The Mariners have this incredible fear of the deep end, like one wrong deal will capsize the whole operation, drown half the crew and leave the rest to be eaten by sharks and interned in a POW camp if they survive 40 days at sea.
Just Go. Get. A. Hitter. If he's the wrong hitter and he's worthless, okay - you still have all the rest of your chips to deploy THEN. If he's the right hitter (as Cruz would have been last year, or Morse would have been, or Josh Willingham even) then we're fine, and we're rolling toward the playoffs.
I don't mind having good young bats to back up my other options, but the idea that Miller and Taylor are our only potential hole is not realistic.
- LoMo is injury-prone and inconsistent. LoMo in a slump resembled LoMo on a streak like a Big Mac resembles a filet mignon. We gettin' the Big Mac again in '15? If so, somebody else better bring the steak and the sizzle.
- Ackley hits like a Major League Pro... but only after the All Star Break, it seems. Can we ride out another two-to-three months of winter wasteland until the Southern Boy warms up enough to hit?
- Zunino contributes by hitting home runs. Nothing else he does at the plate is up to major league standards. If he suffers a power outage for a couple of months he's gonna look like a tomato can run over by a freight train.
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As we're fond of saying, the games count in April too. Make sure we've got enough bats to ride out a cold streak or some ineptitude from kids still finding their sea legs. Not having a suitable replacement on hand for Almonte or Romero cost us the playoffs as surely as not signing Cruz did.
If Romero or Miller or Taylor comes out in Spring Training demolishing the ball, all well and good. I don't want to NEED him to in order to win those April and May games. Because if the new bat struggles, we can work in kids around him. If the kids struggle, we're stuck. More redundancy is better (even though that hasn't worked out for us with things like the DH position lately, because all of our redundancy was inept).
I'm fine with figuring out what's going on with the team from June forward, but I want as many non-rookie (or 2nd year) options as I can get to piece-meal the best roster we can until that point. If Kivlehan OPSes 1.000 in AAA and forces an appearance because Miller is tanking, fine! We can fit him in.
But the Ms always talk themselves into being okay with their options on-hand because going out and adding another bat is risssssky, precious, too rissssky. And then we sit home in October, watching the Royals go to the World Series.
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Felix can't pitch forever. Kuma might be on his last ligament strand. Paxton or Walker could pull a Campos/Pineda/Hultzen and become quickly useless. You can't just sit around waiting for everything to line up perfectly. "There's no fate except what we make for ourselves." I said 3 years ago we were aiming at 2016. Well, we move that up a year by adding the right piece or two. Cruz is one piece, so who is the other? If we feel like we can do it at the deadline, maybe we do that - but what about the Mariners screams "we'd love to go all in at the deadline if we're not ahead in the race at the time?"
They're all about small moves. Last year we added Jackson, which blew up in our faces, and Kendrys, which did the same. And Denorfia, which died with a whimper. For the price of Hart + Kendrys + Jackson + Denorfia - just in WAGES - we could have added a real hitter and skipped the whole debacle.
But we were too scared to get it right in the offseason after doing what we'd never done and plunking down a quarter-billion on Cano. We ran out of courage, and it might have cost us a pennant, maybe a ring. We'd have met the Royals in round one and who says they do to us what they did to Oakland? Last year might have been our year, but we didn't wanna mess up 2016+. Let's stop going halfway to competing. Dive in - the water might be cold, but nobody ever won a title in the pool by standing on the tiled edge and dipping a toe in.
This year we've gone from trying to add Melky or Upton or Kemp as the bat to push us over the top, to wondering if Ruggiano + Miller can be a league-average LF if we squint hard enough. Because the price was too high, or the risk was too much. There's something to be said for saving your tinder and trying to build a dynasty - but banners mean something too, and while we have the greatest pitcher in the AL at the height of his powers, I'd like to see us help him win us a ring.
If it's not too much trouble.
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