Fast Break

Baseball

Bavasi: It’s players’ fault

Seattle Mariners general manager Bill Bavasi doesn’t put much of the blame on manager John McLaren for his spiraling team’s American League-worst 18-32 record.

Bavasi spoke in an 18-minute conference call during the M’s Saturday game against the New York Yankees, a 12-6 loss. It was their fifth straight defeat, giving them a 5-17 record in May.

“This is not a field manager issue,” Bavasi said. “Our performance is not related to his work. It’s related to (players’) underperformance and underachievement.

“No one had the nerve to pick us anywhere but first or second (in the A.L. West) or making it (to the playoffs) as the wild card,” he added.

In his fifth season as Seattle’s GM, Bavasi said he takes full responsibility for the team’s performance.

“I don’t take it personally, but I take it to heart,” Bavasi said. “The buck stops here. We all had a lot of high expectations for this team. The key is that the year is not over. It’s time for somebody to step up and for us to get us back in striking distance by the All-Star break.

“I feel responsible for this.”

But Bavasi said the ultimate turnaround for the M’s must come from the players. He said the team hasn’t received the kind of team leadership from players that is necessary.

“When something goes wrong, we need players to grab (other) players by the throat to say, ‘That’s not what we do here,’ ” he said. “Good teams have players who make demands of each other. We need players to step up and play like they can, not like how they want to.

“I see people who care, but you have to be willing to take the first step out of the shell.”

Bavasi doesn’t seem to have any problem with how hard the Mariners players are working.

“This interview is not an attack on the players,” he said. “They are putting the effort in. But they might need to put that effort in a more intelligent way.”

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