Mariners to season ticket holders: Bavasi, Hargrove to return
With commentary. Short version: Lincoln/Armstrong says “Bill Bavasi will continue to lead our baseball operations and Mike Hargrove will continue to manage the team.”
The full letter, with extra snarky comments, after the break.
With the 2006 baseball season about to conclude, the Seattle Mariners would like to thank you for your support and share our thoughts as we look ahead to 2007.
It would have been great if they’d just left this blank, to mirror the ownership’s general cluelessness.
Or put “duh” and then signed off. I would have accepted that, too.
Although this was our third consecutive losing season, there were a number of bright spots and several areas of improvement on the team this year, which are discussed in more detail below. We are well aware that your patience is not infinite. Neither is ours. Like you, we wish the rebuilding process was much quicker and that the Mariners would be in the playoffs next week. We remain determined to get things turned around as quickly as we possibly can, and in doing so, we ask for your continued patience.
We’re experiencing technical difficulties. “Full House” will return in a moment.
While our goal remains the same – to bring a World Championship to Seattle – we recognize that you will judge us by the results. We know that there is still a great deal of work to do to get us to our goal and that you, like us, are anxious to see some concrete progress. Well, we do think we have made progress!
Super!
After reviewing all aspects of our organization and looking ahead, we believe that:
• The Mariners are much better at both the Major League and minor league levels than we were in 2004, when the rebuilding process began. The talent level is better and deeper and gives us the flexibility to make trades that will help us.
Okay, sure.
• More pieces of the puzzle are in place today than a year ago. The emergence of shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt, second baseman Jose Lopez, catcher Kenji Johjima and outfielder Chris Snelling have solidified several key positions for us. Along with veterans Raul Ibañez, Ichiro Suzuki, Richie Sexson and Adrian Beltre, there is a good foundation in place to build upon.
Uhhhh… so is the implication here that Sexson/Beltre/Ichiro are all going to be back? Because that’s going to do a lot to keep the team from improving next year.
• Our bullpen, with J.J. Putz, Rafael Soriano, Julio Mateo, Mark Lowe, George Sherrill, Jake Woods and several other young arms, is a strength. It allows us to build the pitching staff from back to front, and our main off-season focus will be on upgrading the starting rotation. Felix Hernandez and Jarrod Washburn are the only current starters under contract beyond this season.
“Back to front”? What the heck does that mean? Is that the roster construction version of “shortening the game”?
• During the second half of the season, the Mariners became the second youngest team in Major League Baseball (only the Florida Marlins were younger), including the youngest pitching staff. This transition from a veteran team was by design and it bodes well for the future. The first step for young players is to establish themselves as quality Major Leaguers. The next step is for them to grow together as a “team,” a winning team that evolves into a legitimate contender.
Oooooooooh boy, the grow-together-as-a-team. Instead of sending players to winter ball, they’re going to send them to winter camp, where they’ll roast marshmellows and tell ghost stories. Wheee!
Also: the move to youth generally, sure. But they signed Carl Everett last off-season and gave Ibanez a ridiculous extension. Was it a weighted youth movement?
• Our farm system has become much more productive. Prior to the roster expansion on September 1, 19 of the 25 players on our roster were either products of our farm system or originally signed by the Mariners (Ichiro, Kenji, Sherrill).
That’s a weird metric to use, but oookay.
• The Mariners have shown steady improvement over the past three seasons, with win totals increasing from 63 to 69 to 76 (with three games to play this weekend), including a 42-36 mark at Safeco in front of the home crowds.
That’s not a particularly hard mark to improve on. They’re kind of bragging about how awful the 2004 retooling was (and they didn’t go into that as a rebuilding year, either).
• We have more work to do. And we believe that we have the right people in place to get the job done. Bill Bavasi will continue to lead our baseball operations and Mike Hargrove will continue to manage the team. We believe that they are the right people to lead us to the next level. We have great confidence in their abilities. In our view, continuity of leadership is extremely important at this point in time.
(jaw agape)
If the ownership of the team wants us to know that they have great confidence in Hargrove, doesn’t that tell us that their confidence is worthless? That they really, truly are unable to judge managerial talent? Or, at the very least, that they’re lying to us?
As Ralph Malph commented: If Mike Hargrove is uniquely qualified to lead a young team, then I’m uniquely qualified to perform neurosurgery on wombats.
And if the other message is that continuity of leadership is more important than competence, what are we to take from that?
Under Bill’s watch, we have seen a dramatic improvement in our scouting and player development departments, which has already resulted in several top prospects climbing quickly up the minor league ladder and playing key roles for us this year.
Sure, okay.
Mike is uniquely equipped to lead a young team. His experience in developing and dealing with young players is one of the reasons we hired him in the first place. And we have watched as Mike has kept all his players – veterans and young players alike – focused and playing hard every day of the season. We bounced back from the tough road trip in August by winning series from the Yankees, Red Sox, Angels and Tigers, and continued to play well in September.
I can’t even believe that.
Mike is uniquely equipped to lead a young team.
This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard from M’s ownership. Hargrove has demonstrated, over and over again, that he prefers experience to talent, age to youth, is a poor judge of talent, a poor in-game manager. What are those unique qualifications, exactly?
I cannot believe that Hargrove has the endorsement of ownership, much less that he’s returning next year. Whether or not the team played well in selected series late in the season, whether or not they had a winning record at home, Hargrove went through stretches this year where he could not do right, running the team out of games, mismanaging the bullpen. The Twins may well owe their playoff berth to the M’s, who laid down for them mid-season, after which the Twins pulled themselves together and went on a long run of success. The A’s ran circles around the M’s. They were trounced by divisional opponents.
Hargrove is not a good manager. He’s not a good manager of young teams in particular, but he’s not a good manager in general.
This is appalling.
This is where things stand as we prepare for a busy off-season. Our ownership group will continue to provide the necessary financial resources for the club’s success. Their goal is to get the Mariners back to the playoffs and bring a World Series to our fans in Seattle and throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Uh huh. Soooo… payroll cuts?
Along with you, nearly 2.5 million fans enjoyed watching Major League Baseball at Safeco Field this past season. The fan support has been remarkable. In addition to our commitment to the team itself, we are also committed to making Safeco Field a special place where you, your family and guests can enjoy a first-class entertainment experience in a safe, clean and family-friendly environment.
That’s the M’s, folks: they’re the Family Fun Center with the Moose in a uniform. Yayyyy!
Once again, we appreciate and thank you for your support of Mariners Baseball.
I wish I could return the thought.
Sincerely,
Howard Lincoln
Chief Executive Officer Chuck Armstrong
Chief Operating Officer
Snarkily,
Derek
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I’m quite literally speechless about this move.
Retaining Hargrove, combined with those words about how he is supposedly uniquely qualified to manage a young team (have they even WATCHED any games this year? or seen Hargrove continue to sit young players uselessly?) just demonstrates that the people running the Mariners don’t Get It.
There is something else they won’t be getting. Much of my money for tickets next year.
I think everyone who gets this email should reply back with a link to this page; let them know exactly what we fans think of their… “creative writing excercise”.
So, I’ll reiterate the question/suggestion I brought over at LookoutLanding:
Can someone please hack into Ichiro’s bubble and tell him to use his Samurai mind tricks in a meeting with Yamauchi to get rid of CHowArmLinStrong???
The sad/funny thing is that the letter has no reply capability. I tried, it bounces and the only feedback mechanism is a phone call to the season ticket holder line. They are not having a fun day after my wife put in her 2 cents
This pretty much takes all the excitement and joy any good news in the offseason will bring. They could sign Cy Young, Babe Ruth, and Lou Gehrig and Grover would manage them into the cellar.
So. F’ing. Tired.
I just bought a house, so at least I won’t have to scrimp and save for Ms tickets. That will make the spring and summer mortgage payments easier to make, I guess.
Dave, I know you’ve constantly said “don’t worry, Hargrove won’t be back, i can’t say why i know, but i do…” How does your information jive with the Lincoln letter?
Is Howie playing PR101, or is this truly the direction the Mariners have chosen to take?
Not to speak for Dave, but it’s clear there’s a lot of PR here – Mateo’s name in talking about the strength of the bullpen, for instance. And some of the guys they’re talking about might yet traded.
But that part was pretty clear.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that letter except for the Mike Hargrove part.
Thanking people *is* a “duh” thing to do, but you do it anyway.
Overall, the year *was* a good one for allowing young talent to develop. No argument there.
The Hargrove thing is enough to make me write to the Mariners and tell them I am serously considering not renewing my season tickets after 12 years because of it. The aggravation and irritiation of wathcing him “manage” a game is excruciating.
But apart from that, the letter’s OK. Not War and Peace, but it doesn’t have to be.
Howard Lincoln is just pure evil. It’s like in the movie Major League 1 & 2 where the owner of the Cleveland Indians made them do horrible on purpose so she could move them out of Cleveland. That’s the same thing with Lincoln only he’s the CEO.
Hey, I did say extrasnarkiness. Had that part not been in there, I’m sure I could have gone without posting about it at all. But once riled… man this pisses me off.
W. T. F?????????????
As a season ticket holder, this letter is the last thing I’d want to read. Yes, they send out these puffy sorts of letters every year, but this one is truly egregious. “There’s nothing wrong! Carry on! Ignore the man in the manager’s uniform!”
This really, truly makes me question whether I want to hand them my season ticket deposit for 2007.
And yes, if they’re in the letter, they’re coming back. If they weren’t mentioned, they wouldn’t be (c.f. the 2004 letter where Melvin wasn’t mentioned once).
My head knows that managers really have less impact than most folks give them credit for, and that a team managed by Hargove could, given enough talent, be a good team.
My heart says that if the Mariners are managed by Hargrove next season that they will not be able to make the playoffs.
I think it’s important to talk about the “managers don’t really have much of an effect on the team’s success” point, in this context.
Overall; sure. Managers don’t have an enormous effect on a team’s on-field performance. I think that DMZ had a good post about this once where he estimated it was in the single-digits as far as win totals (I may be misremembering, don’t shoot me if I am!).
But Hargrove’s managing this year, from the laughable lineups he’s trotted out onto the field, to his love affair with Willie Bloomquist, to his bullpen management, to his underuse/misuse of young talent, has been the absolute worst I’ve seen in the time I’ve been a baseball fan.
So he is costing you, really, about as many games as a manager CAN cost you. Even an ‘average’ manager would be a significant improvement, and with as tight as the playoff races have been this year, even a three game swing can mean the difference between making the playoffs, and not.
You can see why they aren’t making this a big ad campaign or anything. The timing, however, strikes me as particularly awful: right after the M’s let the Sacramento River Cats walk all over us (yeah, that’s Grover, keeping the team playing hard), this demoralizing statement appears.
Brilliant!
That seriously makes me grumpy. All we can do is hope and pray that that’s a bunch of PR shit and not the truth. Because if it is, well, I’ll become a new kind of fan.
I’ll be rooting for the Mariners and following them, but I’ll be rooting for them to lose
The only really optimistic thing I get out of the letter is this sentence:
Felix Hernandez and Jarrod Washburn are the only current starters under contract beyond this season.
To me, this would seem to imply no Meche next year, and I could live with that.
I actually have a large “How to evaluate managers” post almost ready in the queue, too.
I am unable to wrap my head around this one. This is indeed a sad sad day for M’s fans. I went from hopeful about spring-training to destoryed about the entire 2007 season. AAAARGGGGGGGGG.
17. How long will that take?
Probably, yes. They like Putz and Soriano at the back end (sorry Raffy, no starting for you), so all they need to fix is the crap in front of them.
I just don’t understand this. Statistical fans, casual fans, insider fans, barroom fans, everyone understands Hargrove needs to go — but management doesn’t?
I was working on my apology post to Dave, for questioning if he was still sure that Hargrove would be gone next year after the articles from the Rohn firing. I wasn’t positive that Grover would be gone, but I really really wanted to believe.
Guess I can trash that .txt file now.
I go to Seattle twice a year to watch Mariner games (its about 5 hours away), this weekend is my final trip this year. I was so excited all week, and looking forward to leaving tomorrow. Now I’m just, meh about the whole thing. At least I get to watch Felix Saturday.
There’s only one way to respond to this news if it does not please you. Do-not-go-to-the-family-fun-center-that-is-Safeco. It’s the only response that resonates with Howie and Chuck.
At least now I have my first question ready for the feed with Bill in the spring.
so, do we assume they have cleared with ownership, including Mr Yamauchi (and by extension, Ichiro?)
About the only argument I have heard from those who didn’t want to make a managerial change was ‘continuity’, so I guess the idea of 4 managers since 2002 is upsetting to the FO …. sigh. I had thought I ‘d resigned myself to this happening, but I don’t think I really did.
Also: the move to youth generally, sure. But they signed Carl Everett last off-season and gave Ibanez a ridiculous extension. Was it a weighted youth movement?
I think what it means is the youth movement is proceeding from back to front.
I view this letter as being much like the State of the Union address. Largely meaningless and all political. Howie is trying to show that ownership is in touch with the fan base. Saying that while, yes, the season hasn’t been as successful as they’d like, look at all the good things that have happened.
This letter is all spin-doctoring and trying to pull any real meaning out of it is like trying to find deeper truths in Hillary Duff lyrics, there just isn’t any there. It’s all fluff, no substance.
If Bavasi has any sort of leeway this off-season, there’ll be changes. Hopefully ownership will “re-assess” their position on Grover after the season and make the appropriate changes.
I’m flabbergasted.
My family is filled with a ton of baseball fans, and USSM is my secret stash of knowledge I use to dazzle them. I’ve been telling them for a long time that Grover is on his way out and none of them have ever believed me.
I’m so shocked that I’m probably not maknig any sense.
I am vigorously hoping that this is a PR move. I mean they extended Melvin’s contract, then fired him the next year. Maybe they’re doing the same thing here. It’s possible, right?
This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard from M’s ownership. Hargrove has demonstrated, over and over again, that he prefers experience to talent, age to youth
oh, Derek. Why, didn’t you see in the Times this morning that Mike has learned his lesson???
“But the Mariners didn’t start winning until ending their reliance on the aging bat of designated hitter Carl Everett and the faltering arm of veteran closer Eddie Guardado. Until struggling pitcher Joel Pineiro was bounced from the rotation to the bullpen ….
“There’s a real thin line between being patient and being foolish,” Hargrove admitted this week, not naming any specific cases. “And I’ve learned that, no matter how long you do this, you have a tendency at times to cross that line. It’s not always bad that you do. It’s just bad if you don’t recognize it in time.”
When you get an enema, does that not also proceed from back to front?
Or a public flogging?
When I read this letter, my lunch went from back to front.
Please I encourage all season ticket holders to please send a reply email voicing your displeasure over this decision. They value the season ticket holders opinions, right? Please gather everyone who is a season ticket holder and lets get this hargrove guy out of town once and for all.
Actually, other than the fact that Dave’s sources are usually right (and I’ll address that issue in a moment), I’m not sure why anybody would be surprised by anything that falls out of Lincoln’s mouth.
Repeat after me: he’s a businessman, not a baseball man. Still surprised by what he said? Repeat it again.
Lincoln may be a good businessman, though I don’t know how good you’d have to be to make an egregious profit with Nintendo when he was there.
However, he and Armstrong have demonstrated time after time that they are not good baseball men. For example, one of them might say, or cause to have said, “Mike Hargrove is uniquely qualified to lead a young baseball team.” This may well be true if the term “uniquely qualified” may span the spectrum from incompetent to brilliant. Note that it doesn’t say that he is good, just uniquely qualified. I am too; so are you, probably.
Now, as to Dave’s assurance that Hargrove is going to be fired: I pray that it is true. I will burn babies at the stake to make it true.
However, a possible scenario is this: Assume Dave’s sources are unimpeachable. Now, assume that King Lincoln & Prince Armstrong put their heads together and CHANGED THEIR MINDS! Dave’s source(s) remain unimpeachable, yet the causic biles of disappointment will now fill our mouths, plug our ears, and blind our eyes, and great will be the lamentation.
This is the way the season ends,
this is the way the season ends,
this is the way the season ends,
not with a swing but a forfeit.
I will not follow a team led by Hargrove.
Everyone for the sake of the future of our team the Mariners, send angry letters now. Here is the email address to the Mans fan-care. fanfeedback@mariners.mlb.com
“The Mariners are much better at both the Major League and minor league levels than we were in 2004, when the rebuilding process began”
Hmmm… haven’t they been saying for two years that we could retool and contend at the same time, and that this wasn’t “rebuilding?”
I don’t know why I bother anymore. Mostly because I fold a lot of laundry while watching the game…
Its probably a little early to agree that the minor league system is in good shape or “restocked” either.
If Dave was fed dis-information its not the first time
something like that has happened.
All of the needs based posts about pitching are true as well as the need to score more runs that have been talked about to. As Derek notes the letter suggests or implies that is not in the cards.
HOW COULD THEY DO THIS!?!?!?!
THIS IS SO F#*$ING STUPID!
The only f—ing reason Mike Hargrove even got the Cleveland Indians to be good was because of the talent he had, Vizquel, Sandy Alomar, Kenny Lofton, Manny Ramirez, Matt Williams, Jim Thome, Charles Nagy, Jose Mesa, etc.
A TRAINED MONKEY COULD’VE WON WITH THAT BUNCH!!!!
Do they realize how many times Hargrove could’ve put Snelling and Johjima in a game this year when he stuck with Rivera and Doomquist?
Do they realize how long he stuck with washed up players like Everett and Guardado?
Do they realize how he fails to bunt and steal at the right times?
Do they realize that if Hargrove is the manager one year from now, Ichiro will be leaving in free agency?
Do they even realize that maybe the reason why the M’s won a lot in September was because they were lucky and played in many meaningless games?
Do they realize that the M’s were the AL West’s whipping boys in a division where there are no superpowers?
Do they realize that there isn’t one leader that is on this team. And not this stupid “Ibanez is the next Papi” crap, I mean a vocal leader like a Jay Buhner who will pat you on the butt when you do good but kick you in the butt when you do terrible?
DO THEY REALIZE HARGROVE HAS THE PERSONALITY OF DRYWALL?
2.5 million fans!?! We had 3.5 million come through the doors in 2002 and many of the fans that came to the big games this year rooted for the OTHER team!!!
And Julio Mateo as a key contributor to our bullpen? That’s a laugh.
And what about signing Ichiro long term? Why won’t they comment on that.
And what’s this “committment” they are talking about? Committment to stupidity? Committment to greed? Committment to lying? Committment to demonstrating what happens when bueracracy runs a baseball team?
What exactly are you committed to Mr. Lincoln, besides your meds?
Do they not get it? Whatever happened to trying to win a World Series? Hell, the Seahawks had that goal 3 years ago when Todd Leiwike came in as CEO and only got louder when Bob Whitsitt left and Tim Ruskell came in.
This is just disgusting. This team had a chance to really go from being a mediocre to average team next year to being back on its way to being a GREAT team next year.
We could’ve traded Richie Sexson and a couple prospects we don’t necessarily need for a quality #2, #3, or #4 starting pitcher, then we could’ve turned around and signed the left handed sock we really needed a year ago, Mr. Seung-Yeop Lee, that all on top of getting Matsuzaka. We then could’ve turned around and gotten a new manager, and there were plenty to choose from.
Joe Girardi, Lou Piniella, Tom Kelly, Ron Washington, Joey Cora, John McLaren, Ron Hassey, and before a couple weeks ago, Dan Rohn, were all available to talk to. Sure none of them would’ve been perfect, but chances are they would have a much more common sense approach to baseball than Hargrove, and certainly one of those guys I just mentioned would’ve brought some leadership and/or comroderie to this team that so desperately needs it.
But now that won’t happen because Bavasi is still our GM, we will see him outside of breaking the bank for Matsuzaka, just overpay grossly for a #3 starter like an Adam Eaton and will also do nothing about the offense which wasn’t patient and still had Richie Sexson and Adrian Beltre struggling with batting average and/or run production all season long.
And since Hargrove is still manager, the M’s will continue to be no better than 3rd place in the AL West, they will not be patient or smart at the plate again next year, and Hargrove will continue to put out his ridiculous lineups that regularly feature automatic outs such as Willie Bloomquist and Renee Rivera.
This is the worst thing I could imagine happening to this franchise.
Even after all these years of all the losses, all the lost season ticket sales, all the lost TV ratings, all the opposing fans coming to the ballpark, all the hate mail, all the backlash on talk radio. . .
Howard Lincoln still doesn’t get it.
He only cares about making a profit and making us fans look like fools in the process.
Well, guess what Howard? When barely 2 million fans come to the ballpark next year, that’s right, I said BARELY 2 million, then you’ll see what us “customers” were talking about.
And say what you want about the Seahawks, but at least their ownership gives a crap. They actually show that they value their fans and are committed to putting out a winner on the field every year instead of trying to save face every September 30th by writing these BS letters to season ticket holders and having these “Fan Appreciation Nights” that salute the “best fans in baseball”.
I get it though, Howard is a bueracratic idiot and takes us for granted. But you know what? Once the Seahawks get close to another Super Bowl this year and the Mariners barely eclipse 2 mil. in attendance next year, then he won’t take us for granted, I guarantee it.
I hope your proud of yourself Howard Lincoln, that’s all I have to say.
Who does Management have on their radar to placate the grumbling masses? Javy Lopez? Matt Lawton again? Josias Manzanillo? Butch Huskey?
And Who will they hire to fill out for Ron Fairly?!?! That surely should have been addressed.
I will go farther, and predict that Ichiro will not resign with the club if he is to be under Hargrove.
#last comment-Seahawks had goal of going to the Super Bowl 3 years ago, not the World Series, lol
If everyone shows displeasure to the decision of keeping Hargrove, its likely the front office will at least listen.
I think it’s important to talk about the “managers don’t really have much of an effect on the team’s success†point, in this context.
It’s kind of like “replacement level” to me. There’s an implicit minimum level of talent required. “Replacement Level” doesn’t mean “replaced by any random schmoe off the street.” It assumes Major League talent. Mateo replaced by Fruto = okay, see how Fruto does. Mateo replaced by JMHawkins = danger to cars driving down Royal Brougham.
I’m going to call the Season Ticket Holders line too and let them know I ain’t a happy camper. Maybe I’ll suggest that since Hargrove’s teams usually collapse during the second half of the season that I’m willing to pay half-price for ’07 if they keep him around. Or maybe I’ll get lucky and the “expand foul territory” idea will wipe out my seats and I won’t have to worry about it.
The most shocking part of the letter is that Lincoln actually admitted the team is in a rebuilding mode…3 years after the cat’s been out of the bag.
Actually, other than the fact that Dave’s sources are usually right
Dave and all the others who implied or flat said that they’d heard that Hargrove was gone.
#39– complaining that Hargrove played Johjima too little undercuts your argument just a bit– Joh needed more time off.
#43-No they won’t! Don’t you get it? We’ve been trying to get them to listen to us fans for 5 years. And yet, they continue to ignore our needs and pleas and now when the most obvious decision of firing Hargrove needs to be made, they decide to stand by him.
Their PR department is full of BS, ’nuff said.
There’s no way this letter is a cover. This is the path they are taking – the men in charge have spoken. And, as dw said earlier, these letters are a precursor of things to come. I just went back and read 2004 and 2005′s “we sucked but we’re going the right direction” letters and if a player is mentioned, that player stays.
This means that they won’t be moving any significant salary to clear room for new starting pitching. They either raise the payroll or roll around in the dirt with the bottom-feeders for pitching. Maybe they should just save time and send out 2007′s letter now.
USSM (and LL) have seemingly huge readerships – can you guys put that to work, starting a huge letter writing / emailing / other forms of protesting campaign to remove Hargrove? Please?
A TRAINED MONKEY COULD’VE WON WITH THAT BUNCH!!!!
This is damning, honestly. The ’95 team had a dozen players that would at least get a look from the HoF voters. They covered over Hargrove’s inadequacies, at least until they got ground up in the playoffs.
DO THEY REALIZE HARGROVE HAS THE PERSONALITY OF DRYWALL?
This is not damning. Honestly, I could care less if a manager is dull or not. I mean, Torre is pretty dull. Cox is dull. Lloyd McClendon wasn’t dull. Personality means nothing. The ability to construct a lineup without screwing it up? The ability to effectively use a bench? The ability to let the young players play without reaching for a nearly deceased veteran to stand there like a stump and slug .200? That all means something.
#46-Well, don’t you think Hargrove could’ve gone to Bavasi before July 31st and said we need to trade for a legitimate backup catcher?
If you haven’t sent an angry email to the M’s already, then you’re not helping the team. You can have more value to the M’s than Willie Bloomquist by sending an angry email to the M’s right now. fanfeedback@mariners.mlb.com
Tom, trust me: the Hawks have written plenty of these letters. You write these when you lose. The Hawks are winning.
“The emergence of Derrick Fenner and Dean Wells provides us with a nucleus we can build on to win the AFC West”
Sound familiar?
It won’t work, but OK, I’ll send one later tonight.
I’ll just copy and past my post and reword it.
That’s it. I’ve put up with 29 years of this. No more.
From this day forward until Hargrove is gone, I will no longer invest any time, energy or effort into following the Mariners.
Just as life’s too short to waste in unfulfilling personal relationships and dead-end professional exploits, so it is too short to waste on a team and an organization that doesn’t know how to win, doesn’t know it doesn’t know, and shows me by not bothering to figure out how to know that they don’t care.
I have one lifetime and many dreams. The dream of a Mariner team winning the World Series has been dashed beyond all repair into the foreseeable future, by the organization’s Onionesque insistence that a manager whose incomprehensible strategems directly result in lost ballgames is “uniquely qualified” to lead a young team into a contending future.
It’s time for me to turn my time and energy to the pursuit of dreams that have an actual chance for fulfillment.
I am so angry, sad, disappointed and hurt that I can barely stand it. I seriously want to shut off my computer at work, go home and cry. I feel like Tony Soprano must have felt when the FBI played him the tape of his own mother plotting to have him killed.
The Mariners?
They’re dead to me.
#53-This is before the ownership changed, the relaignment happened, and the Seahawks actually set their sights on winning a Super Bowl rather than the AFC West.
If the Hawks go 7-9 this year, you don’t think we’re getting a “things will be better next year” letter?
I made myself laugh thinking about the guy in KC that has to write this letter to the seven Royals season ticket holders.
Is a letter like this more telling than excercising Bob Melvin’s option? Executing a contract seems like it should be a stronger sign of commitment, but for some reason this feels worse.
I’m with Mr. Paisley – nothing much about this letter bugs me except every word written about the manager and his “qualifications.”
I’m on board with Bavasi getting another year, though if it were my place to do so, he would be told in no uncertain terms that success in rebuilding the farm will no longer be enough, and any repeats of his most egregious “proven veteran” mistakes at the major league level (Spiezio, Aurilia, Everett, et al., and even to a lesser degree Sexson and Guardado) will no longer be tolerated. Stuff that would have been unfair to fire you for after your first year is fair game now — you have two strikes now and are way behind in the count, Bill. That said, just working the count to what might be the metaphorical equivalent of a “good at bat” might buy him some more time — he doesn’t have to hit a home run.
Hargrove, OTOH, is way past striking out swinging on an 0-2 pitch in the dirt. He’s actually compounded that mistake and is arguing with the umpire, or something like that. I can see no justification for bringing him back, unless it is that management doesn’t want to pay him to not manage, and they think they can’t compete anyway next year and it won’t matter whether Hargrove costs them a few wins along the way, and besides, if they do end up having to fire Bavasi, they want the new guy to pick his own manager, so hiring a year ahead of the potential absence of a guy who already has a foot outside the door doesn’t make a lot of sense. [Which, IMO, is why they should have fired him LAST offseason. Harrummmmph.]
As upset as I am, I am simply unwilling as a lifelong M’s fan to give up my season tickets. I’ll leave that to the fair weather fans. I’ve seen my share of foul weather, and I don’t want to lose my prime spot on the beach for when the sun comes out again. I own an umbrella.
All things pass. Including kidney stones, and Mike Hargrove.
Mike Hargrove is the right person to lead this team? Didn’t he lead the Mariners to a record number of consecutive losses against divisional rivals?
I feel a Charlie Brown moment coming on. *AUGH!*
Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I just emailed the mariners to express my displeasure.
Jim, what you just said was just about what I mailed them. You should too.
To those who think the M’s will listen to anyone who reads USSM, keep in mind the following quote from Mr. Lincoln from a year ago:
“All you have to do is walk around … and talk to people in the stands. It’s apparent there are fun things to do besides baseball. Sometimes you can sit with a group of 20 or so, and there’ll be one guy with his arms crossed saying, ‘Why don’t they do this or that,’ and the rest are there for a variety of other reasons.”
The only thing more unbelieveable than this quote is the fact that he got away with it.
Perhaps we shouldn’t have been so surprised at this. Bavasi’s famously loyal to his guys, and has stuck by a controversial manager before…
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/baseball/193800_mbar05.html
Bavasi worked closely with Collins when he managed the Angels from 1997-99, and both men were victims of the 1999 meltdown. Bavasi gave Collins a midseason extension over the objections of players, but Collins quit in early September.
(emphasis added)
This is what I was afraid of way back at the beginning of the year- that a 75-80 win season would be viewed as “progress”, and an endorsement of questionable decisions made at the GM and field manager level. Yeah, thed organization can make the next step…or they can fall back down and stub their toes again. The muddled middle is a very tricky place to be.
Color me not that dissapointed. I’ve noticed after a couple of the games recently that Hargrove and Ichiro seem to be getting along and laughing together. That’s a good sign as far as I am concerned.
Oh, and the letter is on the M’s site, too.
I’m also enjoying some schadenfreude about the people who wanted Bavasi back, because otherwise we’d end up with incompetent people in Mariner management due to Lincoln and Armstrong’s incompetence. Heh. Be careful what you wish for, folks. You might get it.
I resigned today as a fan. You might want to resign with me. Here’s what I wrote to the team:
Dear Mariners,
I wrote you earlier this year expressing my disgust with Mike Hargrove and informing you I would not set foot again in Safeco field until Mike Hargrove was no longer in your employment. I kept my word, I did not attend another game this season. As a fan I consider him indirectly in my employment as well. Since today you’ve informed me that you are retaining him for the 2007 season, I am informing you that I resign as your fan. Do you want the uniform back? I’ll return my well worn Mariners hat to the team store where I purchased it from in 1996 if you’d like it back. If not, I’ll just give it to the thrift store. Maybe there’s someone else out there pitifull and desperate enough to be a Mariners fan and subject themselves to team lead by a horrible manager you call good, that can pick it up and replace me. I’ll gladly resume my position as a fan when you demonstrate your good faith by giving Mike Hargrove his walking papers, until then I will not be back no matter what happens. If you’d like your hat back please reply. Otherwise you won’t hear from me again until the day you announce a managerial change.
Sincerely
Nathan
ex Mariners Fan.
I’m also enjoying some schadenfreude about the people who wanted Bavasi back, because otherwise we’d end up with incompetent people in Mariner management due to Lincoln and Armstrong’s incompetence. Heh. Be careful what you wish for, folks. You might get it.
EC fiddles while Safeco burns. What a great guy. I bet he’s wonderful to have at parties, too. There’s nothing that livens up a gathering like the smug guy yelling “I TOLD YOU SO!” at anyone in earshot.
Cam Bonifay: Tanned, rested, and ready.
The worst part is that they gave one losing season to Bob Melvin even though he actually had a good season the year before.
Is it just me, or does it seem like baseball died?
You guys are such drama queens… it’s not Hargrove’s fault this team didn’t make the post-season. If we were out three games then OK, but you have to pin this year on the players.
This IS a real dilemma for those of you who have options to pick up another year on your season ticket plan.
1) You know Hargrove’s going to be back next season.
2) You don’t know if you want to go to games to watch him screw around 81 more times (not to mention watching him on TV).
3) You know Hargrove’s contract only pays him for one more year.
4) You know that if you send Mariners’ management an irate letter now saying you won’t be returning as a season ticket holder, they’ll let someone else take your place in line, and use “your” seats. Forevermore. You don’t get them back.
5) Then the Mariners hire a manager we all approve of, Snelling is healthy all year, and the pitching and defense is fantastic.
It COULD happen…
This is why I’m glad I live more than 200 miles away now.
With or without Hargrove, M’s aren’t making the world series any time soon anyway and that is what counts for me. This letter is not any worse than M’s on field performance and signings.
I wrote the M’s a letter insisting that I was horribly offended by their letter. Not because they’re keeping Grover, but because they’re obviously lying as to why, and then offered a detailed explanation as to how anyone with a brain can tell that Grover is not “uniquely equipped to lead a young team.”
72. Actually how do you not win (or at least over .500) with 2 players with 30 or more homeruns, a leadoff hitter hitting .320 and 3 starting pitchers with around 4.20 ERA or lower. Also the bullpen was really good. It’s just Hargroves fault he managed the team so poorly and making such stupid decisions.
P.S. If you season ticket holders REALLY want Mariners management to “reassess” the situation after the World Series and before all those meetings, DO NOT send in your money. Bite the bullet and don’t regret it later.
That should send them a message they can’t misinterpret.
They already make it impossible to move your season tickets closer year to year, so why should you keep buying anyway?
Btw, you KNOW they are going to use that “winning record at home” stat as a core message in their offseason propaganda.
I had always thought the Ms played in Seattle so it was a bit surprising to realize upon reading that letter that the Ms infact play in Pleasantville. If Lincoln/Armstrong truly wrote that, I now believe it when the authors at USSM suggest they have very little to do with the day to day operations. I mean there’s out of touch and then there is OUT OF TOUCH….
I pretty much doubt anything in that letter is binding in anyway, but I have to say this-with all seriousness-if hargrove returns as the manager next year, I (and my family as it turns out)can very easily take a year off from Mariners baseball.
#72: my neighbor’s rundown shack isnt the reason my roof is leaking but it does make it damn hard to enjoy the view from my backyard….
Their PR department is full of BS
isn’t that the definition of a PR department?
#65– FWIW, the players under Collins were objecting loudly & to the media. we haven’t heard that here, aside from rumblings that not everyone is happy.
Actually, I DID take a good part of this year off from watching (on TV) Mariners baseball…
We’d turn on the TV for nearly every televised game this season, and I’d listen with one ear and read a book…if anything interesting happened, like the M’s scoring a lot of runs or looking like they would win the game, I’d put the book down.
I did this the past couple of years, too, and I’ll admit, I DID finish fewer books this season, and turn off the TV in the middle of a game about half as much as I did last year.
(sometimes that doesn’t work so well, like the other night when the M’s looked like they were sunk against the A’s, but stormed back and won the game…. :blush: )
EC fiddles while Safeco burns.
Why are you complaining? You got what you wanted: a GM who’s rebuilding the farm system, doesn’t have an impressive track record so far in a fairly long GM career, and is famously loyal to his staff and viewed as a good guy in baseball. There are worse things to have, as you keep pointing out, right?
So yeah, he didn’t stick a knife in Hargrove’s back when senior management clearly must have said “you get to keep your job, Bill, thanks for starting to turn the ship around”. Did you expect him to turn into George Steinbrenner?
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again- there’s more evidence that a team managed by Mike Hargrove can make the playoffs than one general managed by Bill Bavasi. So I refuse to consider this a death knell- it’s more an unfortunate consequence of the Mariners rewarding “improvement”- an unwillingness to re-evalute where they stand in terms of philosophy going forward and whether current management suits that. Instead of “hey, let’s examine the organization top to bottom because we’ve been in last place 3 years in a row”, it’s “yay! we don’t suck so much any more! contract extensions for people!” (shades of the 1980′s).
This becomes a veeery interesting offseason- because I’m pretty sure the M’s are going to write a very large check for Matsuzaka if he posts, but the M’s chances are going to come down to a couple of rolls at the MLB Free Agent Crap Table, and seeing if Bill gets lucky or blows it. I sincerely hope he’s learned from Mo Vaughn, Scott Spiezio, Jarrod Washburn and so on… because if he hasn’t, this could go very, very badly (think Orioles).
Such a fun thing to come home to.
Ignoring all the other points for now, I’ll just make a brief comment about the whole “he’s gone” thing I’ve been pushing for a few months:
I was wrong, obviously. Sorry. The information I get on almost everything from these guys has turned out to be accurate, so there wasn’t any reason for me to not believe the same people when they talked about the managerial decision. Clearly, they either lied to me, embellished the truth, or weren’t in a position to understand the full dynamics of the situation. If the situation was as bad as I was told it was, Hargrove wouldn’t be back in ’07. So, the only conclusion I can come to is that the information I’ve been given on the situation all year isn’t reliable.
Sorry about that. I’ll try to keep from making the same mistake again.
you aren’t the only one Dave; Jason C. went on air last week saying Hargrove had been told he was done at the end of the year….
Dave, you didn’t do anything wrong. You told us what your sources told you. That’s all we can ask, I seriously wanted to hope that you right, even though everything I was seeing was saying that your sources weren’t accurate.
I’d rather you tell us everything you hear than nothing at all. Especially since what you hear is most of the time right.
I’d say its about 90% likely that Jason and I got that information from the same guy.
Am I the only one that noticed that they listed Jake Woods as a relief pitcher! That’s great news. We already knew the front office was full of BS. At least they view Jake Woods as a non-starter. Good news, I think.
What dw said. Jeez, EC, you have so much need to be right that you’re enjoying the unhappiness of fellow fans who disagreed with you about Bavasi? Things suck for all of us, but at least you get a nice petty laugh out of it? How small the joys in your life must be.
It’s so frustrating to me that a team in such an affluent, educated, and forward-thinking city can seem so dense. I saw the M’s and the A’s in Oakland for the first time this year, and I kept thinking about the bizarro world in which one of the brightest minds in baseball runs a team in a genuinely terrifying neighborhood, while up in Seattle incompetence ruins the on-the-field product in the most beautiful stadium in the game. Aren’t things backwards sometimes?
Anyway, I’m skeptical regarding the effectiveness of email campaigns/fan protests, but I’ll give them my two cents. (It’ll be the last two they get until Hargrove’s gone.)
Is there no chance that this is just a PR thing, or feeling out the waters and he’ll really be gone?
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again
Oh, I don’t think anyone has any illusions about that.
Dave, I don’t think anyone thought your sources would give you 100% accurate information, nor that you owe anyone an apology. As it is we get considerably more reliable information from you and this site than from anyone else. Thank you.
Honestly, I’m not really that surprised that Dave was hearing one thing from his source(s) and something entirely different ended up happening; but I’m also inclined to come to a different conclusion about why the disparity in stories happened.
I’m sure that the general feeling within the organization was that Hargrove was gone at the end of the year, and then the word came down from On High that he was staying. This leads me to think one, or both, of two things (this is speculation of course):
1) There isn’t much consensus-building within the organization; probably not many opinions were solicited on whether Hargrove should stay or go. I’d say likely less than ten people had input into the decision, if that many.
2) As a sort of corollary to the above, most likely decisions like this either are decided pretty rapidly, or aren’t announced internally much before they are externally. I’m sure there were plenty of people within the organization that were as surprised by this as we were.
Again, this is all speculation, but it’s the /feel/ I get.
I have been refreshing this thread for a while now, hoping that when a Dave comment showed up, he would still be saying that Hargrove was gone at the end of the season…
Now I have to confront the reality that Hargrove may very well be back next year.
I’m certainly not upset with Dave for passing on what he heard; I appreciate and enjoy his commentary and insight very much.
–Thanks Dave–
Oh, and as for an email campaign, here’s my $0.02.
Bad organizations make decisions based on popular opinion. If the Mariners were an organization that was willing to do an about-face on their decision to keep Mike Hargrove simply because we gathered the troops and made a lot of noise, I’d actually think less of them as an organization.
The Mariners don’t need to be deciding who is going to run the team based on the popular sentiment of the day. Yes, in this instance, I’m pretty sure the popular sentiment is right, but you know what, a lot of times, the popular sentiment is “Willie Bloomquist needs to play more!” or “Alex Rodriguez is an overpaid choker.”
The Mariners, rightly so, aren’t going to change their minds no matter how many emails they get. If it makes you feel better, by all means, fire one off; it can only help to make them aware of public sentiment. But I’m personally glad that public sentiment doesn’t have much of a say in how they run the franchise.
Your snarkiness comes off mor elike bitterness at times, DMZ.
‘How dare families have fun at Safeco! Posh!’
Seriously, though, I agree with your sentiments. But, really, who didn’t see it coming?
I am, however, bitter of the fact my hopes up of Hargrove not returning next year was raised through USSM…
My “talk” with the Mariners Season Ticket holder people wasn’t much of a morale boost. The PR department must have whipped them until they memorized “Grover is uniquely qualified to manage.” However, when I mentioned that he wasn’t actually qualified to PLAY younger players, and asked why he plays Bloomquist and sits Snelling, Morse, etc she had nothing to say. She also could only manage to compare Grover to Lou in terms of developing talent (I had no idea there were only 2 MLB managers…). When I asked why I should have any confidence that Bavasi could even find 1 starting pitcher worth his millions, she responded that not only were Everett & Guardardo failed Bavasi picks, but Sexson & Beltre are as well.
Oh – and she could not guarantee that they weren’t going to raise prices again this year…
Sent my email, won’t work, won’t do anything, but I sent it.
Will they kick me out of Safeco if I wear a “Fire Hargrove!” shirt this weekend.
Not that it will do anything other than make me feel better.
I’m all for people letting their voices be heard about something like this, but Dave’s right. If popular opinion dictated how the Mariners were run, Willie Bloomquist would be standing out in the middle of the field all by himself, simultaneously playing every position on the diamond.
I’m more of a fan of sending an email than calling the poor folks answering the season ticket holder line, though. There’s not really much they can do, and it’s impolite to vent at someone who has no real ability to do anything about the issue you’re venting about.
The decision is made, all we can really do now is…well, mourn.
#91 – I understand being skeptical about email having any meaningful impact. I’ve been very vocal on blogs about my disdain for Dudley. I’m pretty sure that does even less good, if that’s all we do. I sent this email to the Mariners:
I truly hope the Mariners will reconsider their apparent decision to return Mike Hargrove to the field in 2007.
Management may value continuity, but the fact reamins that this team has under-performed during Hargrove’s tenure and no discerning observer could conclude otherwise.
We as fans do not find it acceptable to count a rather isolated good stretch in inter-league play as “improvement†when we have been so incredibly un-competitive in our own division. Our record against Oakland is an embarrassment to Seattle. It seems foolish for the Ownership Group to provide funding for a product that is mismanaged so badly. Why should they continue to provide funding competitive with the top clubs in MLB only to have their assets squandered?
The fans I talk with on a regular basis have eagerly been awaiting the news that we would have something to which we could look forward this off-season. This news will serve as the “last straw†for many of them. Surely Mr. Lincoln does not want fans to give up on this franchise. His acknowledgement that patience is not endless is accurate. I’m afraid, however, he has misjudged the inflection point. If fans become as discouraged as I have witnessed so far today, the revenue stream will dwindle to the point that Mr. Linclon will will have limited choices to improve the team. I pray he will prevent the situation from reaching that point.
Sincerely,
CHH
I judge that they will lump the irate emails into “file 13″ so my approach was to at least appeal to sentiments they might actually think about. Maybe it will resonate, maybe not. There’s always time for torches and pitchforks later. I just feel to depressed to scream, and I had to do something.
OOOH! I’M GAZING INTO MY CRYSTAL BALL. . .
I see many phones ringing at the Mariners ticket office, and they are very ANGRY phone calls.
And I also see browsers crashing.
On the website known as ussmariner.com and on the seattlemariners.com website for all ANGRY emails and comments being posted.
Well, perhaps we can keep a dying ember of hope alive by positing a deep plot by management: Grover’s was told he’s gone, but was offered the opportunity to resign sometime later this winter after a faux affirmation of his status by management, thus allowing both sides to save some face and, perhaps, giving Grover an opportunity to shop his portly butt to some other organizations.
Okay, too Maciavellian by half, but in the spirit of the Bush administration’s pronouncements on weapons of mass destruction, it might be true.
My God that’s ugly. “Grover was told” is what was in my head.
#101 – I didn’t exactly think my phone call would change the world. But considering they don’t have an email account set up for season tix holders to vent (as the Sonics do), and who knows where the feedback alias goes to (probably Carl Everett), then all I can do is talk to the people closest to what management cares most about – money.
I promise I didn’t raise my voice
I’m hoping that this letter is the proverbial “vote of confidence” that often preceeds a sacking of the manager.
TOLD YA SO. I couldn’t resist. I don’t have any inside sources, but if they didn’t ditch him early this year, and then not after that awful road trip, and then he and Bavasi are making lists of who to interview for bench coach next year and Hargrove gets to boot Rohn out of the organization….well, the signs were there.
Man, it sucks to discover Dave is mortal, or maybe that his and Churchill’s sources are. And when you want so badly to believe something (like Hargrove is gone), as we all wanted to believe that…
You guys can write all the e-mails you want, leave all the phone messages you want, send all the real letters you want. If you get anything back at all, it’s likely to look and sound a lot like the letter I got back last year when I cancelled my season tickets (of 8 years, driving back/forth from Olympia for my half of the package – 40x a year) over the Everett signing. Everybody has their last straw. And really, what you’re likely to find is that the Mariners don’t give a damn what your last straw is. They’ll tell you that they’re the ones in charge, it’s their decision to make, they have facts/knowledge that you don’t and they may even say ‘we regret that you feel this way’.
But as Dave correctly points out above, if they ran the team based on popular opinion, the voices that call KJR would have equal clout to yours.
The problem is, this is awful tough to watch.
SO glad I’m a Rainiers fan.
—
In other news, somebody posted that the Ms had said something stupid about not really caring about winning, but more about developing players in the minors…and that San Antonio was thinking they weren’t that interested in re-upping affiliation with the Ms.
The Ms’ AA team is no longer the San Antonio Missions. They signed an agreement with the West Tennessee Diamond Jaxx. Story here.
The only bright side to this is that Hargrove is now the official scapegoat for even a mediocre start next year.
If you bring in a new guy now, then there’s no way you can fire him a couple of months into the season if things start going sideways.
It should be interesting to see how many Mariners fans are out there that care about this to write letters, e-mails, and make phone calls about this. Or at least what percentage.
If I had to guess, the number/percentage is quite high.
MATSUZAKA (See # 84) – Does anyone have a timeline on this? The deadline for posting? The deadline for submitting a sealed bid? The deadline for revealing the winning bid? The deadline for the Japanese team to accept (or reject) the bid? The deadline for the negotiations to conclude (successfully or unsuccesfully)?
And is the posting bid a one-time expenditure–as Ichiro’s was? And (assuming that the Ms submit the winning bid) does the negotiated salary (and bonus) come out of that mysterious foreign player budget?
#92: I can’t imagine an organisation (especially one that plays to family values) would send THAT letter and then turn around and fire Hargrove…..
This is like having your brother marry a complete *bXtch*….while you dearly love your brother, the aggravation associated with visiting his house makes it better to just stay away….
I can’t stand Hargrove-brand baseball…dammit man i persevered thru the year but screw them…
But as Dave correctly points out above, if they ran the team based on popular opinion, the voices that call KJR would have equal clout to yours.
Interestingly, the few callers I heard to the Gasman’s show were unanimous in wanting Hargrove gone, but thought Bavasi was OK. Some of them were even coherent.
Well, running a team by public sentiment may be foolish, but if we send factual, well-documented emails concerning Hargrove’s failings, surely THAT would get the job done, right?
Right?
Oh well, looks like it’s suicide for me again.
I sent an email with my season ticket holder ID #. I don’t thinbk it does much, but I fugure at least they tally these thongs. I also told them that the glowing letter was almost an insult.
I take small solace in that fact that Snelling was mentioned in the “solidified several key positions” sentence with YuBet, Lopez, and Kenji, and also that there was no claim that the team would try to keep Meche or Piniero.
The sentiment in this link is the embodiment of the frustration I’ve felt with the Ms these past few years…..
if DMZ and Dave keep it up, I’m sure everyone will hear a bit of themselves in this passionate tirade… and if you’re like me and having trouble finding the words to describe how deeply you’re frustrated, this is a cathartic experience…
This is my first try at linking so hopefully, I’m not trying the patience of the powers to be twice over…
a an’s pain
a an’s pain=a fan’s pain….
Oh, and as for an email campaign, here’s my $0.02.
Dave is of course right that the Mariners won’t change anything because of a couple hundred angry calls and emails. If a few THOUSAND season ticket holders cancelled, that might get their attention.
My two cents is that a written letter sent via snail mail would carry more weight. It’s just too easy to fire off an email, especially as a knee jerk reaction or a mass mailing campaign, for them to carry much weight these days.
And Daniel Caberea of the Orioles has just pitched a one-hitter.
Aside from our preference that the letter state the team’s intention to ditch Hargrove, what *would* be an acceptable letter? If you were, or are, a season ticket holder, what would you want it to say, and what would you expect it to say (the two may be different)?
119 – I still think that kid will break out someday. Maybe even next year.
Here are my feelings on the whole thing. This is the first time I’ve followed the Mariners closely the whole season. I’ve been to a few games before but I decided that this summer I wanted to really get to know the team. So I’m not as knowledgable about baseball as some of you.
What it comes down to is that it’s hard to watch a team perform below their talent level. I’ve been very impressed with the ability of a lot of these players. I think they’re a great young team that is as formidable as any when everyone is making a contribution. But the slumps they’ve gone through, particularly against division rivals, are frustrating because you know that they should be able to play better. Would a new manager be able to help them in this way? It seems like that should be part of the job…
…but I fugure at least they tally these thongs
Eyes…burning…arhhh
Eh, crapola. Just, crapola. And here I thought a night off from losing to Oakland would cheer me up.
I guess the question now is, do they really believe this crap about Grover being the right guy, or are they just figuring that 07 is already down the drain and no sense worrying about being competitive until 08?
I’m curious how long we’ll be calling for Bavasi’s head after he allows Mike Hargrove to hand pick this winter’s free agent signings.
If Willie Bloomquist is named the opening day right fielder over Chris Snelling, fans will finally see the real Bavasi that Derek warned us all about in 2004.
I’ve never bought into the “managers don’t make a noticable difference” dogma, and this thread and all that has lead up to it is proof in point. Maybe a manager’s in game decisions don’t make much difference but there is far more to in than that. In any work situation (and most any other situation) people do better if they like and respect their leader than if they are convinced their leader is a duffus. This works on an individual level and is compounded on a team level.
[]
Sorry about that. I’ll try to keep from making the same mistake again.
I smell mischief.
I don’t know if I can take another year of Hargrove’s infamous throat clearings during post game press conferences. I guess the good thing about the guaranteed continued Mariner mediocrity is that it will be easier to get batting practice balls due to lower attendence.
The Architects of Mediocrity strike again!!! to borrow a phrase
They’ll be back—but I won’t. I don’t have time to waste it on mediocrity. JimThom in #55 and crewm in #122, I’m with you both, but without the angst; I passed through that back in ’03 watching what could have been and should have been the team of the decade rot to duff because ownership and senior management didn’t really know how to win. Lincoln found himself holding a good thing along about 2000, but it’s clear he had no idea how that happened or how to keep it happening. The only guy who had an idea built an old team and left, and nobody else in this organization can or will bring home even a division champion.
The real problem is that Chuck Armstrong and Bill Bavasi are coming back. Armstrong is capable of the mealy-mouthed, lie-to-your-face-cause-I-know-you’re-a-dolt pablum we see in that shine’em on to the season ticket holders. My response to Chuck: The last two years were totally unacceptable, this year wasn’t worth watching as the team CONSISTENTLY UNDERPERFORMED, and I have zero confidence that the management team you have assembled and supervise will do better. I don’t want to see your ‘big offseason moves’ since the last few you have made are sub-par, and burden the team with inadequate cornerstone players at top dollar. Your effort isn’t worth my time, and certainly not worth my money. The fact that you want to spin the situation only causes you to lose my patience as well as my respect.
And as far as Bill Bavasi is concerned, he’s a helluv a nice guy, and a great boss, BUT he has never built a winner, and I think there’s an excellent chance he will continue that string to 10 straight years in ’07. This isn’t just a case of this guy or that guy coming up short, it’s a consistent, sustained trend: He can’t spot real talent. Period. Given the rush to overpromote young guys, I have to say I wouldn’t want him as a Director of Player Development, either. Somewhere down below that, in running a farm system day-to-day. Or doing Chuck Armstrong’s job, as the bottom line guy; Bill B. might do OK there. But he’s just not capable of building a team that wins. The idea that Bavasi ‘rebuilt a farm system in ruins’ is a falsehood; in fact, he inherited the core of young talent which constitutes the franchises only real hope: Felix, Lopez, Doyle, Jones, Feirabend, Putz, Soriano, Balentier if he comes through, and Asdrubal Cabrera if he does also. Whether BAVASI’S OWN group has even assembled a talent group as big remains to be seen. So far, we have: Betancourt, probably Clement, maybe Lowe. The Ms 25-man consistently underperforms. Bill B. gets snookered on trades. The young guys he promotes have incomplete skill sets. The team is unbalanced. He’s never completed the rotation, in no small part because he’s held onto guys who were failing too long. The defense has declined under him. He’s not succeeded in identifiying guys who hit for power here. I could go on, but that’s enough. If you’re back with your present title, Bill, I’m not. As long as it takes for a change to be made. I gave up on the team under Woody Woodhead, and I’m done with you.
Re: Hargrove, he’s the least of our worries, the moldy cherry on top of this layer cake of kaka. And Dave, I think that someone was playing you to pursue their own anti-Grover agenda. I suspected that when Hargrove made it through May, but it was clear after the recent coaching massacre. Hargrove was allowed to publicly fire Rohn, in a very blatant and humiliating manner, IN-SEASON, and as was alluded in the press it was for ‘disloyalty.’ There was no way in hell after that that Hargrove was _not_ coming back; the Ms would look godawful if they cut his throat after letting him assassinate Rohn. So your source assuring you subsequent to that that Grover was getting the knife was playing you. I don’t think that Hargrove is good enough—which is exactly why his retention here is diagnostic of major problems above him in the decision chain.
I’ll wander by to comment now and again, but I’m done following this mediocre franchise until their are major changes IN MANAGEMENT. I quit watching five weeks ago, and everything I gather since tells me that was totally the right decision: chumps with flatline learning curves don’t get my time or money, especially when they want to spin their fanbase.
#130
Yeah the Mariners management is looking more and more like they are emulating the spin machines of both the Clinton and Bush administrations. It is really insulting to the intelligence of us fans that grew up in the Kingdome and had a real grassroots love for a hopeless baseball team. Hate to say it but I am almost getting to the point where I get physically ill when I see a Mariners uniform and I hate that it has come to this even though deep down I will always love the Mariners as they will always represent the golden age of my youth.
[namecalling]
The Mariners are like a highly speculative stock that you buy when nobody has heard of or wants and then eventually becomes the next greatest thing and makes you massive amounts of money then it turns into a big dumb manipulative corporation with no ethical standards. Ok Ok I will quit being so melodramatic. Please forgive any spelling errors as my alzheimer’s makes spelling difficult sometimes.
[Sent the following e-mail, despite the obvious futility just to feel better.]
Based on Lincoln/Armstrong letter today, it’s apparent that they don’t watch the games. I could live (reluctantly) with retaining Hargrove, but it’s appalling for the front office to assert or imply that Hargrove is an effective manager for a young team. At a minimum, PR letters from the front office shouldn’t demonstrate overt stupidity by including such obvious nonsense. I can’t retain my illusion that they know what they are doing if they don’t at least try to hide their lack of baseball acumen!
I sort of expect rumors to start that Hargrove has compromising pictures of Lincoln or Armstrong, much like similar rumors long ago that tried to offer a plausible explanation for Lou’s continued use of Ayala. I know this is absurd (and I’m trying to be funny) but picking the ONE trait of Hargrove’s that is least defensible and lauding it is that inexplicable.
Wow, this sucks.
I sent a letter as a concerned fan with an opinion on my team. I don’t expect it to change anything, I don’t really care if it does now, but now they better know how atleast one of their fans feels about this.
We may be the second ML team since this team moved, but they were affiliated with us before that; so this is a homecoming of sorts.
I liked San Antonio, but I’d rather be in the Southern League, I think.
Wow. All I have to say is wow, it’s like a punch in the gut. You have all articulated my thoughts better than I could, so I won’t even try.
I’m a bit bemused by the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments in this thread. Put down the sharp objects, people.
- We need to keep in context that this is just a fluff letter likely written by some PR flunky. I can’t imagine Howard and Chuck ordering a pizza and staying late to put pen to paper on this letter. Its sole purpose is to put a positive spin on the season to entice season ticket holders to re-up. Not the best way, obviously, but that’s the point.
Its point is not to serve as a press release confirming that Mike Hargrove will be the manager for all of next season, or as a fair and balanced recap of the successes and failures of the season. It’s a marketing puff piece put out by a large company – are we really surprised that it’s full of spin and inaccurate optimism?
- If Hargrove is not likely to return next season, what would you really expect to see here? A passage bashing him and assuring season ticket holders that Hargrove is both awful and soon to be terminated? It’s just not realistic. And while I understand Melvin was just completely ignored in a similar letter before he was let go, I just can’t imagine that here–it would be terrible PR.
- I agree the statements here make it appear Hargrove will be around next year. But if minds change this summer–one never knows–it’s not as if the powers that be will say, “Shoot, we mentioned he’s coming back in that season ticket holder letter in September! Guess we’ve got to hold on to him or look silly …” Honestly, outside of the hard-core fans, nobody will remember this letter even next Monday.
- Assuming Hargrove will in fact be back next year, should it really be that surprising? I realize he’s not a good manager, but back away from the details a moment; the team has improved its W-L record year by year under Hargrove, and it has played well in stretches this year. Besides, he’s a *name* manager with experience. These are compelling reasons to people who don’t care to get in-depth with facts. Manager changes tend to be enormous risks, and sports owners, like owners of other big companies, don’t care for risks.
I think we hard-core fans forget just what a tiny minority we are, and that sports teams are like any other company–perception counts just as much as reality, especially when you’re discussing the perceptions of a handful of cloistered owners who share virtually nothing with the hard-core fans. It’s a different world.
I’m sure more baseball-savvy people than me have a couple of potential manager solutions in mind who would be more apt to play young players and take a more statistical, analytical view of managing. But how many teams hire those kinds of guys? How confident are you that the Mariners would replace Hargrove with somebody like that?
- I’m most amazed by all the statements by people willing to just leave behind their fandom of the Mariners out of frustration. I’m not a Mariners hard-core–my religion of choice is the Sonics–but come on. You either are a fan of a team or you’re not. You can curse the players, the ownership, the stadium, the press, the league, whatever. But when you really care about a team, you could no sooner leave that behind than you could your blood type.
If you don’t want to support the team with your dollars, that’s your right, but if something this small–and it really is, in the big picture–is enough to turn you away from caring about how the team is doing, you’re not a fan, you’re a dilletante playing as a Mariners fan.
And to put it all in perspective–no matter who is managing, at least you’ll have a promising team in Seattle next year playing in a glorious ballpark. We Sonics fans might be losing our team entirely.
In spite of all the suspected intrigue and dishonesty on the part of management, I think maybe it’s a lot simpler. Maybe Chuck Armstrong and Howard Lincoln are so *not* baseball men that they literally believe every single word they wrote. Have they ever really shown they have enough baseball knowledge to evaluate managers or players on their own? They’re pleased to have kept attendance over 2 million, think things are honestly on the upswing and Grover is the man to improve things even further next year. They just don’t know any better and have no framework to critically evaluate the performance of the manager and team. This reminds me of my upbringing as a Phillies fan. After a couple decades of frustration you realized that no matter how many changes were made, the team would never really be consistently competitive without a change in ownership. I feel that way about the M’s now. I am very fearful of the offseason moves to come. I don’t trust this crew to bring in the right pitchers, especially if they rely on Hargrove’s input in evaluating free agent talent. That’s how we got Carl Everett last year.
Some days I hate Hargrove less than I used to. Then he starts Willie Bloomquist in right field or moves Pineiro back to the starting rotation and I remember that I still hate him just as much. But I do think he’ll have less opportunities to screw up next year’s team. Or, I hope so, but it does depend on the rotation.
But that’s actually kind of scary. What we learned today (unless the team is willing to go back on it later, which I think is unlikely but who am I to say for sure) is that Hargrove will *not* be fired for managing in a bad way. He will only be fired for losing. And, if Bavasi does a decent job this offseason, I honestly don’t see them losing so much for a while.
We could have Hargrove for a very long time. If this team makes it to the ALCS again in the next 3 years, he’ll probably be managing them. That just makes me feel kind of unhappy, a little dirty or something. I don’t want him to be the manager of my team when we have a real shot.
#108–In other news, somebody posted that the Ms had said something stupid about not really caring about winning, but more about developing players in the minors
that (according to the SA Express) would be the always popular & reliable “source close to the situation who did not want to be identified”. So, the Mariners move on and the Padres (how appropriate!) will take over as the Missions’ affiliate.
I had a long post written in reply to #138, but I decided to just sum it up by saying this:
Even dedicated fans reach a point where they feel like enough is enough.
A lot of us reached that point today.
I wonder if we can sign Neifi Perez to a 3 year, $15 million contract.
I’m simply speechless. Why is Mariners management compelled to keep Hargrove as a manager when practically entire baseball world thinks Hargrove should have been fired already? Practically no one will like this move. I was not happy when he got hired, and I was never happy with the way he managed the game.
I went to few games this year, and if Hargrove stays in his seat for next season, I will not be going to games next year.
This wrecked my evening…sort of like dental work but without the fun.
The line from the letter that struck me as oddly worded was “Bill Bavasi will continue to lead our baseball operations…” Why not just say “Bill Bavasi will return as our General Manager”? Is there some other position for BB to “lead” from?
Oh well. Life isn’t that bad…my supply of Redhook was just restocked yesterday.
#142
Even dedicated fans reach a point where they feel like enough is enough.
A lot of us reached that point today
Seriously? Because of this? You enjoyed nearly a decade of quality baseball and now, three years removed from that, in what seems to be a middlingly successful rebuilding operation, this is the straw that broke the camel’s back of your fandom?
Hargrove’s return would be very disappointing. A totally predictable PR letter mentioning his return is mildly disappointing. But I don’t see how either one is cataclysmic.
Seriously? Because of this? You enjoyed nearly a decade of quality baseball and now, three years removed from that, in what seems to be a middlingly successful rebuilding operation, this is the straw that broke the camel’s back of your fandom?
That’s bizarre arithmetic.
That “decade of quality baseball” lasted from the last half of 1995 season through 2001 (maybe ’02, if you want to give credit to a team that finished in 3rd place). Of course, you have to ignore the 1998 and 1999 seasons, in which the M’s had a losing record.
If that’s what Seattle fans call a decade of quality baseball, I’m really glad I wasn’t in town when this franchise got going.
It has nothing to do with what the past success (or lack thereof, if you’ve been following this team for a while) of the team has been.
It has to do with the fact that moves like this (compounded with other ones; see Everett, Carl and Bloomquist, Willie) demonstrate that the Mariners’ current management either doesn’t understand what it takes to build a consistent contending team; or even darker and sadly ever more likely, that they don’t CARE about building a consistent contending team.
I mean, c’mon. That letter touts Mike Hargrove’s ability to manage a young team, when he is in fact pretty terrible at handling young players. This shows that either the Mariners’ management has no idea how to evaluate talent in its personnel; or that they’re willing to be deliberately dishonest about said talent.
We want the team to be successful, but the current direction of the team gives us no reason to hope that that is a possibility anytime soon, and if they DO manage to be successful, it will be despite egregious mistakes, not because of intelligent decisions.
I did say “nearly a decade” not “a decade”, LB. Was that stretch from 1995-2003, in which the Mariners won an average of 90 games per year and became the toast of Seattle, really that awful?
To the point that three years later, in the middle of, like I said, a middlingly successful rebuilding effort has created an atmosphere where “enough is enough?”
I know we all want multiple championships, but how high are our standards when the likely return of a bumbling manager is enough to inspire this level of pathos?
I agree with you, Jeff, that the Mariners’ management hasn’t exactly lit the world afire with some of their decisions (though it bears repeating that most organizations make the same kinds of blunders you mention).
But it’s a PR-crafted letter to season ticket holders. What did you expect them to say? These kinds of letters are all about putting a ridiculously positive face on things.
If Hargrove’s pet rock ran the team instead of Grover himself, we’d be at .500. Basically, he’s the reason we’re the laughingstock of the AL West, and the fact he’s staying -is- worth getting worked up about.
I don’t care about the PR aspects of the letter. That is, you’re right, to be expected, and entirely meaningless.
It’s the decision making. It has, over the last few years, ranged from middling to poor to abysmal. There have been very few things that have been “smart” moves.
This is just one more bad decision to add to the heap; how many do we have to endure before we can say enough is enough?
Plz Ichrio.. demand a trade….
But Jeff, isn’t this just part and parcel of being a baseball fan? Are the Mariners’ bad decisions really that much more frequent and blatant than those committed by other teams?
The Mariners aren’t very good this year, but in my baseball ignorance (which you’re more than free to call me out on, by the way) this is a direct result of having a competitive team for several years, trying to stay competitive too long, and finally doing the right thing by rebuilding with youth.
This is pretty generally the pattern with any sort of competitive team in any sport, right? Good team gets old and becomes bad. Bad team, if run correctly, rebuilds and becomes good once more. Rinse. Repeat.
The Mariners certainly aren’t the sharpest team in MLB and have had their share of missteps, but overall they appear to be on the right path, right? At least as much so as most teams are at this point in rebuilding after a collapse, right?
I understand the frustration with the bad decisions, but there’s a lot more hope with this team than with the Mariners of two years ago – or even the same team earlier this year.
My real confusion is with people willing to give up being a fan at all at this point because of this. It would be a stupid decision, but every team makes them.
The overreacting in this thread is ridiculous.
I’m signing off for the evening, but I just want to be crystal-clear on what I’m saying and not saying.
I’m not saying that I want Hargrove back as a manager.
I’m not saying that people don’t have the right to be upset because they don’t want Hargrove back as a manager.
I am saying that getting too obsessed about the wording of a fluff PR letter that praises Hargrove’s abilities, beyond enjoying the comedic irony, is a waste of time.
I am saying that while this makes it appear that Hargrove will be back, I think it would be a mistake to take it as the definitive word on the subject.
I am saying that being a fan of a team means being a fan through thick and thin. Given that things seem to slowly be getting, um, thicker, even if Hargrove does return, I’m shocked that this would be grounds for breaking off fandom. (not directed at you, Jeff, I think I get where you’re coming from)
On a purely talent level? There’s some reasons to be optimistic (Yuniesky Betancourt, King Felix, Jose Lopez); some reasons to be reasonably satisfied (Adrian Beltre, Richie Sexson); and some horrible train wrecks considering contract status and the way they’re being used (Jarrod Washburn, Julio Mateo, Willie Bloomquist, Willie Bloomquist, Willie Bloomquist).
This organization has CONSISTENTLY shown that they are unable to evaluate the talent they have and understand how to make the best use of it.
Two examples of this:
-I hate to pick on Willie Bloomquist so much. I’m sure he’s a great guy, and he does have some skills (not falling down on the basepaths, chiefly) that make him valuable if used properly. But he has had 249 at-bats this season according to espn.com. TWO HUNDRED FORTY NINE. There have not been any significant injuries that have necessitated this; there have almost always been better options available every time that his name was written on the lineup card.
-Jeremy Reed didn’t turn out to be the player we were all hoping he was going to be, and it’s my opinion that the organization (likely guided by Hargrove’s dislike for young players, at least in part) gave up on him much too quickly. Not only now is he not a viable option in the organization’s eyes as anything but a fourth outfielder, he also has basically no trade value. And this is a player that was the centerpiece of the Freddy Garcia trade (now I always thought that Freddy was overrated, but my point still remains the same).
And, to continue point #2 and link it to point #1, what did the organization do when Reed fell out of favor? They a) plugged Willie in far too much in that spot and b) brought Adam Jones up far before he was ready AND benched him for “poor performance” when he’d barely had time to adjust to major league play, likely setting back his progress as a prospect significantly.
I don’t follow other teams that much, but others who frequent this site do; and it seems like the Mariners organization is, yes, one of the worst in baseball at making intelligent baseball decisions. Keeping Hargrove for 2007 only solidifies that reputation.
In order for me to care about the Mariners next year, they are going to have to /wow/ me this offseason. And this is not a good start.
What a downer. Kinda like the feeling I got when Fox News announced that Bush had “won” Florida on election nite. It cannot be. This is someone’s sick idea of a joke. . . .
#154 You speak of building a winning Team as if it were a grove of Walnut trees wherein the farmer has 30 years to evolve a winning formula.
I think folks here realize that the window of opportunity for producing a MLB championship with a collection of professional athletes is very narrow. Top performance for any given player can be a year or two and getting multiple peak performances to align is crucial. Under these circumstances, you can’t afford to fritter away an opportunity that may not come again for decades.
It is precisely because people see missed opportunities, and realize that they don’t come along every year, that they are disappointed.
You can always “restart” a video game. Most of us see Baseball as much more than that.
uh… hmmm… not having had the heart to write anything at all for half the season was already a bad sign… then comes the FULLY EXPECTED NEWS that Hargrove and Bavasi will be back. C’mon… for those who don’t get it, Howard doesn’t give a double scoop of sheiss about fan hopes and dreams. All our corporate owners expect is a quiescent and subservient fan response to whatever they decide. Unfortunately, the corporate ethic they’ve got, is less about bushido, and more about bullshit. I’ve quite being disappointed a long time ago. Now, it’s just insult to injury.
I really wish that letter was just a fishing expedition, to see what the ticket sales response will be to such a thing. But from past experience… the timing of this announcement, means they’re betting once again on short memories and the absolutely incredible good fortune they have with such a gullible fan base. Sorry, but while U.S.S. Mariner is a place to come (thank god) and not feel completely insane… the real world filling Safeco field is still at least 25,000 strong…
eesh…. let’s talk about the off season, eh? LOL
#149: I did say “nearly a decade†not “a decadeâ€, LB. Was that stretch from 1995-2003, in which the Mariners won an average of 90 games per year and became the toast of Seattle, really that awful?
Ooh! I know this game: How to Lie With Statistics! How does that stretch look without The Magical 2001 Season? Substitute a 95 win season for 2001 and you get “an average of 87 wins.” Not so impressive.
In the 9 year stretch you cite (carefully dodging the 99 loss season), there were 4 seasons under 90 wins, and three of those were losing seasons. Suppose we prorate the 1995 team’s wins out to a full 162 game season: a .545 record would have given the M’s … 88 wins. Still short of 90.
And if you do actually include the 99-loss 2004 season to round out the whole decade, the figures are even more dismal.
“That awful?” Well, I’m sure there are worse things than 4 of 10 losing seasons. Talk to a Royals fan, or a Rays fan. There’s always someone who’s got it worse than you. (Unless you’re a Royals fan. Or a Rays fan.)
But when a season ticket holder like me looks at the cancelled checks and sees how much I’ve spent on this pastime over the years, it’s pretty awful, yeah.
There’s really nothing like a monopoly business. Nothing like it in the world.
Plz Ichrio.. demand a trade….
Nah, just play out the contract and walk away. That’ll send a message. If they trade you at the deadline, so be it. But I don’t think ownership will let them.
Buy an ad in the Seattle Times thanking the fans for seven years and don’t look back.
#156: I am saying that being a fan of a team means being a fan through thick and thin.
Oh really? Suppose you were a Red Sox fan in 1945 when they gave Jackie Robinson a sham tryout, and a voice came from out of nowhere: “Get those [N-word]s off the field!” And then suppose it took them until 1959 to actually put a black player on the field, the last team in baseball. You still a Red Sox fan after that?
Great stuff, Derek.
Let’s assemble teams to dismantle Safeco with crowbars or something.
Maybe we can put the roof on Qwest Field for more noise. Then we can sell the seats, foul poles, screens and the mound to Minnesota for their new stadium.
At least there is this in the PI this morning.
Ichiro! will stay in CF
#156: I am saying that being a fan of a team means being a fan through thick and thin.
Oh really? Suppose you were a Red Sox fan in 1945 when they gave Jackie Robinson a sham tryout, and a voice came from out of nowhere: “Get those [N-word]s off the field!†And then suppose it took them until 1959 to actually put a black player on the field, the last team in baseball. You still a Red Sox fan after that?
Come on. You’re not seriously conflating that situation with the possible return of a crappy manager?
One is just a bumbling personnel move; the other is a stance on an important social issue that defines who the team is as an organization – and in this case, evil.
If you think of your fandom as a marriage, and the Mariners as your spouse, your comparison is the equivalent of comparing a really nasty argument (Hargrove potentially returning) with your wife getting a crack habit, selling your children on the black market, and shooting you twice in the chest with a revolver.
One is grounds for divorce; the other is not.
LB said:
September 29th, 2006 at 12:53 am
#149: I did say “nearly a decade†not “a decadeâ€, LB. Was that stretch from 1995-2003, in which the Mariners won an average of 90 games per year and became the toast of Seattle, really that awful?
Ooh! I know this game: How to Lie With Statistics! How does that stretch look without The Magical 2001 Season? Substitute a 95 win season for 2001 and you get “an average of 87 wins.†Not so impressive.
How is that lying with statistics? And is it really news that dropping the highest number of a range out of the average will lower the average? But what would be the point of that?
What is your argument proving? That if you remove 21 wins from the Mariners’ record, that their record is worse? That the 2001 season didn’t happen and wasn’t evidence of good baseball?
Let me play your game and throw out the two losing seasons. Guess what? Their average wins just rose susbstantially!
In the 9 year stretch you cite (carefully dodging the 99 loss season),
That’s the whole point of a range, isn’t it? To point out a trend over a finite amount of time? The 99-loss season was the first season of a new, losing trend – a trend we’re still in.
there were 4 seasons under 90 wins, and three of those were losing seasons. Suppose we prorate the 1995 team’s wins out to a full 162 game season: a .545 record would have given the M’s … 88 wins. Still short of 90.
Um, okay. What’s your point? I wasn’t claiming the Mariners were the best team in baseball. Go back to what I actually said. I said that we got to enjoy “nearly a decade of quality baseball.” Not World Series baseball, not best-team-in-baseball baseball, just quality baseball, with lots of good play and won games. It just seems a curious base of experience with which to decide to throw yourself off a cliff of depression after three genuinely bad years – genuinely bad years that were almost inevitable given the aging of the players on those winning teams.
You can feel free to nitpick this, but I really feel that you’re trying to refute something I didn’t say.
And if you do actually include the 99-loss 2004 season to round out the whole decade, the figures are even more dismal.
But why? I never said it was a full 10 years. We could extend the range back into the early 1990s, too, but that would be equally irrelevant.
“That awful?†Well, I’m sure there are worse things than 4 of 10 losing seasons. Talk to a Royals fan, or a Rays fan. There’s always someone who’s got it worse than you. (Unless you’re a Royals fan. Or a Rays fan.)
But when a season ticket holder like me looks at the cancelled checks and sees how much I’ve spent on this pastime over the years, it’s pretty awful, yeah.
See, now that’s fair. So if you’re fed up, don’t renew your season tickets. It was your choice to buy them, it’s your choice to not renew them. I just think that if Hargrove (potentially) returning is enough to make people give up being a fan of the Mariners entirely, then that doesn’t say much about their interest in being a fan of a baseball team. No team is perfect, or even close to perfect, and if that’s the standard the you’ll be disappointed 9 times out of 10.
Coach said:
September 28th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
#154 You speak of building a winning Team as if it were a grove of Walnut trees wherein the farmer has 30 years to evolve a winning formula.
Not 30 years, certainly, but I do think there is an element of building and patience involved. Wouldn’t you agree?
I think folks here realize that the window of opportunity for producing a MLB championship with a collection of professional athletes is very narrow. Top performance for any given player can be a year or two and getting multiple peak performances to align is crucial. Under these circumstances, you can’t afford to fritter away an opportunity that may not come again for decades.
Sure. This is why it’s so hard to win a championship – the competition is so difficult that everything has to come together. I agree that bringing back Hargrove would be a step back from that. I agree that it would be disappointing.
I don’t think that Hargrove will still be here when this team is otherwise ready to contend for a World Series.
It is precisely because people see missed opportunities, and realize that they don’t come along every year, that they are disappointed.
Time to restate:
I’m not saying that I want Hargrove back as a manager.
I’m not saying that people don’t have the right to be upset because they don’t want Hargrove back as a manager.
I am saying that getting too obsessed about the wording of a fluff PR letter that praises Hargrove’s abilities, beyond enjoying the comedic irony, is a waste of time.
I am saying that while this makes it appear that Hargrove will be back, I think it would be a mistake to take it as the definitive word on the subject.
I am saying that being a fan of a team means being a fan through thick and thin. Given that things seem to slowly be getting, um, thicker, even if Hargrove does return, I’m shocked that this would be grounds for breaking off fandom.
You can always “restart†a video game. Most of us see Baseball as much more than that.
Um, okay. Me too. I was referring to the macro view of the cycle of how teams flourish and inevitably decline.
dang it. I hate it when Kelley’s whining mirrors our own
dang it. I hate it when Kelley’s whining mirrors our own
You know, it’s funny – after Dave annihilated Kelley’s last column, this one is much more sensible.
Sent this to the Ms, for what its worth:
I have been a Mariners fan since I moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1989. I remember attending games at the Kingdome well before 1995, well before the current ownership group took over. I’ve seen some pretty bad Mariner teams as well as some pretty good ones, but nothing trumps the insulting letter printed in the press yesterday.
I am just writing to tell you that the statement that Mike Hargrove is “uniquely equipped” to lead a young team is patently laughable. He has an awful record with this team, no concept of in-game management, and has demonstrated time and again that he prefers experience to talent, witness his absolute refusal to pull the plug on Carl Everett, a player everyone in Major League Baseball knew was done two years ago. I watched Everett with the White Sox while living on the South Side a couple years ago and he couldn’t hit lefties to save his life. Too bad Mike didn’t get that memo.
As far as I’m concerned, Hargrove is a joke and so is upper management for even trying to suggest otherwise. This team has been trounced by their divisional opponents the last few seasons and nothing this management group has done exudes the slightest notion that they have any idea how to fix the current downward spiral, nor do they seem to care as long as they can draw a few thousand suckers each game to cheer on Willie Bloomquist and the Moose.
I assure you that as long as Mike Hargrove is manager of this team, as long as Howard Lincoln and company continue to insult the intelligence of Seattle baseball fans by fielding a clearly inferior product managed by a dunderheaded moron, and having the gall to say things are just fine — I will NEVER spend a single dime buying tickets to this club or any products on Mariner broadcasts. Your organization’s incompetence has just lost you this fan. Enough is enough. I can’t subsidize this idiocy any longer. Bye.
In the PI WFB’s play is cited as a good thing to have come out of this year.
I have thought for a very long time that Howard Lincoln needed to go back to private business or retire. But then again, he has every senior elitist executive’s dream job where no one questions his decisions and he has long shown that he certainly doesn’t have to stoop listening to the fans. Well, with the exception of maybe the ones who actually CARE whether the blue boat beats the red boat. When he ordered Lou Pinella out of his office that fateful day during Lou’s last season, I knew that Mr. Lincoln’s priorities were skewed. He has always been more concerned with whether there is fresh sushi in the stands and more mindless distractions of the video kind on the Jumbotron than he is with providing a genuine product on the field. What this organization needs but will never have as long as Howard Lincoln is at the helm is Baseball PASSION. Winning is everything. Losing sucks. Continually losing is the fault of upper management. Not Bill Bavasi’s or Mike Hargrove’s and certainly not the two bench coaches who were fired. We all watched Hargrove get outmanaged when he clearly had the superior team on paper at Cleveland, we can only hope he will be gone by the time the current crop of Mariners come into their own. We’re still 3 years away from that. This organization is a mess.
Man, some of you “fans” jumping the Mariners’ ship never would have made it during the team’s true dark ages, 1977-1990. That’s right–14 years of nothing but losing records. Then expectations rise with a few playoff appearances and an expensive ballpark and payroll. Now a mere three straight losing seasons and people are going ballistic over the inevitable season ticket retention letter. This drought is nothing. Steel yourselves.
Meh. All the sideshow stuff is fine as a CUSHION when a team isn’t winning (most teams will go through a cycle). It shouldn’t be a REPLACEMENT for winning.
On the other hand, I think the ownership group wants to win–any CEO has that testosterone-fueled drive to beat the opposition. It’s just that these folks have no idea how to do it, and they have no idea that they have no idea….
I’ve decided that I’m going to spend my fretting time on worrying about Buck O’Neill instead.
Random thought of the day as we look forward to 2007….Ken Griffey Jr. returns to Safeco next year! Unless some drastic changes occur in the offseason to improve the Mariners, this will probably be the only series I will attend. I will cheer loud and long each time the Kid comes to the plate and hope he strokes yet another line drive home run to right center field….maybe two.
Thiel weighs in on the subject
In the PI WFB’s play is cited as a good thing to have come out of this year.
Unless it’s an article I missed, it wasn’t a P-I writer who cited WFB’s play; it was Grover who said one of the advantages of moving Ichiro to center was that “we’ve given Willie, Bohn and especially Chris Snelling a chance to play at this level.”
More importantly, everyone should say a prayer or think a good thought for Buck O’Neill. He’s in my Hall of Fame.
23 – Amen.
Take all this angst and remember it next time you’re tempted to buy a ticket. If you have season tickets, do not renew.
Howie and Chuck consistently run one of baseball’s most profitable franchises. They are very good at consistently wringing operating profits out of an MLB franchise. They are in the midst of proving that a francishise can continue to earn strong profits while in the midst of a multi-year rebuilding program. They have a formula and they’re not lying to anyone about it:
It is no accident that “winning” and “baseball” don’t appear. Howie and Chuck are proving that neither is necessary to pull cash out of a franchise’s market year after year.
The only act Howie and Chuck understand is the tickets we don’t buy. Don’t buy tickets. Help your family and friends visit the Tacoma Rainiers and the Everett Aquasox. Take away Howie and Chuck’s revenue and force them to suffer real operating losses. It is the only way to change Howie and Chuck’s formula.
It is no accident that “winning†and “baseball†don’t appear.
well, actually ‘winning’ does:
“The first step for young players is to establish themselves as quality Major Leaguers. The next step is for them to grow together as a “team,” a winning team that evolves into a legitimate contender.”
and from Hickey:
“Attendance is critical,” Lincoln said. “We can’t continue to see declines. The fact that we’ve drawn almost 2.5 million fans is a testament to fan loyalty. That is great but it should not make us complacent. And we’re not. We know the fans are not going to continue to support the Mariners if we don’t turn it around. We have not gotten there as quickly as I had hoped.
While I remain a fan of the team it’s been getting harder & harder to drag myself to Safeco to watch a team that is surounded by horrible management and ownership.
I’m relatively encouragd by the team. They are getting better. I’m disgusted with the ownership.
I think I’m just going to slide from season tickets to buying a few individual games to go watch teams like the Red Sox and some division rivals. The team will get less of my money. Multiply me by a few thousand more people and you’ll see some pretty good financial losses.
Kinda proves the point, doesn’t it? Would Howie feel anything was “critical”, like say winning, if attendance was up? Methinks not.
And re-read the first quote. Howie is using “winning” as an adjective describing the public persona of his young, established team. As far as that team’s performance goes, Howie requires only a “legitimate contender.” Legitimate contenders don’t have to win or play .500 ball. They just can’t go on 0-11 road trips that erode public interest in August and hurt attendance.
182 – Right on. That’s what I did this year.
Still, Howie and Chuck are damn good at this. Safeco Field is a great asset and they control it on favorable terms. It won’t be easy to force a loss on them.
And re-read the first quote. Howie is using “winning†as an adjective describing the public persona of his young, established team.
sorry– not how I read it.
179-I was unclear. Hargrove should be fired (among other reasons) because he still thinks regularly playing WFB was a good thing according to the quote in the PI.
Legitimate contenders don’t have to win or play .500 ball.
Um, unless you’re discussing the 1973 NL East, 1984 AL West or 2005 NL West, you won’t contend without being above .500.
There were 15,000 season ticket holders this year, and if I had to guess after this headline came out, there will be 5,000 of those people canceling.
That’s about 1/3 of their season ticket base gone, and certainly many more fans will send nasty emails and phone calls their way. We’ll see what happens, but barring a miracle, “The Idiot Trust” is back for another year.
The good news is watching the Cougs play USC on Saturday might make me feel slightly better. . .
Um, the point is that Howie’s definition of “legitimate contender” is defined without reference to win/loss.
Howie’s “legitimate contender” is a team the public perception of which is sufficient to maintain attendance at budgeted levels.
I think you’ll also see a big dip in weekend season ticket holders and package deals. The allure of Safeco is wearing off. It’s a decent way to spend an afternoon but it’s not an “event” the way it used to be. The field itself just isn’t go to be enough to drag people out.
I think you’ll also see a big dip in weekend season ticket holders and package deals. The allure of Safeco is wearing off. It’s a decent way to spend an afternoon but it’s not an “event†the way it used to be. The field itself just isn’t go to be enough to drag people out.
That usually how it works with new parks, anyway. Can’t believe even the Ms would be that stupid to think they could have a cash cow without a winning team.
#167: See, now that’s fair. So if you’re fed up, don’t renew your season tickets. It was your choice to buy them, it’s your choice to not renew them.
Don’t renew them, huh? Have you got any idea how much Charter Seat Licenses cost when the stadium opened?
The team has CSL holders my the short hairs. Not renewing is not a realistic option, the resale value of those CSL is at an all-time low, and the team is doing nothing to make the value higher.
There were zero bids on a 20-game CSL offered on eBay last week for the low, low “Buy It Now” price of $7,500, and bidding started at $6000. Not a single bid was offered.
eBay Link
There’s no point in my sending in an email to the team to register a protest. They know, and I know, I’m stuck with them. I’m signed up for 81 games at whatever price they choose to charge me through 2018.
LB: yes, that bites. in your shoes, the decision is much much harder, just as it is in the shoes of those folks who may not be charter seat holders, but who have been season ticket holders long enough that they’ve moved into optimal territory. for the rest of the season ticket holders though, the ones who don’t ever get to move up…the choice is a little easier.
ya know, the best seats in the house at cheney stadium cost $600 for an entire year. that is the first 2 rows and includes parking for every game as well as guaranteed promotional items and special incentive prizes (like throwing out a ceremonial first pitch or taking batting practice). Okay, so the price will probably be going up, what with the new owner, but still….. best decision I ever made. (well, one of the best)
I think I’d pay good money to see someone perform neuro-surgery on wombats.
More than I pay to go to M’s games (I’m a bleacher bum that bum-rushes the other sections with open seats).
Well, guys, I’ve been telling you off and on all season that the M’s problems start at the top. Do you believe me now?? I’ve also been telling you that the only way anything is ever going to change is if the fans STOP SUBSIDIZING THIS #$@%##&**!! In other words, quit going to games. Money is the only thing Armstrong and Lincoln understand or care about. I’ve been to one M’s game since 2003 (and I only went to that one because it was a church outing). I used to be a 16-game package holder every year (starting back when they were 20-game packages). I absolutely refuse to support this @#%$, and you should too.