Seattle Mariners Rumors: Team Is Sending Mixed Signals
By Todd Pheifer
Credit: Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports
The Seattle Mariners are ready to make more deals. Unless they aren’t. Confused?
First it was Robinson Cano. Then, Corey Hart and Logan Morrison. After that, there were (are) ongoing rumors about Nelson Cruz, David Price, Matt Kemp and Ervin Santana. Spend, spend, spend. Big trades, mega-deals. It will just be a matter of time before the next press conference is called.
Or, perhaps the Mariners are done. At least, that seems to be the news out of Seattle at the moment.
What? The hype shifted that quickly? The Mariners went from having plenty of cable money to being done spending for the holidays?
This is difficult to follow.
Why do I get the feeling that the Mariners woke up the day after signing Robinson Cano and said, “What have we done?!?” Why do I also get the feeling that the M’s are hesitant about “going for it?” Obviously you can understand the hesitancy. This is why the David Price trade rumors are potentially problematic. If you make that kind of deal, you are creating a very short-term window for producing a winner on the field.
For a moment, we need to step back. The rumors are not necessarily generated by the club. If you look at the moves that have been made, Cano is really the only risk, and not for a few years. Hart, Morrison and the re-signing of Franklin Gutierrez are all low-risk, high reward transactions.
Very suited to the Mariners’ style over the last few seasons.
There may be a lot of cable money, but we must remember that the Mariners do not exactly have a singular owner that is focused on winning. Does Nintendo care more about winning or profitability? I think we all know the probable answer to that question.
The Cano move indicates that the Mariners are “serious” about winning, even if they aren’t. However, the rest of the moves suggest that Seattle is still hoping that their youngsters and affordable veterans will fill out the roster in such a way that the team is somehow able to be competitive with a lot of extra payroll.
So, are the Mariners done? They very well could be. We won’t know until some of the other dominos start to fall.