Tracy Larsen on Baseball | The Seattle Mariners

"We'll get 'em next year!" and Other Hopes for 2000
By Tracy Larsen, for Seattle Insider
Originally published by Cox Interactive Media, 1999

Now that the '99 Mariners season is in the can and the players are watching all the post-season action from their off-season living rooms, it's time for us prognosticators (fans and writers alike) to look back and second-guess every move the professionals made. Reverse a bad trade, save a blown game and mix with a healthy dose of 20/20 hindsight and before you know it we've decided that the pennant should have been ours back in July.

But that won't happen, of course. The Mariners' quest for the post-season fell short once again, with a 79-83 record overrall. There's always "next year", but next year may be ARod-free, or -- worse yet -- centerfield may be left wide open without Griffey to act as the human fly, scaling walls and denying homeruns with the greatest of ease. If either of those things happen, this will be the saddest off-season in Mariners history. I'd like to think that even M's management -- a group about as forward- thinking as Custer getting a haircut before the Little Big Horn -- wouldn't be stupid enough to let them both go.

The Mariners have offered both superstars record-setting salaries, but those may or may not be the real deal. Call me cynical, but considering the fact that both Griffey and ARod have repeatedly asked only for a playoff-contending team -- meaning, "Give us ace pitching!" -- and have not really whined about wanting more money, I see the M's offers as a high stakes shell game.

If the superstars don't see a commitment from management to drastically improve the team's playoff chances, they may reject those astronomical salaries, and the M's could use it to their advantage in a PR campaign to effectively say, "See? They're just too greedy. We offered them a gazillion dollars and they still rejected it. We can't possibly afford them." That way, the M's could let them both go, freeing up all of that money, and still come out smelling like the proverbial rose.

But both Griffey and ARod know that they could probably get record-breaking salaries just about anywhere. What neither of them can buy, and what they both desperately want, is a World Series ring. Griffey especially, at age 29, is beginning to run out of throw-away seasons in which to dream of that ring.

Will they go or stay? Will Edgar Martinez be far behind? And then there's Buhner... should he stay after so many injuries? (I'm thinking no, he shouldn't). Or will the team as we know it today break up into a million little pieces, only to be an empty shell of its former self, the self that, as a unit, really built that expensive new field? Will our former first baseman, David Segui, find his way back from the Great White North, as he has hinted he would like to do? For good or bad, we now have an entire baseball-free winter to think about all of these uncertainties.

It's not all been bad, of course. There have been some highlights to this past season to be thankful for. There were some predictions during the pre-season regarding the three young players which we'd acquired in late '98 for Randy Johnson that, luckily, didn't come to pass. The most impressive part of that trade has to be the young right-hander, Freddy Garcia, who pitched himself to an impressive 17-8 rookie season this year. If he stays healthy, we could be looking at a future, multiple 20-game winner.

The other two-thirds of that trade included pitcher John Halama, who, in the latter part of the season, helped stabilize a shaky starting rotation, and infielder Carlos Guillen, who should be able to come back from his season-ending knee injury in time to start next season. Hopefully, though, he won't be brought in to replace a missing ARod.

This year the dream of playing on real grass came true, as the team moved from the concrete confines of the Kingdome to open-air Safeco Field, and despite the problems of cost overruns (which have yet to come to a satisfactory conclusion), the M's seem to have made themselves at home there. Shouldn't be too hard, really, considering it's the most plush and expensive ballpark in history. Still, it's a beautiful field for future Mariner dreams.

Other positive developments, depending on your point of view, would be that Bobby Ayala, at long last, was traded to Montreal just prior to the start of the season (he has since moved on to the Cubs, following a less than impressive 1-6 season). Unfortunately, Ayala's ghost must have found its way into the body of Jeff Fassero, after the veteran left-hander -- the supposed leader of our Class-B pack -- posted a dismal 4-14 record before being traded to the Rangers toward the end of this season.

The final irony is that, as I write this, I see Fassero warming up in the Rangers' bullpen during Game 2 of the Division Series against the Yankees. That just goes to show that at the beginning of a season, you'll never know what will happen by the end of it. But it also gives me some hope that, during this long, dark off-season, maybe miracles will happen. Maybe both of our superstars will follow that illusive pea, and win that shell game.

The phrase "We'll get 'em next year" has never had so much meaning as it does now.