| Christopher Reina. 24th September, 2008 - 12:36 am
 The Mariners and A’s met up in Oakland last weekend and unlike so many meetings during the beginning of the decade, this September series had no postseason implications.
They were stuck playing each other, not even being able to play a spoiler like those NL teams battling the Mets, Phillies and Brewers.
These two AL West clubs had a stretch of regular season dominance between 2000 and 2003, where they combined to win 785 games (98 wins per team per season) and make six playoff appearances.
00: Oak: 91-70 (win division), Sea: 91-71 (wild card)
01: Sea: 116-46 (win division), Oak 102-60 (playoffs)
02: Oak 103-59 (win division), Sea (93-69)
03: Oak: 96-66 (playoffs, win division), Sea: 93-69
But it was the Angels who won the Wildcard in 2002 and sneaked themselves into a World Series win.
Since 2004, Arte Moreno’s first full year as owner of the Angels, the A’s and Mariners have just one postseason appearance and have averaged just under 81 wins, though Oakland has averaged 87 coming into this season.
04: Sea: 63-99, Oak 91-71
05: Oak 88-74, Sea 69-93
06: Oak 93-69 (win division), Sea 78-84
07: Sea 88-74, Oak 76-86
This season the A’s have overachieved but will finish under. 500, while the Mariners will lose over 100 games for the first time since 1982.
The Mariners and A’s have different philosophies, a different set of obstacles but an equally bleak forecast over the next few seasons and when they meet it has none of the same feel as those electric games of just a few years ago.
At the same time as the A’s traded away Dan Haren, Nick Swisher, Rich Harden and Joe Blanton in the span of just over half a year, the Mariners aggressively tried to compete.
Encouraged by an unexpected 88-74 finish in 2007, the Mariners expensively added Erik Bedard at the cost of five players and Carlos Silva at the cost of $48 million over four seasons.
They also gave Ichiro Suzuki a five-year, $100 million extension last summer before he could reach the open market.
He is unquestionably one of the most consistent hitters in the game, but almost 25% of Ichiro’s hits this season have been infield hits.
Only Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols have scored more runs since Ichiro came into the league, but he is 51st in OPS (.808) amongst players with at least 500 runs during that time span and 63rd in RBIs and $20 million is a lot to spend annually on any hitter, let alone one that rarely creates runs for others.
But the biggest problem for the Mariners was an unrealistic set of expectations. Their Pythagorean record was just 79-83 in 2007, suggesting they lucked into nine of those wins and the optimism that 88 usually wins brings should have been more guarded.
As soon as the predictions stopped and the games started, the Mariners quickly buried themselves by going 12-15 in April despite outscoring their opponents and then going 8-20 in May when they gave up 65 more runs than they scored.
Seattle has hit well in the second half, but have continued to be as inept as any team in baseball in one-run games.
Somehow the Mariners have three players (Ichiro, Ibanez and Lopez) with 180 hits apiece, a first in team history and something that Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr. and Edgar Martinez surprisingly never accomplished.
They have used 15 different designated hitters, the most since Toronto in 2004.
I identified Jose Videro as a liability at DH in my pessimistic, now optimistic, season preview back in March. The Mariners wasted 69 DH slots on Vidro before they released him in early August.
They essentially had just one DH from 1995 until 2004 in Edgar Martinez.
But even with a more productive DH (Barry Bonds?) and more than just 15 starts from Bedard, the Mariners have a serious dearth of talent that makes competing with the Angels and whichever AL East team defaults to the Wildcard a relative impossibility.
Contrasting from the Mariners, the A’s weren’t expecting to compete and eagerly began rebuilding, but were 51-42 on July 11th and just four games behind the Angels.
They traded Rich Harden just three days before the July 11th high-water mark and then dealt Joe Blanton a week later to ensure their fate.
The A’s had six consecutive losing seasons in the 90’s, but have been tremendously consistent during Billy Beane’s tenure. This is the first time Oakland has had back-to-back losing seasons since 1998.
Notoriously thrifty and somewhat beloved because of the underdog nature of their financial coffers, the A’s let former MVPs Jason Giambi and Miguel Tejada depart via free agency and invested in Eric Chavez as their franchise cornerstone, who has played 23 games this season, 90 in 2007 and has now undergone four surgeries in under a year.
Bobby Crosby, while finally healthy and played in more than 100 games for the first time in three seasons, but has gone from a potential breakout MVP candidate to a guy that has a .694 OPS since 2004, which is 19th amongst shortstops who have played in at least 500 games.
The A’s now boast the American League’s most prolific strikeout victim in Jack Cust, who broke Rob Deer’s mark in the 4th inning on Friday. He is their leader in OPS with a mark of .845.
Continuing the strikeout theme, only five players in all of baseball since 1901 have hit nine or fewer homers while striking out at least 130 times, but Jack Hannahan is poised to join Rick Monday in that category this season.
Bluntly, the A’s haven’t been this horrible offensively since 1982.
They have a payroll of about $47.9 million, which is the third lowest in baseball.
But the Mariners came into the season with a payroll of $117 million, easily ninth and within just $20 million of the Mets, who are second behind the Yankees.
This payroll has resulted in the worst record in the AL, with ten fewer wins than the next worst club (Baltimore, who plays in a difficult AL East which has four of the seven best records in the AL).
Not only are the Mariners spending without winning, they are even spending big while underpaying at the very top of their rotation in Felix Hernandez, who is a dominant Cy Young caliber starter making just $540k in 2008.
They are both a long ways away from even lightly disturbing the Angels.
- Christopher Reina is the executive editor of RealGM |
