I want us to win. I hope that’s something you understand. I just think we lose more fans than we win when Nick Johnson gets hurt and we don’t come close to a pennant again. The odds on that are FAR greater than the odds of the M’s winning some fans back and enjoying a nice last hurrah for our city’s hero. I’m taking the easy bet here and enjoying a nice mediocre season with some Griffey nostalgia mixed in with an excellent draft and series of trades by Zduriencik. Winning a pennant/World Series? Let’s save that discussion for mid-season when we can reassess the roster and figure out what to do with it then. For now, Griffey’s the best answer for the team looking to reinvigorate its general fan base.

We haven’t really talked about the option of acquiring Nick Johnson in addition to Griffey, though. I’d be all for that if the money would work out (though I doubt it would).

I think the effort of trying to win an extra game or two in lieu of giving Junior his encore here is as irresponsible as you and Dave seem to think the opposite.

I don’t think that’s a good summary of what we think, but I want to focus on something else there– you’re saying that you’re willing to take an extra loss or two in order to have Griffey here.

What if it’s three, or four? In your previous comment you base much of this on a belief that the team’s not competitive anyway. What if they are? What if the M’s are even with Oakland at the break, and Griffey’s not playing particularly well. Is the second half of his encore worth a chance at the playoffs?

And what if the team ends up missing the playoffs by one or two games you willingly surrendered at the start in order to see Griffey in Seattle again? Is that worth it?

I don’t understand here why being competitive isn’t a worthy goal, and why taking a chance on one potentially productive, injury-prone player that might help the team is awesome, while taking a chance on another is a silly idea worth mocking. If competitiveness is not the goal, then why does it matter if we sign Nick Johnson? I’m sentimentally attached to him — can’t I get my year of a favorite player in a Mariners uniform as well?

And given the injury histories of Griffey and Nick Johnson, it’s strange that you’re so focused on how fragile Johnson is while supporting a Griffey signing. I don’t quite understand why one is so easily derided and dismissed as injury-prone and brittle while the other isn’t.

This is why I think a GM like Zduriencik was selected over guys such as Antonetti or others — he works the masses just as well as he works the stat guys.

Except one of the PI bloggers quoted Zduriencik as saying he wanted to “take the emotion out of signings.”

There are a lot of people for whom the Mariners begin with Ichiro, for whom Griffey is — as he was for Ryan Rowland-Smith and his friends — just that guy with the big head on the Simpson’s — and those people are just as much fans as anybody who can remember Griffey. For that matter, there are people like me who grew up with Julio Cruz as my favorite Mariner and for whom the 90s “glory years” of Arod and Griffey and RJ were just background noise while we were getting on with other parts of our lives until we had time to get back into it. For us, making the M’s better today and into the future counts for a lot more than some kind of sentimental pyrrhic victory lap.

But whatever happens, whoever gets signed — Griffey or Johnson or nobody — I hope the team stays healthy and put up unexpectedly crazy-great numbers.

ooooooooooooooooooooooh boy

Say whatever you will (if you knew me, you’d think it was hilarious that I was siding with the sentimentalists here as I’m pretty severely stat-inclined), but Griffey means more to me and a lot of other people who follow the Mariners than any other player who has ever played the game. I think the effort of trying to win an extra game or two in lieu of giving Junior his encore here is as irresponsible as you and Dave seem to think the opposite.

If Zduriencik goes out and trades for Nick Swisher, I will be happy as there is something there to build on with a relatively stable and quantifiable projection. But Nick Johnson? Seriously? You guys are asking an awful leap of faith for a crowd base to get behind a guy whose ability to stay healthy is the reason a moniker like Mr. Glass exists in our language. Johnson may stay healthy and help us win an extra game or two (or three if he stays really healthy). Or, in a much much more likely scenario, he misses most of the year, and we don’t get a boost of goodwill from the city, we don’t get an attendance boost in the stands, and Zduriencik loses some credibility with the front office.

This is why I think a GM like Zduriencik was selected over guys such as Antonetti or others — he works the masses just as well as he works the stat guys. Frankly, the Griffey decision at this stage of his career isn’t something that should be left up to statistician in us, but rather it’s something that should be left up to the little kid in us instead. That, to me, is just as much a part of what baseball is about as it is the numbers and the extra win or two.

I thought 2009 would be the return of watchable baseball in Seattle.

I’ve heard vicious rumors of this thing called multitasking. Seems like Zduriencik can accomplish a bunch of things all at once, no? Our team should be better than last year’s, and I think that after Bavasi’s reign of absolute fiscal irresponsibility, it’s a little too much to ask to really want a good product the very next year. Nick Johnson is a fool’s errand, in my estimation.

2009 is the year of Griffey Jr. coming back home.

I thought 2009 would be the return of watchable baseball in Seattle.

ooooooooooooooooooooooh boy

In the hopes of somehow pulling 400-500 at bats out of a guy who is more hopelessly injury plagued than Junior, what do we really accomplish? Winning one or two more games (IF Johnson magically stays healthy) and perhaps garnering a worse draft pick? Really? If that’s your idea of a solution, I think you’ve got your priorities a little bent out of shape. Griffey is the heart of Seattle baseball, and in a year where we are certainly very very unlikely to be competitive (even in a crappy division), there is absolutely no need to try to squeak an extra win or two out of the M’s by hiring the most injury prone positional player in the entirety of baseball. Nostalgia has its place in baseball, and for once, I think it’s time for the numbers to take a back seat and show Ken Griffey, Jr. some well-earned respect and admiration. Plus, this probably assures us he goes to the Hall in an M’s uniform — something I’d be extremely proud of as an M’s fan.

Nick Johnson? He’s an injury beleaguered joke. Try him some other year when we could really have a solid shot at contending. But 2009 is the year of Griffey Jr. coming back home.

I don’t begrudge the intelligencia of USS Mariner from wanting Nick the Stick… however, is there anything other than wishful thinking associating a Johnson move to the Mariners? Do we have any idea whether there is actual interest in making a commitment to a player like Johnson as a lefty 1b/dh? Seems to me like they’ll just stick with Clement/Branyan/Griffey there.

Just to rosterbate a little more… anybody else thinking Washburn to the Dodgers? They just threw money at Randy Wolf and they’re still short starting pitching. He probably would pitch pretty well in that part as a fourth starter, and the Dodgers could send prospects the Nats’ way to land the Mariners Johnson, while absorbing much of Washburn’s salary.

The Mariners probably can’t wait on a market to develop for Washburn to make a move on Johnson. The longer they wait, the more unlikely it is to happen. Either he’ll prove fragile again, and they would have been right not to pursue him. Or he’ll actually be the player the Mariners would like to acquire, and by then his price will be much too steep, and they’ll probably get outbid by other teams anyway. If it’s going to happen, it has to be pre-ST.

I don’t think Washburn necessarily has to be a factor in picking up Johnson… but then I don’t think like most baseball teams.