Pretty disappointing really…

MLB.com Baseball Today: Vinny Micucci and John Marzano kick off the Spring Training coverage with reports from the camps mixed in with your calls and e-mails

All the other teams have their numbers depressed by games played in Safeco, while the M’s don’t?

True, but the other teams also had their numbers inflated by facing the M’s pitching staff in those same games.

Well, they play 9 or 10 games at Safeco. As opposed to 81 for the Mariners. And again, the Mariners arguably had the worst two offensive position players in their league in 22% of their lineup- and still were competitive in their division offensively when you account for their park being miserable.

And yes, declines by other players would affect this, but if Lopez plays like first half 2006 ALL year, he improves, as opposed to staying static. He’s also 23 this year. We shouldn’t be writing off 23 year olds as being incapable of improvement.

The offense isn’t the problem, in my opinion, unless you have some comobination of Vidro collapsing and injuries that blows holes in the lineup for a big chunk of the year, which is a non-trivial risk. The fact that the Mariners can’t piece together a rotation without wildly overspending in the free agent and trade market, plus the fact that they wasted talent to bring in a sub-par DH that they’ll probably regret come July when they can’t afford to pick up someone available on the trade market and Vidro’s OPS’ing 740, is the problem that will likely keep them from winning.

Great to see. He’s sure been through a lot.

Fwiw, regarding the article, I think the rotation will be a little better than they’re projecting, but I’m only cautiously optimistic about our line up maybe being better. They made a good point about still having “old problems.” Guillen and Vidro may be better than what we had last year, but neither is adept at getting on base at a high clip.