McLaren Blows His Top

Well, it was all over ESPN last night, and the Seattle bloggers and sportswriters are buzzing about it: the normally cool-headed John McLaren lost his temper in yesterday's news conference. His Mariners are 18 games below .500 in spite of a $120M payroll, and they play like a team of Little Leaguers, or at least overpaid Little Leaguers who are just waiting for their candy bar and Gatorade at the end of the game. McLaren railed about how tired he was of losing, how tired his players are of playing hard but getting nothing for their efforts, and of how something was going to have to change--and soon.

Some of this outburst is a case of the shit flowing downhill, as Seattle owner Chuck Armstrong--himself a generally mild-mannered guy--ripped into McLaren and the M's coaching staff before the game Wednesday. It was the kind of shouting that the team could no doubt hear from the locker room, the sort of chewing-out session where nobody wants to meet your eyes when you leave.

After last night's disappointment, the media was allowed into the clubhouse immediately after the game, where each Mariner stood at his locker, ready to face the music for their poor performance of late. Both were departures from the usual delayed entrance, with a handful of players bothering to answer the questions they didn't want to hear. Will this represent a turnaround for the Ms?

As you've heard me say before in this blog, some of this exasperation is to be expected. When you're shelling out $15.5M to Sexson, $9.85M to Washburn (currently the #4 starter, with a 2-7 record, a 6.58 ERA and 1.58 WHIP, after two years of 4.30+ ERA and 1.35+ WHIP in Seattle), and $8.5M to a DH (Vidro) who's currently hitting .225/.273/.325, with 3 HRs and 28 RBI, what do you expect? That's a fourth of your payroll right there, to guys who were either never very good, or on the bad side of their careers.

I cringed when I read about each of these signings, and if Seattle is fretting about its horrible season, they have only Bavasi to blame. Baseball managers and GMs are forever fretting about how you can't win in baseball unless you spend money, in spite of teams like Oakland, who succeed every year in spite of a low payroll, or the Orioles and Dodgers, who haven't been able to win even when they've got one of the biggest payrolls in baseball (as they have in the past).

Just like everything in life, what you pay for something isn't a measure of how good that product is. Good general managers know how to get the most bang for their buck; they don't just throw money at the most expensive free agent on the market. If Armstrong and Bavasi are concerned that their team is playing like a bunch of overpaid, yet mediocre players, maybe that's precisely what they've bought.

Seattle's tried to pretend it's a big-market team, with the kind of Steinbrennerian resources that drive the Yankees to annual success, when in fact the only team that can spend and succeed like that are the Yankees. You have to pay top dollar for top talent, yes, but that doesn't mean that just because you've paid top dollar, you've gotten top talent.

The way for mid- and lower-market teams like Seattle to succeed is to build from within, around pitching and defense, not fling money at guys who have proven themselves (that is, given their best years) somewhere else. Seattle needs to focus on its minor league guys, nurturing the position players the way they have pitchers like King Felix, Putz, or Lowe. They were right to get rid of the injury-riddled Chris Snelling, and Shin-Soo Choo was blocked by a crowded outfield, and is likely a fourth OF guy anyway. The position players they've brought up this year and in years past--Balentien, Betancourt, Lopez--may not be All-Stars, but the price is right. All three of them are outhitting Sexson and Vidro, and their combined salaries aren't a third of Vidro's, or a sixth of Sexson's. 

Until they can focus on this business model, instead of the buy-high, suffer-long deals that Bavasi seems to prefer, then McLaren and Armstrong can bellow until they're blue, and Seattle will continue to plod along in the cellar. Armstrong doesn't need to be issuing statements in support of McLaren, he needs to be announcing a job opening at GM.