Both the 2001 and 2007 teams had huge differences in projected and actual wins.

Yeah, but I don’t think that’s a particular function of “their offense really sucked”, and again, I mentioned a STRETCH of seasons where the M’s were well above .500 without an ace of King Felix’s caliber, and a bunch of midlevel starters, not just one season. The 2007 team maybe has a better case for that, but even there, it was a decent team offense.

The other factor here is that 1B/LF/DH are typically fairly easy to find decent-offense players if you are willing to reject “AAAA” labels, or are willing to platoon. So some of the M’s problems on offense are fairly straightforward fixes. I’d be more worried about 3B/C (3B because Beltre’s a really good player, and C because our catching options mostly suck.)

To extend the card analogy, you can stand on a 15 or 16 and win, but that’s not how you play winning Blackjack or baseball.

Actually, that CAN be the mathematically correct play to make when your opponent is showing certain cards, in that it optimizes your chances of winning (because you are guaranteed not to bust, and they have a proportionally higher chance of busting if they draw, than the risk than they will beat you). While it’s true that baseball is not blackjack, sometimes the winning move IS not to jump off a cliff if your fellow GMs start thinking it’s an awesome idea.

That being said, I wouldn’t definitively rule out signing a FA pitcher coming off of injury- perhaps in the offseason that WILL turn out to be a reasonable move, and market conditions will make those players a relative bargain compared to a lead-footed slugger. My feeling, though is that there are reasonable moves that would both add or retain good players (I say retain because I think it’s not out of the realm of possibility Beltre could stay a Mariner) that don’t just involve ponying up millions based on an MRI… and we’ve seen what relying on a glass-armed pitcher with awesome stuff has gotten us.

Both the 2001 and 2007 teams had huge differences in projected and actual wins.

To extend the card analogy, you can stand on a 15 or 16 and win, but that’s not how you play winning Blackjack or baseball.

The Mariners can make some marginal moves and bide their time til younger talent develops and some of the millstone contracts come off the books, and there is a good chance that the Mariners could contend for a long time next year as they have this year while doing so; But a well run organization knows that building a team to play in October means leaving very little to chance.

This means that the Mariners need a whole lot more “certainties” and a whole lot less “hopefully’s” before they should consider themselves a finished product.

Free-agency is probably the worst way to acquire talent, but that doesn’t eliminate it from the discussion.

The 2001 Mariners (motto “Two outs? So what?”) also had a ridiculous and unrepeatable batting average with runners in scoring position. It helped make up for the team’s 169 home run total. So I don’t know if repeating that offense is out of question if the baseball gods are nice to us.

… which is why I pointed out a STRETCH of seasons. Now, granted, Edgar+Olerud+Cameron+Boone is a hell of a starting point, but the Mariners survived having guys like David Bell and Dan Wilson in their lineup, plus the LFer du jour.

Also, the Mariners went from having a pretty bad defense last year to one of the top defenses in the AL. They also went from one of the worst offenses in the AL in 2004-2006 (bottom of the league) to ~average in 2007, with Bill Bavasi as the GM, so I don’t see that improving like that in 2010 is impossible.

His increase in GB% hasn’t come just at the expense of FB%; his LD rate has dropped as well.
If he no longer resembles Washburn, who does he resemble now? Just looking at this year’s GB/FB/LD rates, there are a bunch of good pitchers right around him, but he doesn’t get the srike-outs they do. So is he now Sean West? Johnny Cueto? Homer Bailey?

Actually, in terms of strike-out rate and batted ball profile (2009 numbers only), he kind of looks like… Jamie Moyer!

(Also: an entire post on RRS without once using the Niehausian “big Aussie”?)

If the Mariners can actually get an above average offense next year–Which is probably a stretch baring any more miraculous developments, then a rotation of Felix, Morrow, Snell, RRS, and French/Silva/Vargas/etc. has a serious shot at contending.

If the improvements are only marginal, you’re still just looking at an 85-90 win second-place team.

However- salary flexibility does NOT solely have to be used for free agents (for example: the Snell/Wilson trade). I tend to think there are some paths for the Mariners to add talent that don’t necessarily depend on drawing the pitching injury history/free agency equivalent of drawing to an inside straight. That’s why RRS developing into someone you can project into a mid-rotation slot is an encouraging trend, since a rotation with one ace + two midlevel guys + enough back-end fodder is actually pretty solid (the 2000-2003 Mariners arguably had 3 midlevel guys in various combinations of Sele, Garcia, Moyer, Pineiro, and random assortments of Halamas, Abbotts and Franklins filling out the back end, and they consistently won 90+).