SEATTLE — Get ready for baseball without the pitching excellence of Cliff Lee. Hold on tight for a thrill ride that young players often provide.
The Seattle Mariners return from the All-Star break tonight, and as the final 2½ months of the season unfold, they could be a different team than what they were the first half of the season. That may not be a bad thing, considering the Mariners’ 35-53 record at the break was the fifth-worst in the major leagues.
The Mariners say winning is vital between now and the final game on Oct. 3. But, having fallen 15 games behind first-place Texas and all-but hopelessly out of contention in the American League West, it’s time to face the brutal truth.
Despite the fact Felix Hernandez and impressive starting pitchers like Doug Fister and Jason Vargas hope to finish what they started in the first half of the season, this is a team that must learn what players do and don’t fit into their future. They’ll use most of the next 11 weeks to do that.
“I think every thing that we do needs to be geared toward improving the organization, improving this team every day for now and for next year,” manager Don Wakamatsu said.
Justin Smoak, the 23-year-old slugger acquired Friday when the Mariners traded Lee to the Texas Rangers, will play every day at first base and may continue to learn some tough lessons. Smoak, in only his second full pro season, has struggled to a .206 average and has been taunted by changeups and breaking balls.
Catcher Adam Moore, a 26-year-old who made the opening-day roster but struggled his first six weeks, is expected to be called up from Class AAA Tacoma at some point.
Pitcher Michael Pineda, a 6-foot-5, 240-pound 21-year-old who dazzled Wakamatsu and his coaches with his high-90 mph fastball and crisp slider at spring training, could see time in September if not sooner.
So could Dustin Ackley, the second overall pick in the 2009 draft who was promoted Wednesday to Tacoma after playing well at Class AA West Tennessee in his first full pro season.
Michael Saunders, the 23-year-old who has been much more at-ease this year than his first big-league experience in 2009, will get a chance to improve his pre-All-Star break numbers — a .216 batting average and .292 on-base percentage in 139 at-bats.
Wakamatsu’s challenge is to play the young players regularly enough that they offer a true sense of their potential while still doing everything possible to win games. Anyone doing the math, especially factoring the loss of Lee, could compute that it’ll be a challenge for the Mariners to avoid 100 losses.
“We’re not throwing in the towel,” Wakamatsu said. “We’re trying to win ballgames.”
The Mariners lean on the hope that core players like Chone Figgins, Jose Lopez, Franklin Gutierrez and Jack Wilson will hit well enough the rest of the season that their paltry statistics end up closer to their career averages.
Figgins is a .291 career hitter but he’s averaging .235 this season. Lopez, a .271 career hitter, is batting .240 in the final year of his contract. Gutierrez, who batted a career-best .283 last season, is batting .256. Wilson, a .268 career hitter, is batting .250 and the Mariners are handling his playing time with care to avoid leg injuries that have plagued him.
“With a lot of people having disappointing starts, you can look at that and say, ‘We can play good baseball here,’” Wakamatsu said.
In doing so, the Mariners must do it without Lee. He gave them eight victories, a 2.34 ERA, an 89-6 strikeouts-to-walks ratio and immeasurable leadership in the clubhouse, especially around young left-handers Ryan Rowland-Smith and Vargas.
There also are the players who stand to lose playing time if Smoak and Moore see regular duty.
Veteran Casey Kotchman, whose recent hitting resurgence still left him with a .218 average after a horrid start, could be limited to occasional starts and late-inning defensive duty.
If Moore is called up and starts, it will slice into the time current catchers Rob Johnson and Josh Bard are getting. Moore batted .193 in 19 games with the Mariners but has a .372 average in 21 games at Class AAA Tacoma.
Outfielder Milton Bradley, batting .210 with eight home runs and 28 RBI, is expected to be healthy after missing more than a week because of a sore right knee. But his playing time seems blocked by Saunders in left field and Russell Branyan, acquired early this month from the Indians, at DH. Wakamatsu indicated that Bradley, a switch-hitter, would platoon more in left field with the left-handed-hitting Saunders.
“The key is, every year if you have young players, you have to find out about them, and that means they have to play at some point,” Wakamatsu said. “I think we have to be able to find out about a player like Adam Moore.”
Now lurking at Tacoma is Ackley after the organization promoted him on Wednesday. He batted .263 in 82 games at Class AA West Tennessee, including a .305 average since May 12.
The Mariners caution that even though Ackley is one step away from the major leagues, nobody should assume he’ll wear a Mariners uniform this year. Besides this being Ackley’s first full season of pro ball, he was converted to second base this year and, despite impressive progress, has made 13 errors.
“Our job is not just to get him to Safeco Field, our job is to get him there and keep him there,” said Pedro Grifol, the Mariners’ minor league director. “It would be wise to not read too much into (the expectation of Ackley) coming to the big leagues. He’s going to Triple-A because he’s earned the right to go there. He’s played well. He runs up a professional at-bat. But there’s still a lot to learn.”
Even if Ackley does reach the majors this year, it likely wouldn’t happen until September.
Until then, the Mariners will be deep into a stretch when young players will get a chance to show what they can — or can’t — offer.
“No matter what, we want to win ballgames,” Wakamatsu said. “We’ve gone in a little bit different direction with the trade and we’ve brought in Justin Smoak, who got a chance to be a big part of our future. We want to continue with the success of some of the guys we didn’t expect, whether it’s Doug Fister and Jason Vargas, and continue to build for the future.
“You always try to go out and win ballgames, and we’re going to do the best we can.”
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