Muddled Mariners wonder what’s next

SEATTLE – The usually cheerful manager let loose with a seething rant. The demoralized general manager ordered his 25 players to sit at their lockers for an accountability drill to answer why they are so bad. The team president ripped into his veteran coaching staff.

Now what for these sunken Seattle Mariners?

With noise still echoing from manager John McLaren’s expletive-filled tirade Wednesday after their 20th loss in 27 games, the Mariners spent an off day in Boston on Thursday pondering this: There are still 102 games left in this face-plant of a season for the worst team in the major leagues, one with a $117 million payroll that expected to be in the playoffs this fall.

Instead, Seattle is in ruins. The Mariners have followed their worst May in history (8-20) with four consecutive losses in June. They are 21-39.

“It’s a completely demoralizing position we’re in right now based on the legitimate expectations,” general manager Bill Bavasi said after McLaren went wild. “It’s true you have to try to stay optimistic – but it’s also true you have to get fed up at some point.”

No team that has been as low as 17 games worse than .500 has rallied to make the playoffs.

“We went into spring training thinking, we can win. We can win our division, and then we’ll go from there,” Bavasi said. “Those goals have radically changed, because now we have to just look at today’s game, and work on tomorrow’s.”

Yet Bavasi said the Mariners are not giving up on 2008.

How much more of this must go on before he finally does?

“That’s going to be a long time, because we’re not going to give in,” Bavasi said.

He was the general manager of the Angels – the same team Seattle trails by 15 1/2 games in the A.L. West, the largest deficit in baseball – in 1995. That year the Mariners, managed by Lou Piniella, rallied from 13 games behind the Angels on Aug. 2 to force a one-game tiebreaker and then won the division title.

“You probably had the same question of Lou and the guys in ‘95,” Bavasi said when asked about when 2009 will become the priority.

But those Mariners had Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martinez, Randy Johnson and a teenage reserve shortstop named Alex Rodriguez. When asked if the current roster he assembled can turn it around without changes, Bavasi said: “Can it? It can. A lot of things ‘can’ happen. I don’t know that it will.”

Yet any moves will come incrementally – and apparently not with the manager.

Bavasi said again McLaren’s job is not the issue, that his players are. McLaren, a coach for 21 1/2 years in the major leagues before manager Mike Hargrove’s sudden resignation during an eight-game winning streak last July, is 64-80 in 11 months on the job.

The slumping players agree McLaren should be spared.

“The bottom line is, it’s up to us to do our jobs,” said Jose Vidro, Wednesday’s cleanup hitter who is batting .225 with 28 RBIs in 47 games.

For all their frustrations, the Mariners have made few changes. The only member of the opening-day roster no longer with the team is long reliever Cha Seung Baek. He was traded for a minor league pitcher, a move that didn’t exactly put the clubhouse on alert.

Bavasi said he is essentially stuck with the core he has this far ahead of the trade deadline.

“I can’t make a deal anyway right now that’s worth a damn,” Bavasi said.

Yet Vidro and first baseman Richie Sexson, among others, could be in trouble.