in MLB Articles

Rare Scene This Year

At week’s end the Seattle Mariners sat 13? games behind the LA Angels in the American League West, and the 33 – 42 record puts them on pace for 91 losses this season. Not exactly what manager Mike Hargrove had in mind for this season’s edition of a team that expected to compete with LA and the Texas Rangers for first in the division.

Mariner fans are not happy and feel that the team may be throwing in the white flag, with trade rumors involving Randy Winn, Bret Boone and Jamie Moyer circulating all over chat boards and radio talk shows.

Ichiro Suzuki is coming off a year in which he banged out 262 hits to set the major league single-season record. This season sees the 5’9’’, 172 pound slugger struggling at the plate and hitting a very human .298. Not to say that that’s a bad average, but Mariner fans sort of expect more from a guy who once said, “If I’m in a slump, I ask myself for advice.”

Adrian Beltre is another player who has Mariner fans scratching their heads. Beltre used a recent ten-game hitting streak to raise his season average from .237 to .257, but he didn’t hit any homeruns during that stretch and has only 5 for the season, his last homerun coming on May 21. He is sitting at only 34 RBIs and it is safe to say that the Mariners were expecting a whole lot more from a man who hit 48 homeruns, drove in 121 runs, and hit .334 last season.

The only bright lights for the Mariners this season are closer our expert Guardado, who has 19 saves and a 1.67 ERA this year, and first baseman Richie Sexson, who, with 17 homeruns and 57 RBIs, also witnessed the birth of his twins in mid-may.

Sooner or later the Mariners will have to decide whether to give it a shot this year and try to add some help, or to actually begin dumping players in looking to rebuild for next year and beyond. If management does choose the latter route, there will be a lot of Mariner fans howling about this ‘lost season’.