ave Henderson leaned against the backstop at Cashman Field in Las Vegas last weekend as the Seattle Mariners took batting practice.
Someone asked him if six weeks of spring training had revealed any answers to the Mariners’ most pressing questions going into 2005.
Would Adrian Beltre and Richie Sexson, who couldn’t seem to find a fence in Arizona, consistently hit home runs over them in the regular season?
Is the starting pitching, by far the strongest part of the team in spring training, really that good?
Did the oft-injured Pokey Reese get his ailments out of the way in Arizona, where he missed about half the games?
Forget what happened in spring training, good or bad, Henderson said.
“Just look at their history,” he said. “History doesn’t lie.”
On this Mariners team, history would indicate:
* Jamie Moyer will pitch about 200 innings and have an earned run average of less than 4.00, even at age 42. If the rebuilt offense can back him with four runs per game, Moyer should win many more than he loses. That might not compute to 20 victories, which Moyer has done two of the past four seasons, but it’ll be a whole lot better than the 7-13 record he had last year. The starting staff as a whole will pitch better than last year, when the first five went 30-50 with a 4.77 ERA.
* The Mariners should easily get 100 home runs from their middle four hitters – Beltre, Sexson, Bret Boone and Raul Ibanez. Beltre won’t hit 48 like he did last year for the Dodgers – it’ll take him a few weeks to figure out American League pitching – but he should hit 30, as will Sexson.
* Ichiro Suzuki is the surest thing on this team (well, outside Pokey Reese being on the disabled list). Forget the notion of a .400 batting average and a 56-game hitting streak for Suzuki. History says he’ll hit .350, score 110 runs and steal 35 bases.
* Randy Winn has been a consistent .280, 15-homer, 80 RBI producer since he became a Mariner two years ago, and there’s no reason to think he’ll be anything less, or more, in 2005. The M’s will need Winn’s consistency at the bottom of the batting order, which looked anemic in the opening series against the Twins.
* If the Mariners get 100 games from Reese, they should feel fortunate.
* Nobody should hope for too much offensively out of Miguel Olivo. He’s a .230-.240 hitter who will occasionally drive a ball out of the park if a pitcher makes a mistake over the plate. What the M’s should hope is that he has solved the defensive problems that made him a wreck last season. So far, Olivo has been fine.
* Eddie Guardado, Jeff Nelson and Shigetoshi Hasegawa give a much-needed veteran presence to a bullpen, but the uncertainty of youth could make the late innings a little scary. Hard-throwing young setup men J.J. Putz and Matt Thornton have the potential to be dominant late-inning pitchers, but history has shown that neither is effective when they don’t throw strikes.
Judgment calls
* Get off the stuff: More names showed up in the newspaper last week that should bring shame to baseball if anyone in this sport has a conscience.
No, I’m not talking about the list of 38 minor leaguers – including eight from the Mariners organization – who have tested positive for steroids.
This was in smaller type at the end of the notes columns, but far more serious in my mind. Cincinnati Reds player Ryan Freel and former All-Star pitcher Matt Keough were charged with drunken driving in separate arrests.
The Mariners have had their own drinking-and-driving issues. Besides Richie Sexson’s well-publicized episode with police in Vancouver, Wash., over the winter, former M’s players Carlos Guillen and Mac Suzuki also have been stopped.
When you’re as young and talented and strong and pampered as these guys are, it’s easy to believe no harm will come from anything you put in your body.
When players do steroids, they are killing themselves and the game they profess to love, and they’re setting a horrible example for young athletes.
When they drink and drive, we’re all at a horrible risk.
* Hargrove plays them all: It was nice to see manager Mike Hargrove use all of his players the first week of the season to see just who he can rely on in key situations.
Hargrove tried Raul Ibanez in left field and Randy Winn at DH, and learned that Ibanez was just slow enough afoot to let a couple of key balls drop.
He learned that Matt Thornton and J.J. Putz need to throw the ball over the plate to take advantage of their high 90-mph fastballs in late-inning relief situations.
He learned that Willie Bloomquist is fast enough and has instincts good enough to play center field. The catch he made late in Friday night’s game might have saved a victory.
And finally…
Bret Boone winters in Seattle now, and he was struck the past offseason by the fan support here even after a 99-loss season.
“Fans can be very fickle, but I think it’s more the talk shows who really feed the negativity,” Boone said. “I think the average guy who goes to the games, they live and die with us. I don’t think there’s another franchise in baseball that can lose as many games as we did and draw three million people.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
