History of bad leadership haunting Mariners

The Mariners tanking or “blowing it up” can be traced to a poor decision that they made ten years ago. In 2008, the Mariners lost 100 games and fired Bill Bacardi, their previous GM who made a really dumb trade of Adam Jones and a few other players for Erik Bedard. Bedard was a decent pitcher who had no stamina or presence that Bavasi thought could be the ace of a staff.

Unfortunately Bedard was very fragile and never amounted to much, Adam Jones became a star for the Orioles and Bavasi got canned. In October of 2018 the Mariners had a chance to right the wrong and move forward and earn some PC or diversity points by hiring Kim Ng who had worked with MLB. Instead they chose the safe route with Jack Zdurenscik of Milwaukee who was supposed to be a great scout and could rebuild the farm system. What happened? He whiffed on two draft picks which set back the Mariners YEARS. Dustin Ackley couldn’t hit well enough or run or field and Danny Hultzen has an arm of cotton candy.

Then came the SABR Knight in shining armor Lord Jerry DiPoto of the Anaheim Angels. he was going to move the organization forward into the 21st century and past the Angels and A’s. He made a lot of moves but has yet to put the team into the playoffs.

Why should I trust him?

What the Mariners should have done is returned to their roots last fall and winter. Once Joe Girardi was available, they should have thrown out DiPoto and Servais and gone after Girardi and whatever GM he likes in order to create a winning culture. Joe Girardi is the closest thing there is to Lou Piniella. No, we can’t have Girardi, players don’t like him, he wears people out, wants too much money, binder bores us, etc.

That’s the mentality of a loser. A winner goes out, disregards the noise and finds the best person for the job to instill a winning culture. What do the Mariners have now? Two to three more years of rebuilding. Yawn.