With 2011 hopes gone, Mariners must turn focus to the future

Another game was lost with one swing, over before it was over.
In Sunday's second inning, Texas first baseman Mitch Moreland crushed a Blake Beavan changeup for a three-run home run, and probably none among the 30,335 incredibly loyal fans inside Safeco Field

 truly believed the Mariners had the firepower to come back.
This team is on pace to score about half as many runs as the 2001 team. It is on pace to hit almost 100 fewer home runs than the 2000 team. It is on a march to make history. The team batting average is .221.
The Mariners' offensive futility makes you wonder if they could score off Robinson Cano's dad.
Sunday's 3-1 loss was their ninth in a row. They are nine games below .500 and 11 ½ games behind the division-leading Rangers.
Manager Eric Wedge keeps saying his hitters have to square up on the ball. In other words, the hitters have to hit. But this team can't hit. There is no meat in the meat of the order.
When his Mariners team began to sink into the abyss a few years ago, then-manager John McLaren said that the players had to play like the backs of the baseball cards say they should play. They had to live up to their career numbers.
Well, this team is playing to its baseball-card numbers. These players, with the dramatically disappointing exceptions of Ichiro and Chone Figgins, are playing to their histories.
And now, the goodwill that was built through a surprising May and June has been used up. The soft parade of scoreless innings, the dreary days and nights of suddenly uninspired baseball, have caught up with the 2011 Mariners.
"It's tough to watch," Wedge said of the hitting slump. "It's tough to live through."
Truthfully, this is the team we expected to see coming out of spring training.
And now that reality has caught up with the Mariners, the rest of this season — in Seattle and on the farm — should be about evaluating talent. Seeing which prospects from a collection that includes Justin Smoak, Greg Halman, Kyle Seager, Beavan, Mike Carp (who was recalled from Class AAA Tacoma after the game), Carlos Peguero (who was optioned back to Tacoma), Alex Liddi (at Tacoma), Nick Franklin (at Class AA Jackson), Josh Lueke (at Tacoma), James Paxton (at Class A Clinton) and others can turn out as good as Dustin Ackley and Michael Pineda appear to be.
At this point in the season, the question of whether the Mariners should be buyers or sellers at the fast-approaching trade deadline practically is moot. There's isn't a trade out there that will save this season.
Sure, they can deal closer Brandon League. The last thing this team needs is an All-Star closer who has very few games to close. But trading League isn't going to net the Mariners much of a prospect.
The window of opportunity for making a decent deal for Erik Bedard probably closed when he went on the DL with a knee injury.
The Mariners could deal the slumping Ichiro (to the Yankees?) for a decent prospect, but do you really think that's going to happen?
The only other realistically tradable piece is reigning Cy Young Award winner Felix Hernandez, who is signed through 2014. But he won't be traded, nor should he be traded.
Dealing Hernandez would be business as usual for the Mariners. Just another indication they aren't willing to spend the money it takes to be competitive.
Trading Hernandez would tell the fans what too many of them already believe: This franchise isn't in it to win it. Trading Hernandez would be Pittsburgh Pirates thinking. Kansas City Royals thinking.
It would be unconscionable.
The Mariners have to change their tightwad image. If this new administration is going to succeed, it is going to have to spend seriously and smartly during the offseason.
With two outs in Sunday's ninth inning, Smoak lofted a harmless fly ball to short left field, ending another unthreatening ninth inning.

Yankees Start Trip With Loss in Seattle

For the Yankees, the western sojourn that began Friday night is not just a nine-game trip. It is a test of their mettle, measuring the efficiency of their offense, in three spacious ballparks, against starting pitchers who excel at their craft. Runs will be precious. So will victories. All of these truths were reinforced in the opener at Safeco Field, where the Yankees disintegrated after tagging the 22-year-old phenom Michael Pineda for three runs, knocking him out after five innings. Their bullpen imploded against one of the worst

offensive teams in the majors. Their best chance to tie ended with a baserunning blunder, with Eduardo Nunez getting picked off second base to end the eighth inning. The Mariners’ 4-3 victory carried even greater significance, considering that the Yankees tormentor Felix Hernandez is pitching on Saturday. Hernandez, the reigning American League Cy Young Award winner, was 3-0 with an 0.35 earned run average against them last season. And from there, it hardly gets easier with Jason Vargas, a tough lefty, starting on Sunday. Oakland is slated to start Trevor Cahill, Gio Gonzalez and Brett Anderson. The Angels will send out their top three pitchers: Jered Weaver, Dan Haren and Ervin Santana. In all, seven of the nine starters the Yankees will face on their trip began Friday among the A.L.’s top 15 in E.R.A. Their first challenge was Pineda, who toted into Friday a 14-inning scoreless streak and the reputation as one of baseball’s best pitchers, no need to qualify that description with the word “young.” In discussing him and Hernandez before the game, Mark Teixeira went so far as to describe them as “the best one-two punch in baseball.” Roy Halladay and Cliff Lee may beg to differ, but Teixeira’s point was well-taken. With a 2.16 E.R.A., Pineda led the A.L. in strikeouts per nine innings, with 9.41, and had allowed only 14 walks in 58 and a third innings. Manager Joe Girardi spent part of the Yankees’ day off Thursday analyzing videotape of Pineda, noticing his remarkable percentage of first-pitch strikes (71.2 percent, best in the majors, according to FanGraphs.com); a slider that acts more like what he called a power curveball; and staggering control for someone so young. And yet until an hour or two before the game, when his players watched video and studied scouting reports, Pineda existed mostly as a concept, not an actual pitcher. “The only thing that I’ve heard is that he throws hard,” Curtis Granderson said. Teixeira said he intended to examine how Pineda handled left-handed hitters, but considered it counterproductive to base his approach at the plate off it. “On TV,” Teixeira said, “you can’t see movement very well.” The only way to gauge Pineda’s stuff, Teixeira said, was to step into the batter’s box. There are no other substitutions. In his first at-bat, Teixeira saw the wicked movement. He saw the slider. He also saw — and clobbered — a 95 mile-per-hour fastball, sending it deep into the right-field stands. In the fifth, Granderson worked a one-out walk and scampered to third on a single by Teixeira. He raced home on a wild pitch that moved Teixeira to second, a crucial moment when Alex Rodriguez followed with a bloop single that fell just in front of a diving Franklin Gutierrez in center field. The Yankees led, 3-0, but not for long. A. J. Burnett, whose five-inning stint was his shortest outing since his season debut, was seemingly on his way to the second nine-walk no-hitter of his career, having walked four and struck out four through the first two innings. But in the bottom of the fifth, Brendan Ryan led off with a single and moved to third on Ichiro Suzuki’s double inside the left-field line. Luis Rodriguez lined a ball off Burnett’s foot that caromed to Robinson Cano, who threw Rodriguez out at first. But Ryan scored on the play, as soon did Suzuki, when Justin Smoak followed with another run-scoring groundout that cut the Yankees’ lead to 3-2. With Burnett laboring and at 97 pitches, Girardi called on Boone Logan to pitch to the left-handed hitting Adam Kennedy to begin the sixth. For his second straight outing, Logan allowed a single to the lone hitter he faced. In came Luis Ayala, who allowed a single to Miguel Olivo. Carlos Peguero then walked on four pitches. Ryan’s fielder’s choice groundout scored Kennedy with the tying run, and Suzuki’s groundout drove in Olivo with the go-ahead run, the winning run, the run that began what could be a difficult trip for the Yankees.