John Blanchette: Mariners’ ship keeps sinking…
SEATTLE – There is a hot seat here after all.
It’s just that the temperature is regulated by a Boy Scout rubbing two sticks together – from the Seattle Mariners bat rack.
The kind that don’t make a spark.
OK, so Mariners buckstopper Howard Lincoln is the biggest thing in slow burn since Edgar Kennedy was being tormented by Harpo and Chico. So it took a weekend sweep at the hands of the woeful Washington Nationals – think the old Senators, but with fewer stars – to coax the steam from his sidecars. So he didn’t act until the M’s were, by math and mutual acclaim, the worst team in Major League Baseball.
Lincoln finally got off the dime – the penny? – Monday and fired general manager Bill Bavasi, ostensibly for assembling the biggest collection of underachievers since the Brat Pack.
The underachievers themselves are all still employed, of course – and still living down to their recalibrated expectations, losers 6-1 on Monday night to the Florida Marlins, who have more than half again as many victories with less than one-fifth the payroll.
The M’s are still helmed by manager John McLaren, who drew yet another verbal line in the sand that his players proceeded to scuff over with another feckless performance. Bavasi’s stand-in is assistant Lee Pelekoudas, a respected organization lifer and a candidate for the job permanently, though that would hardly scream “change.”
But then, screaming isn’t the Mariners’ style.
“We don’t follow the Steinbrenner model in this franchise,” Lincoln huffed at one point during Monday’s press conference. “We’re not going to be out there trashing our players, making derogatory comments with the idea that somehow that will motivate them and placate our fans.”
And how’s that working out?
Instead, the ownership apparently thinks that motivation will emerge from gassing the GM – or from having the team president air out the manager and coaches behind closed-but-not-soundproof doors, as Chuck Armstrong did two weeks ago.
Armstrong tried to explain that away Monday with a bizarre story about his Navy days aboard the Bonhomme Richard and how he was channeling John Paul Jones. Sinking ship metaphors have never been so in vogue in Seattle since the USS Mariner was putt-putting around the Kingdome.
It does not inspire confidence that Armstrong will be the point man on the search for a new GM, seeing as a month ago he said Bavasi was doing “an outstanding job.”
What happened since? Did he forget to look at the waiver wire one day? Did he park in Armstrong’s space?
No, of course, Bavasi was fired – and properly so – for his five-year body of work, which without citing all the details was amassing the fewest number of victories with the greatest payroll expenditure in club history. It was hilarious on Monday to hear everyone from Armstrong to Bavasi to Pelekoudas chide the press for dealing in hindsight, when that is precisely what Lincoln was doing in firing his chief talent hound. No one in the organization so much as whispered that Bavasi was bluffing over the winter when he declared the M’s contenders and made the deal for Erik Bedard to go all-in.
But the problem, as it often does, starts at the top and considering he has been the franchise’s boss for what will now be seven years without a playoff appearance, Lincoln is due to get what he gave. We also know that rich guys treat each other with considerably more dignity than they do their subordinates. If Lincoln leaves, his fellow owners will allow him to resign gracefully, between seasons, away from this current stink.
And yet the problem is also rooted at the bottom – if you can call $117 million worth of salary the bottom.
“This club on the field can perform one hell of a lot better than its performing now,” insisted Bavasi. “It’s not lost its talent. Nobody’s gotten old all of a sudden. They have learned to become dysfunctional – and they have to unlearn that.”
In his valedictory, Bavasi did seem to have considerable insight into the M’s shortcomings without wholly coming to grips that in putting the club together he was the guy who whiffed on finding the characteristics that define winners.
He noted in particular – and called it ironic – that for all the big-ticket additions to the roster in the offseason, the subtraction of volatile outfielder Jose Guillen may have outweighed them, simply because he “had no patience” if a teammate was getting in the way of winning. It didn’t matter if his behavior was sometimes “inappropriate,” Bavasi said.
“We’re all spending a lot of our careers,” he said of fellow GMs, “looking for Tony Phillips.”
But M’s management has done little to hold its workforce accountable, either. While Armstrong and Lincoln insisted owners were not afraid to eat salaries of unproductive players, the M’s are still trotting out Richie Sexson at $15.5 million to hit .218 – with what hits he does manage mostly being singles – and Jose Vidro to be a .215 designated hitter. What Triple-A prospect could possibly be worse?
“We are open to all ideas,” Lincoln said. “Nothing is off the table. We are prepared to make whatever further changes are necessary without any hesitation.”
He’ll get busy rubbing those two sticks together, just to prove it.