, I’ll certainly look at doing something like that. It’s not something I want to do.”

Hargrove said he definitely wouldn’t resort to what former Texas manager Billy Martin did when he was with the Rangers.

“He put all the names in a hat and drew the lineup out of it,” Hargrove said. “I hit ninth that day and got three hits. It’s the most radical thing I’ve ever seen done. I don’t know that I’d ever do that.”

Olivo stays in lineup

Catcher Miguel Olivo’s .159 average entering Tuesday’s game was the worst of the M’s starters, but Hargrove had no plans to replace him.

Hargrove said Olivo needs playing time to develop into the premier catcher the team believes he can be.

“We don’t want to sacrifice our long-term goals for the short term,” Hargrove said. “Having said that, we don’t want to stifle the short-term (goals) trying to reach the long-term. It’s a real delicate juggling act, but Miguel will be given every chance to play.”

It might be different if Olivo weren’t playing so well on defense, especially with a strong throwing arm that has kept opponents from stealing.

“Miguel is doing a good job of handling our pitching right now,” Hargrove said. “With his arm strength, teams think twice before they try to steal on us.”