It is fair to say that the trades of Cabrera, Bazardo, Soriano, and the attempted trade of Balentien evidence poor judgment and/or poor talent evaluation. Moreover, the signing and subsequent release of Horramible is only the latest in a long line of costly mistakes. Bavasi wasted $ 1.2 million on Pokey Reese. He wasted $ 2.05 million on Reitsma, but continues to believe that Reitsma can be successful by giving him another shot this spring. Many of us believe that Bavasi is wasting another $ 850,000.00 on Cairo, and $ 3,000,000.00 on Wilkerson. An argument can also be made that Bavasi mishandled Jose Guillen’s option.

Every GM makes bad trades, risky free agent signings, and the like. Unfortunately, Bavasi’s indefensible trade record, spotty free agent signings, combined with the repeated failure of the team on the field, warrant his removal as GM of the Mariners. From my perspective, however, nothing will change unless Lincoln and the current regime are removed as well. That might require the sale of the team.

If the Bedard trade didn’t happen, and they weren’t able to scrape up anything else, HoRam was their (really bad) insurance. At 450K, that’s cheap insurance. Sure, not cheap to you or me, but they’re willing to throw twice that at Bloomquist. That means $900K is essentially throw-away money. HoRam cost half a Bloomquist. Cheap.

The bullpen looks pretty strong, almost strong enough to leave Morrow at Tacoma if Lowe or Huber are healthy and look good. How was HoRam supposed to crack that pen?

I’m not worried about Cairo being on the bench, its not like McLaren is going to try to make him into Mark McLemore, Mac isn’t the type to overuse his bench. Last year Broussard wasn’t even on a pace to get 200ab’s until he got 73 in September.

Specifically, he’s played every position except CF and C.

Except that the practicality of playing OF is much different than the theory (see Morse’s initial conversion and some other guy last year who learned on the job…)

Cairo first played the OF way back in 2001, so I would suggest that his “learning on the job” period is over.

I’m not saying Cairo is necessarily a better choice than Morse, but let’s get our facts straight here. Cairo can play just as many positions as Morse can.

The “if you can play SS you can play anywhere” theory is OK if you’re an athletic young pup with plenty of time to adjust to a new position. I don’t think it holds for a (relative) geezer like Cairo.

Morse’s ability to play OF as well as infield positions is more useful, and Morse being the emergency 3rd option at SS is a lot more useful than Cairo being some theoretical 5th OF or backup at 3B.

Seriously though, I’m really hoping that Lowe makes a full recovery. He could actually make a big difference.