Frank Thomas had SLGs of .563 in 2004 and .590 in 2005, so having him post a .545 SLG in 2006 during full time play does not exactly count as a huge surprise.

Ken Griffey, on the other hand, has not posted a .500 SLG since 2005, while playing in two of the better hitter’s parks in baseball.

By the way: Frank Thomas’s numbers last year (.240/.349/.374) were almost as good as Griffey’s when you take the park effects out of the way, and his numbers in Oakland (.263/.364/.387) were BETTER than Griffey’s. So Griffey could be hitting .350/.410 next year, be performing slightly better than last year if you throw away park effects… and having everyone in Seattle go “gosh, he looks done”.

the Mariners drawn better than 24 other teams each year.

You’re living in the past. The M’s haven’t been in the top 6 since 2004.
M’s attendance rank, by year:
2001: 1
2002: 1
2003: 2
2004: 10
2005: 12
2006: 15
2007: 16
2008: 19

That’s right: 18 other teams drew better than the M’s last year. Eighteen. Including Toronto, San Diego, and Detroit. The M’s are well below the median among the teams in baseball — and they’re going to draw less this year, so they’ll probably be in the bottom third. As I said in a previous thread, they’re going to be lucky to stay above 2M fans (vs 3.5M back in 2002). And meanwhile their pay structure is way out of whack: they spent $50 on payroll for every butt in a seat in 2008, by far the most in baseball, and even with their new reduced payroll they’re going to be in the top two or three.

and have no “closer” to finish off the games.

Yeah, because you always have to go spend lots of money on getting closers in free agency. They never come out of nowhere, like Putz.

But how exactly would that move him closer to his precious family?

Perhaps something like “this is your last season in the bigs. After that, you’ll have more than enough time to spend with your family. Of course, if you don’t accept our dirt-cheap offer, you’ll have even more time to spend with your family.”

But how exactly would that move him closer to his precious family?

His kids are teenagers now, they hate him because he is ruining their lives.

I think they should give him a lowball offer, but be reasonably generous with the incentives.

But how exactly would that move him closer to his precious family?

The thing about conspiracy theories is they have to have an element of bad logic to them. In this case, being passive-aggressive on Griffey allows them to keep up the appearance that they’re NOT overt meddlers.

Well, OK, I agree that you do have the bad logic thing going for you