SEATTLE — As the Seattle Mariners floundered through the first week of May with the worst offense in the American League, the focus was on hitters.
The DH tandem of Mike Sweeney and Ken Griffey Jr. had produced eight RBI and no home runs. No. 2 hitter Chone Figgins, acquired because of his high on-base percentage and ability to harass opponents into mistakes, did none of that, instead carrying an average well under .200 along with did four other regulars in the lineup.
The name rarely mentioned as a reason for the problems was the hitting coach, Alan Cockrell. Until Sunday.
Cockrell became the first prominent victim of the Mariners’ hitting struggles when the Mariners fired him before Sunday’s game against the L.A. Angels. The team replaced him with Alonzo Powell, a former Mariner who’d been the organization’s Class AAA hitting coach for the Tacoma Rainiers.
“Oftentimes it’s a similar message from a different messenger and sometimes that carries some weight,” general manager Jack Zduriencik said. “We are looking forward to seeing how this thing works out. We are a better offensive club than we are playing right now. We made a decision and we’ll stand by it.”
Sweeney rarely spoke of his — and the team’s — resurgence last year without crediting Cockrell. This season he’s batting .176 in limited playing time, and he didn’t hesitate to accept responsibility for Cockrell’s fall.
“I look around this clubhouse and there are a ton of players that deserve to get fired before him and I am one of them,” Sweeney said. “I mean, I know our offense hasn’t had a heartbeat, but it’s not due to Alan Cockrell. It’s due to us, the players.
“I will be the first one to stand up and take a bullet for that guy because he was here early, he worked his butt off, he put in more hours than anyone in this clubhouse. It’s tough to see a guy like that go. I wish I was the one to go instead of him because I deserve it more than he does.”
Cockrell, who came to the Mariners as part of manager Don Wakamatsu’s staff last year, had been on shaky ground the past few days, especially after the Mariners were shut out in back-to-back games Thursday and Friday. The club made the decision after Saturday’s game, when the Mariners lost 4-3 in 10 innings after they failed to score with a runner on third base in the seventh, eighth and ninth innings.
Cockrell had been watching video of Angels starting pitcher Ervin Santana on Sunday morning when Wakamatsu came for him. In the manager’s office, Wakamatsu and Zduriencik told Cockrell he was being dismissed.
“When you don’t hit, you have to make a move and they made a move,” said Cockrell, 46, who began his pro career as a player with the Everett Giants in 1984. He was the Colorado Rockies’ hitting coach in 2002, and again in 2007 and 2008.
Before leaving Safeco Field on Sunday morning, Cockrell said the Mariners’ hitting struggles puzzled him. He’d gone into the season believing the Mariners had players with a history of high on-base percentages who could manufacture runs, even though the team lacked power.
“I don’t want to say anything that I am going to regret later on,” Cockrell said. “We struggled in the area of driving in runs. We preached quality at-bats, we preached wearing on a pitcher. But in all honestly, it would take three or four quality at-bats consecutively to score one run. That puts a lot of pressure on the offense and that’s tough to do at this level inning after inning. For me, that’s where we came up short. I tried to what I could do every day. It didn’t work out. It just didn’t work out.”
Cockrell believes the Mariners succumbed to the pressure of higher expectations after winning 85 games last year, when their situational hitting was markedly better despite having more free swinging hitters.
“They can breathe, relax and just play the game like they did last year,” Cockrell said. “There was no expectation, no thought of winning. This year that’s what everybody is trying to do.”
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com/marinersblog
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