I prefer to think of this as being cynical. Goodness knows the past history of this management team has made it pretty deep. I just have a suspicion the faction that wanted a long term deal for kids got shot down by the bean counters at the Armstrong/Lincoln level, and Delgado and Koskie are the booby prize.

I agree with what you’re saying, mostly. I don’t think everyone here is like that, but I do believe that a portion of the fanbase has attached their personal hope to some of the potential moves the team could theoretically make and have blown them out of proportion. I’ve seen three pretty distinct kind of Mariner fan over the past few months:

Bitter Fan. This is the one who is still pissed about the trade for Al Martin and Doug Creek and believes that the organization as a whole is never going to change. They’re the ones constantly reminding us that Howard Lincoln is cheap, that the team has no track record of signing big name free agents, and we’re all in for a big disappointment.

Hopeful Fan. This is the guy who took the reports I made about the teams interest in Adrian Beltre and Matt Clement and have decided that anything other than these signings will be a colossal failure. They see this as the offseason of restored dreams, a chance to bring in three or four all-stars, and will be very angry if the team “settles” for lesser players.

Ryan Howard Fan. By far the most annoying of all, this is the one who created the lame Ryan Howard rumor which has now permeated the blog, leading me to pull my hair out every time someone brings up his name. If I ever meet this fan in a dark ally, I might be blogging from the NC corrections department for the next 25 to life.

My larger point is that we’ve got something of a mob mentality here: by chewing so insistently on the smallest scraps of news – even when it isn’t news at all – and by passing the same judgments back and forth, I think there’s a tendency to build up, not just a belief that the M’s should sign certain players, but an expectation that they will do so.

And I think you’re wrong. The authors of this fine site believe certiain things, like (for instance) that the Mariners will pursue Beltre, and that Koskie won’t sign unless it’s for $1 until they’ve failed to get Beltre.

As for our dear readers, many of them regard this with healthy and warranted skepticism. Many disagree entirely.

So in turn I disagree entirely with the characterization of this site as a self-satisfying mob. This isn’t freep by any stretch.

Beltre’s only been mentioned here? Umm, no. Larry Stone mentioned it on the 12th, it was mentioned in the PI… you can go Google it, you’ll start turning up other cites.

I mentioned that this was the locus of speculation that the M’s would be major players when it came to Beltre. Of course other sources might mention the M’s as in need of a third baseman, but what I haven’t really been seeing is any serious speculation of the M’s as his likely destination … except for here.

But whatever. My larger point is that we’ve got something of a mob mentality here: by chewing so insistently on the smallest scraps of news — even when it isn’t news at all — and by passing the same judgments back and forth, I think there’s a tendency to build up, not just a belief that the M’s should sign certain players, but an expectation that they will do so. Meanwhile, it can be sobering to browse through other cities’ newspapers and see how different the conversations are in those locales. The M’s aren’t major players, if you’re reading columnists in New York, Boston, Chicago, or LA.

Is that conclusive? Of course not. As I said the first time ’round, in retrospect it might look like we were better informed than those guys were. If that’s the case, I’ll be as happy as anyone. But there’s a question of perspective winding through all of this, and I’m wondering how our perspective might be distorted simply by the process of returning to a website every day and discussing, ad nauseum, the very fact that we have nothing to discuss.

I think you have every right to believe what you do about the M’s — it’s hard not to ignore the bumblings of the FO, and how they’ve conditioned us Ãœber-fans to expect moves based on mediocrity and fiscal conservatism. Good news is that the M’s haven’t done anything too horrible yet. That in and of itself shows something positive is happening. I’m holding out hope that the M’s will finally learn from their most recent mistakes and Bavasi (who’s much more willing to take a gamble than Gillick) will be able to pull the trigger on at least one big-named free agent. I’m slanted to the view that they HAVE to get someone who your fence-sitting, non-blogging, season-ticket-buying fan would recognize (though that isn’t necessarily a good thing). Even Howard should be convinced by now that he cannot field a product of mediocre players.

One would hope…

Sorry