Only October counts

  • Kirby Arnold / Herald Writer
  • Tuesday, October 23, 2001 9:00pm
  • Sports

BY KIRBY ARNOLD

Herald Writer

NEW YORK – In this land where everything is Yankees or it isn’t squat, the Seattle Mariners didn’t expect to get any respect.

So it wasn’t surprising before the American League Championship Series began that a New York newspaper columnist described the Mariners’ pitching staff as “Jamie Moyer and a bunch of Seles and Abbotts.”

Well, that bunch was good enough to accomplish something the Yankees have never done, win 116 games in the regular season. The problem, the Mariners learned in a week unlike any they’ve played since spring training, is that everything accomplished in the regular season means nothing when the playoffs begin.

One man’s hitting slump, another’s sore groin and just a couple of misplaced pitches will get your team a nice seat in front of the TV for the World Series, watching the Yankees.

It’s the Series and the rings that go to the winners that truly matter in New York, and the Mariners certainly have taken notice after what they just experienced.

It’s not the regular season that means everything around here. Nowhere in Yankee Stadium are there signs proclaiming the amazing accomplishment of 1998, when the Yankees set the American League record with 114 victories, or banners citing all the division championships they have won.

What you do see are countless reminders that the Yankees have won 26 World Series championships. It’s in huge letters outside the stadium, on the parking garage, even on the napkin you get with your hot dog.

The Mariners would dearly love to kick out a hot-dog wrapper like that.

To do it, they must find a way to win 11 games in October; they won just four of their 10 postseason games this year.

For now, the Mariners must live with the sting of coming close and the satisfaction that nothing could rob them of their a place high in baseball history for a regular-season record only the 1906 Chicago Cubs have achieved. One-hundred sixteen is a huge number no matter how long a team lasts in October.

“If we’d have won just 80 games and gotten into the playoffs like that, this still would have hurt,” relief pitcher Norm Charlton said moments after the Game 5 loss on Monday that eliminated the Mariners. “A loss is a loss. But I’m very proud of how we played as a team and the way as a ballclub we handled ourselves like professionals.”

Reaching the next level – the Yankees’ level – is something general manager Pat Gillick will start working on soon. Of the main contributors to this year’s team, only eight are under contract beyond 2001 – Mike Cameron, Edgar Martinez, John Olerud, Jeff Nelson, Arthur Rhodes, Kazuhiro Sasaki, Ichiro Suzuki and Dan Wilson.

Several months ago, manager Lou Piniella bragged about the moves Gillick made to build the current team, and then he added, “But wait until you see what Pat can do with this club in another year.”

What Gillick did this past year went beyond anyone’s imagination. The club broke spring training with enough question marks in the lineup that few people were convinced the Mariners could beat Oakland in the AL West.

  • They had lost Alex Rodriguez’s .300-plus average, his 40-plus homers and 120-plus RBI and replaced him with second baseman Bret Boone, who had batted .300 only once in his career and never drove in more than 95 runs.

    The M’s searched all winter, and up to the trade deadline in July, for someone who might add power to the lineup. The return price – promising young pitchers who the Mariners refused to give up – was too steep. Gillick refused to break up the pitching/defense formula that he believes in.

  • They added a bona-fide leadoff hitter in Suzuki, but Piniella intentionally short-sold the Japanese star to the media during spring training in order to ease the pressure of high expectations. In the end, Suzuki became the best leadoff man in the game, led the American League in hitting (.350) and stolen bases (56), and was the catalyst to an offense that led the league in hitting.

  • The starting pitching contained more promise than certainty, with hope that Freddy Garcia would mature, Jamie Moyer would continue to defy age, Aaron Sele would provide stability in the No. 3 spot, Paul Abbott would remain healthy and John Halama would be consistent as a fifth starter.

    Four out of five wasn’t bad, as Garcia became a dominant No. 1 starter, Moyer won 20 games for the first time in his career and Abbott won 17 games. Sele finished a solid 15-5 but won just five games after the All-Star break and remained winless in his career in the postseason, and Halama’s downs were so much greater than his ups that he wound up at Class AAA Tacoma before returning as a long reliever.

  • The addition of free agent Jeff Nelson made the bullpen the best in baseball before it threw one pitch. With Nelson, Arthur Rhodes, Sasaki and the surprising return to form by 38-year-old veteran Charlton, the days of bullpen collapses were over in Seattle.

    When Piniella put it all together at spring training, he had his concerns. He openly questioned whether the offense would provide enough support for the pitching.

    It turned out that the Mariners were plenty good enough during the regular season. Suzuki’s sparkling major league debut probably will win him the rookie of the year award, and Boone’s big bat (.331 average, 37 homer, league-best 141 RBI) threw him into the MVP race along with Suzuki.

    No team in history has been better over 162 games.

    What counts, the Yankees are now showing, again, is that the game changes when it boils down to a seven-game series.

    Scouting means everything, which may be why the Yankees shut down the Mariners’ offense and held Suzuki to a .222 average after he hit .600 against the Indians in the first-round division series.

    Health is vital, which Edgar Martinez proved in both the Cleveland and New York series. He batted .313 with five RBI against the Indians, then hurt his groin while running out a double and was never the same. He batted just .150 against New York with one RBI.

    And an air of invincibility will carry a team far, as the Yankees somehow pulled off after they came within one close play at the plate of being eliminated by Oakland.

    The Mariners didn’t play badly in the ALCS, but they picked the worst of times to hit their biggest offensive skid of the year. Against the Yankees, that’s all it took. Four runs separated the two teams in the series.

    “What it comes down to is they played a better seven-game series than us,” Charlton said. “I don’t think they’re better than we are. They were better in this series, but I still don’t think there’s a better team in baseball than us.”

    When they start at zero in early April, the Mariners don’t need to aim for 117 victories, or even 100.

    It’s the 11 they need in October that mean the most.

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