A hundred (million?) reasons to hate the Mariners

Congratulations Seattle Mariners, you have just made history. With your 6-5 loss to the Angels of Anaheim last night, you have become a team to be logged in the annals of baseball history forever.

Last night our beloved M's recorded their 100th loss of the season, a metric used to identify the worst of the worst teams in the major leagues. But that's not all THAT impressive, right? Every year there is usually one, maybe two teams that achieve this impressive feat of losing over 61% of their games; an honor in recent times bestowed upon such storied franchises as the Kansas City Royals, Tampa Bay Devil Rays, and Pittsburgh Pirates. Since 1980, 27 teams have achieved this feat in fact, so no big deal, right?

However, what NO other team has done in history, not until September 24, 2008 that is, is to lose 100 games while spending over ONE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS (US$100,000,000) in player salaries on the season. Well done Seattle Mariners, you have REDEFINED the phrase "shitty team".

The M's have become the anti-money-ball franchise. Where Billy "Money Ball" Beane has made a career of maximizing the dollar return on a team's win-loss record for the Oakland A's, the Mariner executitves have found ways to spend more for much less than anyone has ever before in the business.

What people in other cities may not understand is that Seattle really is a baseball town. While we Seattle Baseball Fans KNOW that this season there is less than a 39% chance at seeing a Mariner win when we go to the ballpark, about 30,000 of us still show up to see the spectacle. Game after game. So there is absolutely no negative reinforcement to our ownership group for producing a losing team. They have a good cable contract in Seattle, international television revenues (every game is shown live in Japan), and great merchandise sales on top of the 30,000 fools buying tickets, hotdogs, and Ichi-Rolls (a sushi item only available in Safeco Field) 81 times a year. What's not to like for the owners?

This mentality of making money over winning ball games explains such things as signing up Kenji Johjima for another 3 years at the extraordinary price tag of $16.5 million. He keeps the Japanese fans watching. Kenji was one of the the worst hitting catchers in the majors this year, but almost worse is the fact that one of our only positions of strength in our minor league system is AT CATCHER. Jeff Clement is a minor league player of the year, and is dying to play full time catcher in the bigs. This was one of maybe ONE positions where we were fine going into next season.

The other man from Japan on the squad is superstar Ichiro. If you want to witness how huge this guy is, ust walk around the ballpark before or after a home game. Inevitably, you will see a 5-tourist-deep swarm of Japanese fans, taking their photo next to the lifesize PICTURE of Ichiro. Now I admit that Ichiro is a fantasic ballplayer, and the best player on the Mariners. Though he does contradict almost every single Billy Beane Money Ball theory in what attributes of a player you should be investing your money in. Fans though, especially in Japan, love this guys. Ichrio keeps the Tivos recording games in Tokyo, even if according to some critics "Ichiro doesn't walk enough" or "Ichiro doesn't hit for power" or "some of the other players on the team want to beat up Ichiro". (No seriously, per Seattle Times reporter Geoff Baker's Blog today, certain players wanted to beat up Ichiro earlier this year. He's not quite the clubhouse leader you usually get for $16 million a year)

So maybe, just maybe, our crack owners and exec staff aren't morons at all. They have created "Japan's Team" for the international revenue, and for the locals, we have a beautiful fan-friendly ballpark, and we have signed expensive, underperforming guys like Raul Ibanez and Yuniesky Betancourt (left picture) who fans LOVE. Look at how cute Yuni is in that picture! He's like a god damned stuffed animal. It's the only explanation for why Willie Bloomquist defies all odds and statistics and remains on the Mariner payroll. Fans LOVE him. My buddy Doug Miller who was briefly the MLB.com beat writer for the M's told me that he received more fan questions about Willie "F-ing" Bloomquist than almost all of the starters. He's that gritty overachieving, white "Baseball Player" that people want to see... don't mind that he owns the longest hitting streak without an extra-base hit in the majors.

I have read that Kids and Females are the target audience that the ownership group is trying to reach with their "product" in the Seattle Mariners. They wisely assume that actual "baseball fans" are going to show up anyway. Kids and females LOVE players like Yuni. They love their Ichi-rolls, the Mariner Moose, and apparently they could give a crap about winning baseball games.

Maybe the joke is really on guys like me. I am too dumb to realize that this team is EXACTLY what the owners want. It has NOTHING to do with the 100 losses. They spent $100 million on making a Disney Land in Seattle, and really there should be no expectations of anything changing.

But hey, the good news is that we kept pace with the Washington Nationals, who also lost last night, and who remain one game behind the Mariners for the coveted first pick of the draft next year granted to the worst team in baseball. Not that we'll do anything with it. Go M's.