Seattle Mariners

Carlos Silva will be mysteriously injured soon. It may not be tomorrow, it may not be next week, but it will be soon.

In 1995 Randy Johnson was billed as a “stopper” because the team could count on the lanky lefty to stop any losing streak it may encounter, and Silva’s been exactly the opposite so far this season.

Ryan Rowland-Smith will be coming off the disabled list, and guys like Jason Vargas and Chris Jakubauskus have show enough promise to warrant the team keeping the more productive pitchers in the rotation as opposed to Silva.

Until Monday, the Mariners were rolling.

They were coming off a comeback-riddled series with Oakland, in which they came out on top. Wakamojo was at full force.

Since then, the Seattle Mariners have lost four games in a row, and in a very disheartening manner.

Half of these losses came in the form of a 2 game sweep at the hands of the now division leading Texas Rangers. During the Texas series, we also lost one of our top performing relievers in Sean Kelley. It's looking like he's going to be on the DL for an extended period of time.

"There was absolutely no doubt that he (Wakamatsu) had the capabilities to one day manage in the big leagues," Mike Scioscia once said. "He was a terrific teacher, communicator, and he knew the game."

Who will win AL manager of the year?

I say not Garnedhire, not Maddon, not Girardi, and not Francona.

Who?

Don Wakamatsu.

As the Mariners end an unexpectedly successful month of April, with great contributions from unexpected players, taking inventory of the team’s success is a much easier process.

Jarrod Washburn, perhaps the most noted turnaround story, went 3-1 with a 3.42 ERA. Washburn has fared pretty well in April as a Mariner. In two of his three previous seasons he ended the first month of the season with a sub-4.0 ERA.

However, this is the first time he's also had a winning record. And that includes 2002, he went 18-6 with a 3.15 ERA and finished fourth in the Cy Young voting.

That photo is Dave Niehaus getting elected into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.  How did he get there? 

Because he's probably one of the best broadcasters ever.

Dave Niehaus' journey started in April, 1977, when he called the Mariner's historic first pitch...

The first month of the baseball season is in the books with the Seattle Mariners among the league's biggest surprises, sitting atop the AL West with a 13-9 mark.

It's a record that seemed highly unlikely given the M's 101-loss campaign in 2008, the complete overhaul of the team, and the fact that their April schedule included matchups with the Angels, Rays, White Sox, and Twins.

Are the Mariners a better team than most of us suspected?

Or are they doing this with smoke and mirrors, only to level off once we get into the dog days of the season?

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4/29/09 – The Seattle Mariners finish season series No. 7 in slight disappointment, losing the series 1-2 to the Chicago White Sox. 13-9 is our record heading into the Oakland A’s series after a day off.

Cheer! – Rain outs mean double headers and the White Sox even switch up the rotation to give us a better pitching match up, M’s Chris Jakubauskas vs. the Sox Bartolo Colon and moving John Danks to the night cap to face off vs. M’s Felix Hernandez.

Over the next month or so, I'm going to break down a different MLB team each day, and make a bold prediction as to what they're looking at, position wise, come September.

Naturally, I'll start with my team—the Seattle Mariners.

It was painfully obvious last year, that the Mariners were not a good team. Suffice to say, almost nothing went right in a 101 loss, last place season. The 2008 Mariners were also the first team in history with a $100 million payroll to lose 100 games. Not an accomplishment to be proud of.

The 2008 Seattle Mariners had the second-worst record in baseball (61-101); it was a campaign of no power and no pitching.

They paid a Carlos Silva $12 million over the season to lose 16 games—almost $1 million per loss.

They gave up five promising prospects for an ace—Erik Bedard—who pitched just 81 innings. GM Bill Bavasi probably thought he was buying job security when he swung the deal, but he was actually ringing up his own ticket out of town.