Seattle Mariners Should Have Fired Their Players, Not Their Coaches

The Seattle Mariners are owners of the third-worst record in baseball this season and, typically, when a team performs as badly as the Mariners have this season, someone has to pay for it.

In the case of the Mariners, the wrong people have paid for it.

After turning the Mariners around from a 101-loss team in 2008 to an 85-win team in 2009, Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu and his coaching staff were fired Monday.

Wakamatsu went from Coach of the Year candidate to unemployed all in the span of less than a year, while his bunch of under-performing players continue to keep their jobs and pick up their paychecks.

The Mariners have been by far the worst hitting team in baseball this season. They have scored 390 runs, worst in the league and 26 less than the Pirates. The Mariners are hitting .235 as a team, also the worst in the league and seven points worse than, you guessed, it the Pirates.

To call the Mariners offense pathetic this season would be an understatement. Ichiro is the only Mariner that is hitting above .255, while Chone Figgins, who has been far below his career average this year, has climbed all the way into second with a whopping average of .253.

It's okay, though, because the Mariners hitters swing for power and not average right?  

Nope.

The Mariners have the fewest home runs in baseball this season with only 67 all year. The Major League leader in home runs is Toronto Blue Jays' right fielder Jose Bautista, who has 36 home runs.

More than half of the Mariners total as a team.

The Mariners are 12th in baseball in pitching this season, yet pitching coach Rick Adair was fired along with Wakamatsu. Pitching has not been the Mariners problem and, if the Mariners had even a decent offense, they would have been in playoff contention right now.

Mariners fans had hopes for the postseason this year after the team acquired pitching ace Cliff Lee during the offseason, but those hopes quickly faded once Mariners fans saw the team step in the batters box.

The Mariners brought in players such as Casey Kotchman and Milton Bradley, who the Seattle front office hoped would add more depth and production to the offense. Both players struggled and Bradley was even placed on the restricted list for 13 days in May so he could seek help for his emotional outbursts.

Jack Wilson has always been one of the best defensive shortstops in the league, but he has also been one of the worst hitting shortstops in the league. The Mariners have focused so much on becoming the strongest defensive team in baseball the past few seasons that they forgot they still have to score runs to win.

It is a wonder that Jose Lopez is still on the team after the season he has had.

Lopez hit .272 with 25 home runs last season for the Mariners and, because of that, he started out this season as the Mariners cleanup hitter. Lopez is currently hitting .240 with six home runs, not exactly the stats of your typical four hitter.

Lopez has also made numerous mistakes in the field and on the bases, perhaps none bigger than in a game a few weeks ago where he was on first base in the ninth inning of a tied game. Lopez' run did not matter, as the winning run was on second, yet Lopez decided to take off on a line drive to right field and ended up getting doubled off at first to end the inning.

The Mariners went on to lose the game in typical Mariners fashion this season.

Lopez is just one cog of the disaster that is the Seattle season, he needs to go and so do many other players from this team.

Wakamatsu has the perception of a very laid back manager, which was good last season for a team that was trying to come together in the clubhouse, but was bad this season for a team that has not been winning.

Wakamatsu never had a chance once the Mariners stopped hitting and started losing. It's a shame that he had to go, especially when others deserved to go more.