Seattle Mariners

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.

Let's call the American League West for what it is, over. Pull out the white flag, hook it up, and raise it to the top of the flag pole and let it fly proudly.

That's the note that I would write to the front office of both the Oakland Athletics and the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. It's time for these two teams to call it a season, pack it in, and start planning their off season capabilities.

The New York Mets management could learn a lot from the Seattle Mariners. Yes, the Wilpons should be looking out West for a better model of how to run their organization. I am aware that the Mariners are 42-70 and are currently 22.5 games out of first place, but their organization is being run correctly.

Make no mistake, this Mariners season has been a disaster in every way, but making Don Wakamatsu the fall guy is the kind of shortsighted thinking left to the dregs of baseball, not a supposedly forward-thinking franchise like the M’s.

Apparently it only takes a year to go from genius to doofus if you believe the Seattle brass, who suddenly have no faith in Wakamatsu’s ability to lead the Mariners out of the morass—this despite doing that very same thing during the 2009 campaign.

After weeks of rumors, Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu has been fired. This comes as no surprise to anyone, due to Seattle's constant struggles; this season the Mariners are 42-70.

The Mariners had high expectations this season.

They acquired many good players last offseason: Milton Bradley, Chone Figgins, Brandon League, and Casey Kotchman. But of course, those players have not performed at all.

Bradley is now a full-time bench warmer, batting barely over .200 without any power or run production. 

On Sunday, the Seattle Mariners were told that their shortstop Jack Wilson has a fractured bone in his left hand because of an accident he had.

The circumstances are what is really weird. Jack Wilson injured his hand when he was in the bathroom. The Mariners say he slipped and fell on his left hand while he was in there.

X-rays that were taking showed a fracture on Sunday. This is one of the most bizarre injuries you will ever see.

The Mariners are just coming off one of the worst months in team history. In July they had a 6-22 record and couldn't do anything right. When they had good pitching games, they couldn't score. When they had good hitting games (which were rare), their pitching struggled. 

Earlier in the weekend Geoff Baker of The Seattle Times wrote an article outlining the idea that Upper Management might not be backing Don Wakamatsu completely, and possibly planning to fire Wak. Since taking over the Seattle Mariners Wak took a bad team and made them Semi-relevant in 2009. Well he has now took a semi-relevant team and made them completely bad.

Ichiro Suzuki is trying to reach 200 hits for his tenth consecutive season, but is still 73 hits short after slumping since the All-Star break.

He has only nine hits in 52 at-bats since the break while hitting .173 in that span.

Only one of his 22 hits in July has been for extra bases, when he doubled on July 15.

He was hitting .360 on May 15 but his batting average has dropped to .307 after an 0-for-4 game yesterday against the Chicago White Sox.

There's still five more days until the Major League Baseball trade deadline, but the biggest news so far, has been the lack of any blockbuster trades. Cliff Lee-for-Justin Smoak almost qualifies, but aside from that there isn't really another trade that measures up.

Of course, that doesn't mean there isn't a talented bunch of players on the move.