I guess I’m one of those that won’t really entertain the thought of putting that to bed just yet. I have no qualms about the amount of money spent on payroll – in fact, from the looks of things I don’t necessarily think payroll factors as much into the decision for players as some of who shout about this group’s “lack of will to win” think.

I do, however, have a problem with Armstrong using the payroll numbers alone to support his position. I am heavily involved in business as well – and in many ways, there are similarities no matter what business you are in. I don’t think it’s a simple profits versus winning paradigm at work here. I don’t think Armstrong and company believe they are mutually exclusive (they obviously are not). The problem I see here is the lack of demand for excellence in the specific arena of baseball performance relative to the demand for excellence in other areas. For example, the “family-friendly, great night at the park” focus *seems* to be much more out there than the “we are in this competition for the prize”. When you listen to quotes from either Lincoln or Armstrong, specifically about on-field performance of the team, you never hear that their goal is to win the World Series or even play to get there. The most often stated goal falls short – “to be competitive”. I find myself asking why every time I hear them speak to this issue – and I listen specifically for this each time.

In my business, when we query our customers, the question is never asked “Are we a competitive service provider?”. Rather it is asked “Are we your *best* service provider?” I’ve found in my field, that is a huge difference. Our company is not in this to “be competitive” (we are), but we are in it to be the best (which we are sometimes). If all we want is to be competitive, we can probably get there, but we will never be the best unless that is the vision from the top of the company to those who deliver the service and projects in the field. Anything less than being the best is not an acceptable outcome.

Now related to the M’s, as a fan, I am not one of those who believes “World Series Champs” or “chumps”. What I do want from ownership is to be sold the product of the team trying to win championships. A nice night at the park would then be a by-product. This team needs that vision from the top down. From everything I can tell, that is absolutely not the vision for this team. It might be from the players, but without the synergy of the whole organization focused on the same thing, it is not the best recipe for success.

What the evidence indicates to me is that the M’s are perfectly willing to spend money on payroll in order to deliver to their market exactly what they envision the market need to be. In my mind, this is why the M’s lock themselves into expensive players with mediocre upsides in lieu of taking chances on the “unknown” players. Like it or not, those fans who have a passion for game and frequent blogs like this and others are not the largest share of the market in Seattle. That’s why they continue to draw so well in a season like this. The casual fan still wants to see players they know. My hunch is that the payroll number stays where it is almost as much for appearance sake as anything else. I don’t know if this is necessarily true, but it is an alternative that would be supported by the evidence Armstrong uses. If the front office is spending money, then implicitly they are ‘trying to be competitive’.

This whole response is a bunch of speculation of course. Armstrong and Lincoln could surprise me someday by saying something more than “we’re trying to be competitive within the division”, but the absence of the larger vision in their statements, to me, is very conspicuous.

I have witnessed some horrible, mind-boggling business decisions made because of the fiscal year. It seems artificial and arbitrary to me (with the exception of tax issues and such) but to the suits I’ve known it is life and death. And I’ve seen millions wasted because of it.

And I think tat Howard and Chuck keep choosing to fix the team the way they do because to them, a tear down is a guaranteed decline, whereas the alternative could go either way. Sure, they’re surprised that it keeps going the same way, but that’s because they are perplexed by the baseball of it all.

Let me put my position this way: to me, as a fan, the future is clearly more important than the present. It was so clear that the team wasn’t capable of winning a world series that I want every decision to be about what is best for the team long term.

I believe that Howard and Chuck do not think that way. I think they think annually. Finishing 80-82 instead of 70-92 is worth absolutely nothing to me. To them, I believe it is worth millions of dollars and multiple prospects. That, to me, is putting the balance sheet ahead of winning (a championship).

But as a whole, their decisions have been so bad that neither explanation is easy to swallow.

If you grant that the M’s are led by good business people, you can’t imagine that they think that’s true: they’ve seen many examples of other teams spending fruitlessly on free agents as attendance declined.

No, they thought that they were spending better than those teams, and it would make all the difference.

That’s a far sight more plausible than the theory you’re laying out.

Nowhere else can someone fail so completely at their job and continue to not only be employed, but be entrusted with a position that affects hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars a year. The “they can’t possibly be that bad, there must be something else going on” mentality is hard to shake, I know it creeps in for me at times…

No – they signed Carlos Silva because they believe that he’s a groundball machine and a veteran innings eater who knew how to win. They drew bad conclusions, but those bad conclusions were based on their assessment of the player’s value on the field, not on some marketing ploy.

But guess what? Sometimes, the uninformed can come closer to the truth that the extremely informed.

I won’t go so far as to say the Mariners don’t want to win. That would be monumentally stupid. Of course they would love to win.

They just haven’t needed to. They’ve thrown pots of money at the team, true enough. But look at those pots of money, for chrissakes. I got absolutely flamed for a crisp on several occasions for suggesting the money was spent more for wowing (exactly) those fans who were completely uninformed… than in building a viable team.

Hey! The hoy paloy wants Power? Let’s bring in duly shined-up power… And the loyal 30,000 (but dropping) base won’t notice it’s not sterling, but plate silver…

This is the sort of thing, I think, is worth complaining about. The circus stunt, public relations, mentality attached to their acquisitions.

Win? Sure, they’d take it. Same way I’d take winning the lottery.

I would suggest that it isn’t this simple, Dave.

It’s not a we invest, we win, we don’t invest, we lose, situation.

A team invests for more reasons that to simply win. They invest to build a viable farm system. They invest to improve weak points. They invest to take advantage of their mid-season or end season position. AND they invest to maintain cash flow, in terms of what Joe-Sixpack expects from his home team.

Um… I submit that the Mariners have NOT addressed all of the above. Therefore, they have NOT invested in winning.

That’s my angst.