Richie Sexson Released, but Bavasi's Legacy Lives On

The Mariners are a joke.

There is really no other way to describe it.

Everything from a lineup that would make any good SABRmetric disciple cry, to terrible trades and signings, the Mariners have been a front-office disaster in the era of Bill Bavasi.

The most enduring image of Bavasi's reign, Richie Sexson, was released two days ago by Seattle as a part of their quest to fix every flub that has occurred in the past four years.

While the 2004 MLB free-agent class at first base was not a particularly strong class, the ridiculous sum of $50,000,000 over four years given to Sexson after a season-ending injury in Arizona was absolutely confounding.

Rather than taking a smarter route with a short-term deal, like the Brewers current failed gamble, Eric Gagne, the Mariners offered Sexson a long-term deal, which crippled their payroll for four years. While Sexson performed in the first year of his deal (.263/.369/.541), his numbers took sharp declines in the next two seasons, and his .694 OPS in 2007 was a grand total of .010 higher than legendarily poor power-hitter Juan Pierre.

Finally, after more of the same this season, the Mariners cut him free.

However, Sexson merely skims the surface of the disaster that was the Bill Bavasi era.

Through four years, Bavasi was known as a trade machine, and often found himself on the wrong end of the trade. A brief sampling of his trades include:

• Carlos Guillen to Detroit for Ramon Santiago and Juan Gonzalez.
  • Neither player did a thing for the Mariners, and ironically Santiago ended up back in Detroit just two seasons later. Guillen has an .866 OPS and two All-Star games in his time with Detroit.
• Freddy Garcia and Ben Davis to Chicago for Jeremy Reed, Miguel Olivo, and Mike Morse.
  • Only Reed is still with Seattle, and for the life of me I do not know why. Garcia went on to go 3-0 with a 2.14 ERA in three postseason starts in 2005.
• Asdrubal Cabrera to Cleveland for Eduardo Perez.
  • Perez played in 43 games for Seattle before being done in the majors. You can currently see him on Baseball Tonight. While Cabrera is back in AAA, he is still only 22 and will probably pan out to be a good major leaguer with time.
• Rafael Soriano to Atlanta for Horacio Ramirez.
  • Soriano has pitched well for Atlanta. Ramirez is currently in mop-up duty for the Royals.
• Randy Winn to San Francisco for Yorvit Torrealba and Jesse Foppert.
  • Torrealba was just kind of there for 42 games with Seattle, and Foppert has never played a game for Seattle. Winn has been a solid starter in San Francisco.
• Adam Jones and George Sherrill to Baltimore for Erik Bedard.
  • While Bedard has been decent, he is nowhere near the form that netted him a top five in 2007 Cy Young voting. Two years of Bedard for a cellar-dweller franchise is nowhere near worth a guy who currently has 28 saves for Baltimore, and a top-tier prospect that will probably be a staple of the Orioles franchise for years.

What is left of the Bavasi era is a team with a long road ahead. Out of all the regulars, Adrian Beltre leads the team with a .442 SLG (which would make a player like Dustin Pedroia, with a .456 SLG, the power hitter of the roster).

Ichiro is also the only starter with an OBP over .350, at .363. Even more pathetically, out of all the players on the Mariners roster with over 100 PAs, the team leader in on-base percentage is...

wait for it

WILLIE BLOOMQUIST

Yep, with 124 PA's, Bloomquist has somehow managed an OBP of .368, exceeding everyone else on the team. When this career .642 OPS guy is your team's on-base leader, you know you have problems.

To think just a few years ago, this was a team contending for the AL West title. Now, despite having a top-10 payroll in MLB, they are left with a roster full of filler, outside a few good young players like Hernandez and Morrow. The Mariners, with the firing of McLaren, and finally, Bavasi, look to turn the corner and rebuild.

It would be a whole lot easier to rebuild with guys like Adam Jones around, though.