Marinating in Seattle

Q. When should you alter your three-year rebuilding plan?
A. Definitely not midway through year one.

With their beloved but woeful Mariners above .500 and in the thick of the AL West and wild card races, Seattle fans are asking whether they should be buyers or sellers before the trading deadline. If GM Jack Zduriencik is asking himself that question, he was the wrong replacement for the train wreck that preceded him.

I'm betting that Zduriencik recognizes instead that the Mariners are a long way from contention and should not be mortgaging their future for high-priced rentals. This is a team that has just three good hitters, one of whom is hurt and another of whom is enjoying his career year. (The third, Ichiro, is back to his old magic and stirring in a soupcon of power too.) The team has been swept along on a wave of solid pitching, but finishing '09 with 81 wins would be an achievement.

The best evidence that Zduriencik understands this was his signing of the ghost of Ken Griffey Jr. Playing an injury-addled former great in order to woo fans is a luxury that only a team with no hope can afford. Predictably, Junior is batting .218 and limping around left field. Imagine a team in a pennant race trotting out a baseball card every night and enduring his replacement-level play.

The Mariners have a wonderful opportunity to trade good veterans in their walk years and reap some future gold. Take Russ Branyan, please, and send back a couple of potential sticks. Until the past 300 at-bats, Branyan was a strikeout machine with no position. This year he's hitting .303 with an OPS of 1.009 in a tough-hitting park while playing first base full time. At 33, he won't be around when the Mariners start contending, so they ought to shop him before he hits the discount rack.

Ditto Jarrod Washburn, who can give someone 100 more innings of 4.00 ERA. But at 35, his future is now, and with his contract expiring, Seattle should get some hitting in return. They'd like to do the same for Eric Bedard. Hey, maybe they could convince Baltimore to relinquish Adam Jones, George Sherrill and three minor leaguers for...oh, nevermind. That would reverse the transparently moronic swap engineered by then-GM Bill Bavasi last year. Having milked Bedard for a season-and-a-half of All-Star caliber visits to the Disabled List, the Mariners can only hope now to reel in a fraction of that value for him now. And by "now," I mean "if and when he comes off the DL and pitches well enough to sucker some contender into thinking he can make seven starts in a row."

That win-now-without-talent approach got Bavasi fired and sunk the Mariners to 101 losses in '08. Zduriencik won't make the same mistake. This year, the Mariners are sellers. But if they follow the plan, the future will be brighter.
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