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| Your Seattle Mariners |
– Sir Isaac Newton
“A team that’s bad tends to stay bad.”
– not Sir Isaac Newton
THE postmortems on the Seattle Mariners’ lost 2015 season started being written sometime around the middle of June, when the team slumped its way through a 2-9 homestand and permanently lost contact with the leaders in the American League. The Mariners are one of only two franchises in baseball to have never made the World Series. If/when the Toronto Blue Jays reach the playoffs at the end of September, the Mariners will inherit the distinction of having gone the longest of any franchise in the league without reaching the playoffs, not having been there since 2001. Mariner fans are patient to a fault, fatalist in nature and also somewhat absurdist. They’re used to 90-loss seasons in Seattle, having endured far too many of them over the course of 40 years. Run-of-the-mill bad years are to be expected there. But 2015 this was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be the year for the Mariners. (And it wasn’t just the locals who bought into the hype.) As such, the M’s flailing about 10 games behind the Houston Astros in the standings and reduced to going through the motions for the last few months of the season feels seems all the more depressing.
And the fact that it’s the Astros at the top of the standings makes it sting even more. Yes, the laughingstock Houston Astros, who turned in arguably the worst 3-year stretch in baseball history from 2011-2013, becoming the first team in MLB history to lose more than 105 games in three consecutive seasons. The Astros have stockpiled an impressive array of young talent through the draft in recent years, and that collective talent has exploded onto the scene in 2015, arriving earlier than expected. (I personally thought the Astros would be bad this year and good the next.) When Jeff Luhnow arrived to take over the GM position in Houston, he was handed a 100-loss team, the worst farm system in the majors, and a fan base so disengaged that the Stros were drawing 0.0 ratings on their local television broadcasts. But he also brought with him the know-how and philosophy of player development from the St. Louis Cardinals (and apparently also brought some of his passwords from St. Louis as well). And if you’re going to rebuild an entire organization from scratch, there is no one better to copy than the Cardinals. For all of the hype and the talk about the Oakland A’s and so-called Moneyball – their unique approaches to overcoming inherent financial disadvantages in baseball – time has shown us, in fact, that the modest middle-class franchise in St. Louis’ methods have proven even more effective.
And calling St. Louis “middle class” is based upon economic realities of the game, of course, having nothing to do with pedigree – the Cardinals have won more World Series championships than any other National League club. From a revenue standpoint, the Cardinals cannot ever hope to compete with the Yankees and the Dodgers and even their fiercest rivals, the Cubs. So the Cardinals haven’t even bothered to compete in that arena, and simply gone about cranking out one MLB talent after another. MLB free agency was always something cost-conscious franchises feared in the past, but in truth, it has been proven to frequently be fool’s gold – in signing free agents, you’re rewarding them for past performance, but most free agents are at or past the point in their careers where their skills begin to decline. As contracts increase in value necessarily, the end result, in essence, is a bad investment that simply gets worse over time. As terrific and beloved as Albert Pujols was in St. Louis, you can bet your bottom dollar the Cardinals are glad they aren’t on the hook for that 10-year, $254 million deal Pujols signed after 2011. No, that would be the
The aforementioned Mariners have a few potential albatross contracts of their own. In an effort to win now, they went all in on Nelson Cruz, which has proved a wise investment this season – seriously, if the Mariners were worth a damn, the guy would win the MVP, and he deserves some consideration anyway, as he’s been that good on a team which is that bad. They opened up the chequebook a year ago and splurged on Robinson Cano for 10 years and $240 million, and still owe over $100 million to Felix Hernandez and Kyle Seager – and part of the Mariners struggles stem from the fact that those three players I mentioned, while being pretty good this season, haven’t performed at the superstar levels expected of them. And they need to perform like superstars for the Mariners to be successful, because the rest of the roster has been, well, not very good at all. And seven years into the tenure of GM Jack Zduriencik, there is no excuse for that franchise, and the organization as a whole, to be as bereft of talent as it is.
Zduriencik’s arrival after the 2008 season was supposed to represent a new era in Seattle baseball, as he brought with him a track record of scouting and player development successes from Milwaukee. (Although a rather scathing article by Geoff Baker, the former Mariners beat writer at the Seattle Times, suggests that résumé was somewhat embellished.) The Mariners had been run into the ground by his predecessor, Bill Bavasi, whose disastrous 5-year tenure saw one ill-advised free agent signing after another, a 90-game winner becoming into a 100-game loser, a loving fan base plummeting in both numbers and enthusiasm, and Bavasi then topped off this particularly bitter-tasting sundae with a cherry of a trade – acquiring oft-injured and underachieving starter Erik Bédard from Baltimore in exchange for current Orioles superstar Adam Jones, current Orioles ace Chris Tillman, and three other players in what is, hands down, the single worst deal made in Major League Baseball since the turn of the millennium. You would think that Zduriencik couldn’t have done worse – but in fact, he’s not done much better. Indeed, the M’s record over the first five years of the Zduriencik era was almost identical to the Bavasi years. And while, in fairness, the Mariners have seemed to have an awful lot of bad luck this year – having played an ungodly number of close games and lost them, having an offense whose hard contact numbers don’t jibe with its BABIP, and having lost far too many man games among its starting rotation to injuries – you cannot look at this team without asking about the farm system. Where are all of those good young players? What happened to them all?
Indeed, the cutlers currently carving up the corpse of the Mariners, be they local or national, have all fixated upon that very point. During Zduriencik’s seven years in charge, the Mariners may have missed out on a few terrific talents available with the first picks in the MLB draft, but they’ve picked second twice and third once, which has netted them Mike Zunino, a catcher hitting .170 and striking out in a third of his at-bats; Danny Hultzen, an oft-injured pitcher whose career is, most likely, over; and former can’t miss prospect Dustin Ackley, whose been traded to the Yankees now after a career in Seattle which has been … well, suffice to say, he’s not going to be missed:
The thing is, Zduriencik wasn’t alone in thinking Ackley would turn out to be good. Quite honestly, everyone thought that way. And when the Mariners were dangling Cliff Lee at the trade deadline in 2010, on their way to a 101-loss season which featured the worst offensive team in the history of modern baseball, both the Yankees and the Rangers offered their top hitting prospects as trade bait – Jesus Montero and Justin Smoak, respectively. As fate would have it, Zduriencik managed to acquire both of them over the course of several years, and neither of them has amounted to anything. Now, prospects have been known to flame out, of course. Nothing is guaranteed, and everyone whiffs on a few from time to time. But what this speaks to, on an organizational level, is a lack of proper player development, which is the bugaboo of pretty much every awful franchise across the spectrum of North American sport.
Player development isn’t sexy and it doesn’t really get much attention – at least not until the process pays off. It’s hands on, it’s slow, and it requires patience. Players are not finished products when they arrive. Players can learn. Skills can be taught. It’s extremely easy to gloss over this aspect of the game, since it doesn’t take place on the field of play. Out of sight, out of mind. Statheads love to throw around numbers to show how good a player is, but it isn’t until an organization puts in the time to develop a player that any of those numbers show up in the first place. As a sports-watching public, we’ve become obsessed with the draft over the years, and a good number of franchises in pro sports have become obsessed as well, viewing it as some sort of quick fix to whatever ails them. Guess what? It rarely is.
The draft is an apparatus intended to create parity within a closed system, of course. The bad teams get first dibs on the best players available and, in theory, that should move them back towards being competitive again. Were that actually the case, of course, you wouldn’t see the same teams in the lotteries of the NBA and the NHL year after year, and you wouldn’t have such disparate levels of success.
The Edmonton Oilers seem to think they’ve struck it rich this year, drafting Connor McDavid with the first pick in the NHL draft after winning the lottery. (According to this rather zealous article, McDavid promises to be the single-greatest player in the history of all hyperbole.) His selection by the Oilers, followed by the pick of another supposed can’t-miss prospect, Jack Eichel, with the 2nd pick by the Buffalo Sabres, culminated a rather ridiculous season in the NHL in which the Sabres and the
With the draft and also all of the cost-containment measures instituted over the years – the salary caps and the luxury taxes and the revenue sharing and whatnot – the end result should be something akin to parity. And that has been to case, to some extent, with another result being that if you’re team is perpetually terrible, you’ve run out of convenient excuses as to why that is. It comes down to a question of competence, pure and simple. There is really no excuse for the Cleveland Browns and the Sacramento Kings. There’s no excuse for the Detroit Lions going 0-16 and winning one playoff game in 57 years, for the Colorado Rockies having basically one good month in the history of the franchise, and the Florida Panthers existing at all. In almost every case, at the root of those franchises’ collective struggles lays an inability to acquire, develop, and then maintain, good talent.
It seems maddening at times. The Mariners have developed about three good players in the past decade, but in St. Louis, they apparently grow good players on trees. The truly elite franchises always find good players, no matter where they are picking in the draft. Quite bluntly, all of the scouting combines and player rankings put forth by the supposed “draft gurus” ultimately don’t mean shit. The New England Patriots draft in the 20s pretty much every season in the most parity-laden league of them all, and all they’ve done is been to six Super Bowls since 2002. The Seahawks won a Super Bowl with 5th round picks turned All-Pros in their secondary, an inexhaustible rotation of defensive linemen, a 3rd round QB who was supposedly too short, and two starting receivers they paid all of $26,000 to sign. In baseball, the Giants have won three World Series in five years and haven’t signed a premium free agent away from another club since the Barry Zito debacle nearly a decade ago. In fact, ownership there actually put the kibosh on such signings, requiring both creativity from GM Brian Sabean and an emphasis on – you guessed it – the farm system. For years, the narrative put forth was that the Giants’ farm system isn’t very good, and yet the Giants had an entire home-grown starting rotation for the playoffs in 2010, had four rookies on the roster in 2014, you’ll find a farm system product occupying every position around the bases, and somehow they’re still in the playoff chase despite having had half their starting lineup on the DL at any given time. They just call up another kid up from the Sacramento River Cats and drop him in the lineup and he starts to perform. (The latest, Kelby Tomlinson, just hit a grand slam today against the Cubs and has been hitting .330 or so.) Indeed, what always impresses me most about call-ups to the Giants or the Cardinals or the Yankees is that they always seem ready to play at the big-league level. The excuses surrounding young players – they’re inexperienced, they need to learn, etc. – just don’t seem to apply in their cases.
The Golden State Warriors, meanwhile, were never particularly lucky in the NBA lottery. The one time they landed the top pick, they drafted Joe Smith. It was a draft about as exciting as the name of the player they picked. So how did they build a champion? They landed Steph Curry with the 7th pick of the draft, as well as Harrison Barnes. They landed Klay Thompson with the 11th pick of the draft. Draymond Green was a 2nd-round pick with a crazy skill set that didn’t make sense in the NBA – at least not until the coaching staff started experimenting with different lineup sets and different styles of play. Not only did the Warriors win their first NBA title this year, but they did so with a cutting-edge style of play. I’ve never really bought into the great infatuation with the NBA draft lottery. As I’ve mentioned before, only two players in the history of the lottery won the NBA championship with the team that drafted them first overall – David Robinson and Tim Duncan. Most of the teams mired in perpetual misery in the NBA are there for a reason, and no one player is that likely to help them out. For all the acumen that Sam Hinkie has shown playing the metagame of the NBA salary cap during his tenure as GM in Philadelphia, making the 76ers into a laughingstock in the process, he hasn’t actually shown whether or not he has an eye for actual talent. Perhaps somewhat worryingly, the returns on his drafts wouldn’t seem to indicate that he does, which would set up the Sixers and their fans for possibly even more misery for the foreseeable future.
And the problem with teams that go bad is that they often tend to stay bad. Sure, 28 and soon to be 29 of the 30 teams in MLB have made the playoffs since 2001, but maintaining that level of play is far more difficult. Pro sports in North America are fraught with narratives of teams whose quality run the gamut from mediocre to awful for decades or even centuries, in the case of the Cubs. I ran across a post on a Vancouver Canucks fan site recently theorizing about the value of tanking – the Canucks having dipped from being one of the élite clubs to one of those also-ran mediocre sorts who can push to grab a playoff spot but likely go no further than that. Are you better off just blowing it up at that point and starting over? The problem with that line of reasoning, of course, is that success through failure is no guarantee. The Houston Astros’ of the world that seemingly rise from the ashes are few and far between. Once it goes bad, it often stays bad for quite a while. It’s been 22 years since the Blue Jays were in the playoffs. The Warriors went 40 years in between NBA titles. The Mariners have spent the past 14 years wandering aimlessly in the woods. My guess is that none of the people driving the discussion on the Canucks board remember very clearly the era when the Canucks had 17 straight losing seasons. One glorious Stanley Cup playoff run aside, that team was miserable to watch, run both incompetently and cheaply. The last time the Canucks were truly terrible, in 1999, they lucked out and, with some draft day finesse, landed both the Sedin twins with the 2nd and 3rd picks in the draft. Good luck finding one generational type player again, much less two. (Having the
The Royals are an interesting example, having finally shed their 29-year absence from baseball’s playoffs a year ago, and now sprouting the best record in the American League. Drayton Moore looks like a genius in Kansas City now, of course, since all of the young players he stockpiled have begun to play worth a damn, but it should be remembered that mid-summer a season ago, the Royals were basically going nowhere. Were it not for a hot finish to the season, which propelled the Royals into the playoffs and on to the World Series, Moore was quite possibly going to be out of his GM’s job, because the body of his work in his career indicated that he didn’t really know what he was doing. Indeed, one of his greatest moves was something somewhat accidental – shut down reliever Wade Davis, the key to the Royals amazing bullpen, was basically a throw-in in the James Shields trade a year ago. He was terrible as a starter in Tampa Bay, but someone on the Royals coaching staff thought that he might make a good reliever. And while they’ve added some pieces here and there in the offseason, the core of the Royals were homegrown on the farm. About a decade’s worth of player development work in Kansas City is finally paying off – but during that time, the product the Royals put forth on the field was often insufferable.
The great myth which has arisen in pro sports is that money solves all your problems. But far more evidence would seem to indicate that a franchise which seemingly has license to print money also has license to spend it badly. The entire principle of Moneyball was the idea that the poor-mouth Oakland A’s simply didn’t have the finances to compete with thoroughbreds like the New York Yankees, who have a seemingly inexhaustible well of resources from which to draw. While there is certainly a correlation between the size of a club’s payroll and its success in major league baseball, what gets forgotten in that equation is that often that large payroll is actually spent to keep the players you already developed. The core of the Yankees championship teams from the 1998-2000 – Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, etc. – were prospects developed within the Yankees minor league system. They were able to attain other key pieces to those teams through trading other good prospects they developed. Now, having a large revenue stream afforded the Yankees the ability to go out and sign some free agents, and also absorb other large contracts in trades, but the entire success of the organization was fundamentally based upon its ability to produce top-quality prospects.
Indeed, even in the Wild West capitalism that rules the roost of professional soccer, where the biggest clubs can seemingly drop €50 million on a player as easily as you or I drop $2.25 for a cup of coffee, talent development at the academy level is often even more important. Developing young talent adds depth to your squad, after all, which is essential when you have a season that can last 55-65 games. Young talent is also an asset that you can sell to other clubs and fetch a nice price. European clubs with poor development systems have to overpay to fill out their squads, which is inefficient, since that’s money not being used for buying players you actually want. Spending inefficiently also often leads to too much debt. It’s possible to spend yourself into oblivion, which is what happened to Rangers, who went broke and had to start all over again the Scottish fourth division, and, more recently and more humorously, at Queens Park Rangers, who were so desperate to make it to the Premier League that they were carrying a wage bill in the second division in 2013 that almost was as high as EPL champion Manchester City, and likely breaking quite a few financial rules while doing so. After one inglorious season in the EPL, QPR are back in the second division again, and also having to face up to the regulators for their past transgressions. Now, few teams have ever spent quite as spectacularly stupidly as QPR, but the point is that all of your big spending has to be matched by an structure in which you’re creating more talent for your organization.
And speaking of stupid spending, what immediately comes to mind here on this continent is the L.A. Dodgers, whose payroll this season is pushing $300 million and who’ve spent about $90 million or so simply to make some players go away. At one point in and around the trade deadline, the Dodgers were responsible for about 25% of the Marlins’ payroll. They’re going to look really stupid
The Lose wonders if this is where the next arms race might occur in sports – through the systematic pillaging of another organization’s development apparatus, you also force other clubs to have to spend more to keep it intact. Indeed, one of the beauties of having so much money at your disposal is forcing your rivals to spend money they don’t wish to spend to keep up. Then again, you’ve already seen something similar happen in the NFL, without a whole of good results. Bill Belichick’s New England staff has been systematically raided over the years, yet none of his former assistants have come even close to matching his success, and a good number of them have graded out to be among the worst head coaches in the league. (And in the case of Scott Pioli in Kansas City, arguably the worst General Manager in the league.) The same sort of thing is now happening with the Seahawks, which have lost two defensive coordinators to head jobs in Jacksonville and Atlanta. (Sadly, no one will take offensive coordinator/big tool Darrell “I’d-run-the-same-stupid-play-again-in-the-Super-Bowl” Bevell off their hands yet.) The salary cap might eventually catch up to the Seahawks, whose scrubs-cum-superstars all have to be paid like it, but only if they’ve lost the ability to generate more superstars out of thin air through their coaching and development.
Which brings us back once more to the Seahawks’ next door neighbours there in Occidental Square, the Mariners. What, pray tell, do they do? All the indications are that Zduriencik is a goner at the end of the season – apparently, soon-to-be Red Sox president Dave Dombrowski mentioned to someone that the Seattle job would’ve been his second choice, which is interesting, seeing as how Seattle doesn’t yet have a job opening – and likely manager Lloyd McClendon will go with him. Even though I think Lloyd’s done OK, all things considered, it’s a results-oriented business and the results have been disastrous. I would like to think that whomever comes in to clean up the mess will be given carte blanche to just get rid of everyone and start over. The trouble with Seattle is that patience is diminishing among the fan base as fast as their numbers. And with about $100 million players on their rosters, the Mariners were built to win now, but they don’t have a farm system capable of producing enough players to compliment them. And while it may be good news that Zduriencik’s tenure is soon to be up, as Friend of the Lose and long-suffering Northwest columnist Art Thiel points out, the same guys who hired Zduriencik will be hiring his replacement. They haven’t gotten these hires right in 14 years, so why would anyone think they will start showing wisdom now?
Regardless of whom the Mariners hire, that franchise – propped up by Microsoft money in a Microsoft town – might want to heed the words of one of Microsoft’s former CEOs and focus on development. The Mariners’ greatest success – the 116-win season of 2001 – came primarily because, even though they had lost three Hall of Fame players in successive seasons (Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez), they had built up a talent base able not only to withstand the losses but adequately replace them – which took nearly a decade to accomplish. It doesn’t have to take that long, but there likely isn’t going to be a quick fix to what has been a long, slow, and insufferable leak.
