Seattle Mariners Need to Be Built Up Piece-By-Piece

The Seattle Mariners and Jack Zduriencik have done a great job acquiring talent like Jason Vargas, Russell Branyan, and several more that haven't reached the majors yet.

Now right now the Mariners have some strong parts, but they have also found a few weak points.

Some of the strong parts of the Mariners are their starting pitchers, defense, and some of their hitters (Ichiro, Branyan, Lopez, and Griffey). Their "starting pitchers" include Felix Hernandez, Erik Bedard, Jarrod Washburn, Brandon Morrow, and Jason Vargas.

However, they have a lot more weak spots, along with two new found weaknesses and that’s their bullpen and hitting. The Mariners can look to fix both of these problems at the MLB trade deadline.

Some pitchers have been having problems include Chris Jakubauskas, Miguel Batista, and as of today, CL David Aardsma can join that list.

The Mariners starting pitchers over the last two games have turned over great leads to the bullpen and they have just blown it.

Yesterday, Erik Bedard struck out eight batters through four innings and Don Wak decided to pull him because of his stupid pitch count. Bedard had only given up two runs over those four innings and he was rolling.

So he turns it over to the bullpen—and wow—that’s all that can be said. The Mariners bullpen gave up 10 runs.

Now today, Jason Vargas turned the ball over to the bullpen, and up until the ninth inning everything was great. Batista, Olson, and Mark Lowe got the hold and turned it over to CL David Aardsma, who usually is great.

Aardsma had a three run lead going into the ninth inning. After it was all said and done he gave up five runs and the Mariners lost 5-3.

However, over the last two games the Mariners bullpen has really shown that they have taken a step down. Washburn pitched a one-hit complete game and the Mariners won. The next two games they turned it over to the bullpen and lost 12-4 and 5-3, respectively.

So now GM Jack Zduriencik has a new target on his list of things to get: a decent bullpen. Zduriencik should probably look to target one or two new RP that can be lock-down.

The Mariners probably could get one of those two pitchers via call up. They will most likely call up LHP Ryan Rowland-Smith and place him in the rotation, which would allow the Mariners to shift two pitchers to the pen.

The Mariners could look to target RPs such as Octavio Dotel and Chad Durbin in the trade market.

And for hitting the Mariners could target Greg Dobbs and Kevin Kouzmanoff.

The Mariners will have to part with a few 5-10 level prospects. (5-10 level means on the top 10 prospects list, players from five down to 10.)

Here are some possible scenarios:

Balentien and Juan Ramirez (sixth-best prospect for the Seattle Mariners) for Octavio Dotel.

Garrett Olson, Chris Jakubauskas, and PTBNL for Kevin Kouzmanoff.

Concerning Bedard, if they are going to do anything with him they will sign him to an extension. What he showed in his last start proves that Seattle needs him because they don’t have another Erik Bedard in their system.