Doc Baseball @ 10 – That sure jumped out at me too. Apparently defense is not a part of the team, nor having a productive DH I suppose.

… nor is any offense from your first baseman, or any offense from your second baseman…

Oh and JLC, I was wondering that too, I mean seriously, are you going to go show off your Howard Lincoln autograph to all your friends? That should get em jealous for sure!

I’m sure they also sell a ton of merchandise in Mariner team stores to Japanese tourists.

What makes you think we don’t have evidence on hand?

It’s not hard, at all, to see that the Mariners were indeed 6th in payroll last year with over $100 million.

Our complaints with the Seattle Times continually printing whatever payroll figures the M’s give them are well-chronicled here, but suffice it to say that they’re just this side of total fiction.

The USA Today payroll figures have the M’s seventh, behind the Dodgers, with a $107m payroll.

I’m pretty sure that qualifies as a franchise record.

The argument was with the statement that every year it’s a record, which is clearly not true – go look at the M’s payroll over time and you’ll see where it dips.

I’m interested to see your evidence about how the average payroll in ‘92 wasn’t $35-40 mil,

That’s not what Howard was saying. In 1992 the M’s payroll was $22.5m. You can go look that up yourself.

and I seriously doubt that you actually know whether or not the Mariner’s payroll has been increasing in recent years, since you didn’t even know what it was last year.

Uh huh. I can see where taking a different viewpoint than the one you seem to hold clearly establishes that I have no idea what I’m talking about.

For a site that claims to look at statistics, this site sure seems to have a lot of opinion based information.

You seem to be willing to make a lot of fact-free assumptions about what I do and don’t know.

It’s not hard, at all, to see that the Mariners were indeed 6th in payroll last year with over $100 million. Seeing as that was the first time the team had ever spent more than $100 million on a season, I’m pretty sure that qualifies as a franchise record.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sports/2003572621_marimoney15.html

I’m interested to see your evidence about how the average payroll in ‘92 wasn’t $35-40 mil, and I seriously doubt that you actually know whether or not the Mariner’s payroll has been increasing in recent years, since you didn’t even know what it was last year.

Also, while Lincoln’s quote is arguably a bit misleading, the Seattle/Tacoma market is actually 14th in the country… Just behind St.Petersberg/Tampa (according to the Nielson Company). Pretty sure the Rays have a lower payroll than the mariners.

For a site that claims to look at statistics, this site sure seems to have a lot of opinion based information.

There is some Japanese revenue that isn’t shared — the not-inconsiderable number of Japanese tourists who make their way to Safeco.

Which is probably why the Mariners were in such a frenzy to re-sign Ichiro last year before he hit the open market. Imagine all those lost Japanese revenues for the Mariners. if Ichiro had gone to the Yankmes to joion Matsui or Sox and join Dice-K. They would have Johjima still, but I imagine he isn’t as big of a name in Japan as Ichiro is.