Halfway Home

At last year's All-Star Break, the Seattle Mariners stood dead last in the AL West with a 37-58 record, 20 games out of first place. Inept manager John McLaren had already been booted. Same goes for Bill Bavasi, their high functioning retard of a general manager. (The team would be far better off if Bavasi made absolutely no personnel moves during his four year reign of terror).

And if those things weren't enough, the players wanted to beat up Ichiro.

The 2008 season was an unmitigated disaster, years in the making. It was painful to watch, more painful to support.

Needless to say, going into 2009, very few had high hopes for a franchise on a five-year downward spiral that seemed destined to result in a battle with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Kansas City Royals for irrelevancy.

M's CEO Howard Lincoln and president Chuck Armstrong, the two men responsible for crafting a team built on over priced, aging free agents were tasked with righting the ship they aimlessly lead off course.

Ultimate cynics such as myself had little doubt Lincoln and Armstrong would fill their GM vacancy with Kim Ng from the Los Angeles Dodgers - making her the first ever female general manager. The managerial post surely would go to some retread like Ned Yost or Lloyd McClendon.

But the Mariners chose a different path. They hired a guy whose last name nobody could spell or pronounce to be GM.

The GM with the funny name promptly hired a first-time manager who few knew anything about.

Yet over the course of the last eight months, GM Jack Zduriencik and manager Don Wakamatsu have transformed the Mariners from a lock to repeat as AL West losers, to one of the great surprises in baseball's first half.

It hasn't always been pretty (the month of May, Double Stuff Silva, YuBet). But at the half-way point in the season, the Mariners find themselves four games above .500 and only four games out of first place.

Zduriencik masterfully cobbled together a roster full of guys nobody wanted (Russell Branyan, David Aardsma, Franklin Guttierez), or thought they needed (Junior, Mike Sweeney). And Don Wak has made a great argument for Manager of the Year.

Stat heads will complain that the Mariners run differential (348 RS/366 RA) points to a certain drop in the standings. But this team was counted out in March and they're still hanging around.

The Mariners play the game the right way. Theirs is built on solid pitching, slick fielding and timely hitting (most nights). They won't slug teams out of the park. But they will grind out wins.

And with the subtraction of the maddeningly frustrating Yuniesky Betancourt, they no longer have a lackadaisical, free swinging,error machine constipating the lineup.

There's still a lot of baseball to play. With the trade deadline looming, the M's will be forced to make crucial decisions on Erik Bedard, Jarod Washburn and Miguel Batista.

Will they sink or swim? At this point, with multiple players coming into form, there's no reason to think life preservers will be necessary.

This team is for real.