Keeping eye on Hargrove

The sharks are starting to circle.

And in the middle, just treading water, is poor Mike Hargrove.

Going into Monday night’s game in Texas, the Seattle Mariners had lost six consecutive games, had fallen to 5-9 and into the American League West cellar.

All this in a season that began with M’s manager Hargrove exploding during spring training when a reporter brought up CEO Howard Lincoln’s offseason comment that Hargrove and general manager Bill Bavasi were on the hot seat.

It must be positively bun-burning right now.

On SportsLink, we’ve been following the discussion on whether Hargrove can stay afloat, including the conjecture emanating from columns, stories and blog postings. At times it’s been pretty intense, none more so than Monday’s blog posting from the Seattle Times’ Mariners beat writer Geoff Baker.

Baker wrote, “So, where does that leave the Mariners and manager Mike Hargrove? Well, in a countdown stage, it would appear.” He went on to say if the losing streak hits 10 games, Hargrove would probably be fired.

But Baker wasn’t alone in speculating. Far from it. The pressure is piling on from columnists to blog posters, with hardly anyone throwing Hargrove a life preserver.

The Tacoma News Tribune’s John McGrath wrote in his Monday morning column, “Twenty-one days into a season already threatening to unravel, manager Mike Hargrove’s job will be at stake this week.”

And P-I columnist Art Thiel wrote, “Most teams with six consecutive losses can look at it as a bad patch of road. But for a team whose leadership in October voluntarily put the entire franchise on the hot seat, six losses in a row is more than halfway back to hell.”

Thiel, of course, was referring to last August’s 11-game losing streak, the streak that cost the M’s any chance of competing for the A.L. West title.

This year’s six-game streak hasn’t done that yet, but it may cost Hargrove and Bavasi more.

It may cost them a chance to stay afloat this season.

Throughout the blogosphere, Mariners’ version, there is discussion – some of it intelligent, some of it not – on Hargrove and Bavasi’s futures. As can be expected, the rabid fans who visit these sites aren’t enamored with either, and would love to see both disappear.

Though, in a thread on USSMariner.com, quite a few people pointed out the pitfalls of trying to change a general manager in midseason, prior to the June free agent draft.

Hargrove doesn’t get the same break. Changing managers when a ship is sinking (which is the image you see on LookoutLanding.com) is a time-honored baseball tradition, even if the way fans discuss it now isn’t.

But sports writer speculation has deeper roots, and when a beat writer like Baker writes, “If Hargrove pulls the team out of this and starts winning with some consistency, he keeps going. Don’t get me wrong, winning tonight or tomorrow, then losing another three is not going to put the countdown off for any length of time. This is very serious,” then you know the manager is in trouble.

And McGrath is sure Hargrove knows it.

Pulling Jeff Weaver after three innings Sunday proved it to McGrath. He wrote, “Hargrove wasn’t making moves for the long haul Sunday. He was making moves in an attempt to stay employed.”

Which is exactly how Thiel interpreted the move. “Hargrove was so desperate to win a game April 22 that he risked the fragile psyche of Weaver by jerking him in front of his hometown friends, family and former team, which abandoned him last year.”

The end may be near. And if the M’s let Mike Hargrove sink, we’ll have it covered.