Nail, Meet Coffin
Dave · June 3, 2008 at 10:01 pm · Filed Under Mariners
Worst seasons in franchise history, by winning percentage.
1978: .350 Win%, 56-104
2008: .356 Win%, 57-105 (pace)
1980: .364 Win%, 59-103
1983: .370 Win%, 60-102
2004: .389 Win%, 63-99
“We have given no thought to making any changes in managerial personnel,” Armstrong said. “Same for the GM. Listen, he’s part of the solution, not the problem.”
Three of the first seven seasons in existance, the Mariners posted a winning percentage below .400. Despite all the horrible teams in the mid-80s, they never did it again until 2004, and now they’re threatening even the ’78 club for the worst record in franchise history.
You might want to consider that they are part of the problem now, Mr. Armstrong. Give it some thought.
Ha, Armstrong giving something thought. That’s doubly funny.
Armstrong is part of the problem if he is incapable of recognizing that Bavasi is part of the problem.
If I had the chance to ask one question of Chuck Armstrong, it would be what criteria he uses to evaluate the success of his GM. Including his time as the Angels GM, Bavasi is steering his ship to his 7th last place finish in 12 seasons. How can that record possibly be considered as part of any solution?
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a smart, creative GM. The big payroll/free agent plan has failed now for five years. They need a new one. Bad.
My take is that if he’s consistently defending Bavasi (and company) he knows that they are part of the problem. Just wait until the off-season, and if the situation remains the same, then (in harmony) we’ll all scream for the collective front office’s head.
The M’s organization has a very serious problem that is quite common in corporate America. Lack of accountability from the Bat Boy to Howard Lincoln no one is held accountable for their performance.
I am also getting sick of all the talk about the organization not wanting to win. I believe that they want to win with every ounce of their being. The problem is they simply do not know how. It is a total cop out to blame the heart of the organization as it takes attention away from the total lack of brain.
I was under the impression we were all screaming for the entire FO’s head already. Or maybe that was just the voices in my head. Cairo at 1B and Ibanez in LF will do that to a person.
I wasn’t around at the club’s inception (not quite), but bad as they were then, at least it was natural to have low expectations, right? There’s no excuse now. Seriously, there is no excuse for this combination of payroll and performance ineptitude. We should start a fan union and picket the games until they start moving in the right direction.
Three of the first seven seasons in existance, the Mariners posted a winning percentage below .400
More precisely, in three of their first seven seasons, the Mariners lost 100 games. The inaugural 64-98 season was also below .400 (and the 1981 strike season nearly so).
To my good fortune, I didn’t really become aware of the Mariners until 1984, although there was still a lot of bad baseball to endure. But this trainwreck is even more painful to watch than 2004, which at least had Ichiro’s record-breaking year as a redeeming feature.
Crush,
You’re right, the batboys aren’t held accountable for their performance. They are held accountable for the players’ performance…i.e. no tips, no playoff shares, extra “requests” from the more demanding players, and generally surly bevahior from people for whom they do everything from go pick up fried-rice-minus-the-peas-extra-shrimp before the end of the game, to clean and polish both their cleats and street shoes. If you are going to have pity for anyone, have it for the minimum wage batboys who have to wash Sexson’s jock and have a snowball’s chance in hell at a playoff share.
Everyone above them is fair game, even PR spokesperson Rebecca Hale and her pathetic “I don’t know” answers in her interview with Dan Savage about the Mariners’ homophobic ‘Guest Relations’ policy enforcement practices, or marketing VP Kevin Martinez, under whose leadership the annual commercials have gone from endearing and hilarious to tired and patently unfunny.
But he’s right! Bill Bavasi is part of the solution: the solution is to fire people in the front office. Bill Bavasi is among those people in the front office. Thus, he is indeed part of the solution!
Gee. And for someone who’s been in his position since 1986, you’d think Armstrong would have enough experience to see the writing on the wall here.
Is it any wonder why the M’s never seem to learn from their mistakes???
I me be naive … but I think it just a matter of time before Bavasi gets canned. A team can only take a certain amount of losing before something changes.
No one wants to lose. Honestly, has anyone here met anyone who likes to lose? Even Bavasi and Armstrong / Lincoln don’t like it.
You have to figure change is on the way … right?
“We have given no thought to making any changes in managerial personnel,†Armstrong said.
Maybe we’ve all got it wrong. It isn’t that there won’t be changes made in managerial personnel…it’s just that those changes will be made without any thought being given to them! 🙂
This is awesome! We’ve become an awful amalgamation of the pre-Huntington Pittburgh Pirates combined with the Sabean-Era San Francisco Giants. We’re a joke. We’ve got at least a two-year re-building effort in front of us, and every second that Bill Bavasi is in charge delays that effort in full. If we draft a reliever in the first round, that’s just another nail in our rather weary-looking coffin. I abhor this organization right now, and it’s going to take a serious face-lift to make us not totally suck for a long long time.
Umm.. the nail has met the coffin already. A few weeks ago. And several cartridges of nails shot into the sucker since then.
It’s a given that Bavasi and Armstrong should be canned. They’re the architects of this mess.
But I also do a double-take every time I see the batting order.. or who’s pinch-hitting.. or who’s playing where.. or who’s NOT on the bench where they belong. McLaren HAS to go too. His day to day decisions are ridiculous.
The passive nature of this town is allowing this crap to continue FAR too long. The media heat in NY is a bit much, but there needs to be some kind of revolt to get the “old guard” out of office. And all the garbage they’ve allowed to pile up.
I can’t believe people are still passing the gates at Safeco. I’m not going to another game until Armstrong, Bavasi, and McLaren are ALL in the unemployment lines with the rest of us.
So what’s the team record under Artmstrong? Ten winning seasons out of 21? And only four playoff appearances? And two after opening Safeco?
Shouldn’t that bear some responsibility?
“Shouldn’t that bear some responsibility?”
I certainly believe that it should…or it would in a well run business. But to carry the business analogy a step further, the results on the field tend to be what they are because the M’s seem to have the kind of mindset that it’s okay for them to be that way. So what if the product stinks, as long as people keep showing up at the ballpark when we throw rally fries and bobbleheads at them? If the ticket buying public truly spoke with their wallets and stopped going to the games, then that would make the upper level management and ownership really do something. Until then, isn’t the team a cash cow? And if so, where’s the incentive to change anything?
Or perhaps just bare his arse in Nordstom’s window.
Armstrong’s views of building a winner are most likely outdated, if not just wrong, so he probably is baffled to why the team is doing so bad and doesn’t think it is Bavasi’s fault that the team isn’t winning.
The 2008 coffin is already under 6 feet of dirt. The nails are getting pounded into future coffins at this point.
“He’s part of the solution, not the problem.”
At least Armstrong admits that there is a problem, some mysterious force risen from the ether to plague this noble team assembled with such care and elegance, this team crafted by artisans to withstand the ravages of the AL West, to deny the cursed possibilities of a season teetering on the Abyss of Hopelessness by Memorial Day not only for this year, but for generations to come. Yes, Armstrong admits that there is a problem, but one forseen only by mystics and dabblers in the dark arts known as sabermetrics. Armstrong intends to tamp down the seepage of this “problem” by applying the still-warm body of Junior to assure large crowds for a couple of weeks. That should do the trick.
As long as ‘JJ Putz Train Night’ draws 38k, Armstrong ain’t going nowhere and nothing changes.
Chuckie IS the problem though!!! Duh.
What they’re saying to each other right now is
“Well, we gambled on Sexson coming back strong, and we were wrong; but who could have known?
“We assembled what we thought was the best pitching staff in baseball, and we were wrong; but how could we have known?
“We built a team around outstanding defense, including the wizardry of Betancourt, the spectacular height of Sexson, and the determination and experience of Ibanez in left. We were wrong, but how could we possibly have known?
“We put together the strongest, most versatile bench available, with gritty veterans like Willie Bloomquist and Miguel Cairo. How could we have known they wouldn’t perform?
“We bought the most outstanding free agent talent on the market, with Wilkerson and Cairo; they flopped, but how could we have known?
“We expected to contend, because we contended last year and only got stronger over the offseason. But everything that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong. HOW COULD WE POSSIBLY HAVE KNOWN?”
That’s how you get a hundred million dollar team with Miguel Cairo starting at first base.
As Steve Ballmer once yelped “Ownership! Ownership! Ownership…!” He yelled something like that. Forget blaming the hotdog vendors … Until we get an owner, this Exxon Valdez will continue to leak. Look at the Angels. When the Ol Cowboy finally rode off the Chissom trail for good, they got good. The A’s ownership has the sense to know their limitations and let the propellor heads do their thing, and the Rangers and the Ms? They stagger around like Joe Hazelwood on shore leave.
Has anyone ever heard of a GM saying, “Yeah, I think the manager has been doing a bad job. He’ll probably be fired soon.”? Or an owner saying that about a CEO, or a CEO about a GM? C’mon, peoople, that’s not how it goes down. Paying more than a tiny little bit of attention to what Armstrong or Lincoln says about Bavasi, or what Bavasi says about McLaren, in these circumstances, is foolish. Their jobs are clearly on the line.
We’ll know they’re going to be fired right about when they’re actually fired. In McLaren’s case, that’s probably going to happen on Wednesday, at the end of the homestand, with an off-day following. And by the way – In Bavasi’s case, it will probably happen after the season is over.
I agree with CCW, it’s unlikely that the FO is going to badmouth a manager or GM unless the next sentence is “that’s why I fired them earlier today.”
But it still seems like “Listen, he’s part of the solution, not the problem†is a hugely stupid thing to say. Really? Then how did all those sucky players get on our team? Did martians suck their talent out with shimmering green talent sucking rays?
Maybe we can rename it ‘JJ Putz Train Wreck Night’?
Honestly that was how my brain interpreted it when I read it.
Armstrong is an idiot….and yes, Chuck and Bill, most fantasy baseball active managers can and would do NO WORSE than you two clowns.
I think it would be nice to just have a little hope.
for all the media heat in NY when things go bad, people still go to the games there, too.
I had not seen that comment from Armstrong before. I assumed it was from a prior year, but I looked it up and it appears that he made the comment about 2 weeks ago. Stunning.
Dave Cameron 4 GM.
It’s times like this when I just fire up MLB 2K8 on the Xbox 360, cut Washburn, Vidro and Cairo, trade Silva, move Morrow and Dickey to the rotation, trade for Doyle and throw him in left, and move Ibanez to DH.
Then I try to convince myself that everything I did really happened.
Then I cry when I realize quite a few people could do a better job of maximizing this roster than our current GM and Manager.
I fully support the “open letter to the M’s FO” idea. Respectful, of course, but direct and demanding. We could all sign it. Or better yet, each send such a letter individually. Flood their inboxes with a clear message that we refuse to passively watch this crappy management run the team into the ground any more.
BigB – I do the same. Only with EA sports mvp 2005 on old school xbox. I’ve got a pretty good franchise going there. Much less depressing than the real thing.
From the PI, May 24 2008:
By “the buck stops here” and “I feel responsible”, Bavasi is talking about how he *feels*. But he’s obviously not talking about the kind of responsibility where one assumes it. You know, the kind the rest of the world deals with every day.
This reminds me of that commercial with the chimps dancing in the board room around a graph that shows their sales (wins) going up. The lone human tells them they have it wrong, and turns it the correct direction. Music stops. Chimps stare at him; then turn the chart the wrong way again. Music & dancing resume.
Reality is apparently => that way.
I think the nail in the coffin also exists when there is legitimate argument that Carlos Zambrano is a better hitter than nearly every one of our offensive players
… oh and that he is better than every pitcher we have too
hahaha, now that is dark comedy the likes of which I’ve only seen this year in No Country for Old Men
The M’s thought that about 50 AB’s were enough to evaluate Clement, so your argument ought to be good enough for them.
Lacking any adequate players to offer, M’s trade $100 million in cash for Zambrano and insert him at first base: “He’s got the hot hand! Look at that OPS! That’s what you statheads love, right?” Fast forward three months:
“…It turns out that Zambrano isn’t our answer at first base; but how could anyone have known?”
Based on his track record, this team is only performing slightly below average for Bavasi-led teams. So what’s the problem? Oh, yeah, the other teams in the league aren’t led by Bavasi.
I fully support the “open letter to the M’s FO†idea. Respectful, of course, but direct and demanding. We could all sign it. Or better yet, each send such a letter individually. Flood their inboxes with a clear message that we refuse to passively watch this crappy management run the team into the ground any more.
Anybody know what it costs to buy, say, a half-page ad in the PI or Times? That should be large enough for a “we, the undersigned passionate Mariners fans” open letter. The internet has more real reach, but the physical media is going to have far more impact on the cave-dwelling old folks in the upper reaches of M’s management.
You can probably call the appropriate paper’s ad sales department if you want to find out; that being said, there’s a chance that they might not run the ad based on content, considering how closely tied the Times and PI are to the team.
I know there’s a couple media types hanging about, anyone want to weigh in on this?
42 –
They might write an open letter back along the lines of what President Bush would write back:
Or:
Anyone have any stats on players before and after their time with the M’s? It might be just that I noticed because they were M’s players, but it sure seems like a lot of good players come to the M’s and stink, and average players leave the M’s and do better. This is the culture of losing thing I’ve ranted about before that only seemed to be somewhat canceled out by Gillick/Piniella.
Anyone see Ned Yost’s comments. They’re virtually identical to McLaren’s, and further evidence that you really shouldn’t too much attention to what these guy’s say… they all say the same things (and so would you, probably, in their shoes):
“We’re all frustrated by the way this season has gone so far for the most part,” Yost said. “I know we’re a better team than our record shows, and I know the guys in our clubhouse feel the same way. The frustrating part for us is that we’ve been going about our business the right way, playing the game like it’s supposed to be played but we just haven’t always gotten the results. It hasn’t been a case of guys not putting forth the effort and coasting. It’s tough when you bust your butt every single day and don’t have as much to show for it as you think you should.”
tomas –
I think you missed a key element in your question (the same one the FO does BTW).
The FO only seems to value past performance. Picking up an injured and/or declining former All-Star and expecting them to perform like they did at their peak is a madness pervasive in this organization.