Guessing For The Future
Baseball makes no sense, and this proves it:
Upon winning the American League West for the first time in their otherwise dreary 19-year history, the Seattle Mariners reason that it’s in their best interest to trade away the corners of their infield, Mike Blowers and Tino Martinez, who only combined for 54 home runs and 207 RBIs last summer.
Arriving this spring to replace them are two players who were absolutely desperate to leave a) the winningest team in baseball, and b) the one franchise whose uniform every player dreams of wearing.
This is how baseball works now.
At least, the Mariners hope it works.
“There isn’t a person here who didn’t want to keep the team we had intact,” said M’s vice president Woody Woodward, “but that wasn’t going to be possible.”
He won’t call what the Mariners have assembled for 1996 the next best thing, however. He doesn’t want to suggest Seattle can’t be as good.
But that will hinge mostly on pitching - as usual - and how Paul Sorrento and Russ Davis exploit the opportunity to be every-day players.
Neither would be in Seattle but for baseball’s bizarre economics. In Seattle, with almost a quarter of the player payroll going into the campaign war chest of Ken Griffey Jr., the healthy raises Blowers and Martinez had earned would have to be paid by someone else.
Still, baseball’s picky rules say you must have somebody play first and third. So the M’s cajoled the Yankees into parting with Davis in the Martinez trade, and Sorrento - set free by the Indians - signed for about $3 million less than Tino will make in New York this year.
In other words, the M’s are trying to buy cheap and get lucky.
What they’ve bought is a player with some baggage and another with none at all.
Sorrento came up in the Angels and Twins chains, a prototypical minor-league slugger who got his break when he was traded to the perfectly awful Indians in 1992. He was their every-day first baseman for two years, until Cleveland concluded he didn’t hit left-handers very well. So he was shunted into a job-share with Herbert Perry last season, when the Tribe blossomed into baseball’s darlings. Sorrento loved winning, but he didn’t have to like how.
“We were winning, so if I go in there ranting and raving it really makes me look bad,” Sorrento said. “I kind of swallowed it last year while we were having so much success. I mean, there are Hall of Famers who haven’t been as fortunate as I’ve been.”
He’s referring to the rings he owns - one from Cleveland’s A.L. champions of a year ago, another from the Twins’ 1991 World Series winners.
But Sorrento remains unfulfilled.
“It’s been kind of frustrating because I felt I’ve swung the bat pretty good but never really had the opportunity to play every day,” said Sorrento. “I’d gotten the reputation as a part-time player.”
Yet it’s hard to argue with Cleveland’s reasoning. Platooned only against righties, Sorrento belted a career-high 25 homers. He became the first player in major league history with more than 50 RBIs to have more RBIs (79) than hits (76) - though his batting averaged dipped to .232. As a full-time player in 1992-93, Sorrento had nearly identical 18-homer, 60-some-RBI seasons.
“I always hit lefties fine in the minors,” he said. “It’s hard to keep your stroke when you sit for a couple of days. I’d try to do extra reps and get back to where I was, but I never could. I was inconsistent, but in the role I was in I think anybody would be. That’s why it’s great to get this opportunity.”
M’s manager Lou Piniella sold Sorrento on signing by telling him he’d get the chance to hit against lefties as well as righties. That - and the sight of Edgar Martinez working with a first baseman’s mitt - has been bad news for the old Tino-in-waiting, Greg Pirkl, who has already spent four seasons in Triple-A.
Hope he can speak Japanese.
“But I know if I don’t produce,” said the 30-year-old Sorrento, “they’ll go get somebody who will.”
Fact is, the M’s are counting on Sorrento to produce, as they are with Davis. The difference is, the 26-year-old hasn’t even had the opportunity to prove himself as a part-time player.
After three consecutive 20-plus-homer seasons in the minors, Davis presumed he was the Yankees’ third baseman of the future - except that Wade Boggs wasn’t ready to live in the past.
It’s an old story in New York. Why trust the talent you’ve grown yourself when you can throw money at legends? For a refresher course in that history, all Davis need do is walk across the locker room and talk to Jay Buhner.
“I really thought the Yankees had plans for me - and I think they thought so, too,” Davis said. “But they signed Wade three years ago and he’s done such a super job. I don’t know if everybody thought he was washed up or what, but he’s far from that.
“My time ran out.”
And Davis is more than a little ambivalent about that.
One the one hand, he admitted that “being from a small town in Alabama, it would have been great to put on the pinstripes and tell people I played for the Yankees.
“But there’s a lot of pressure in New York for a young guy. The intensity will be there on the field with Seattle, no doubt, but you won’t have to worry about little things off the field so much. Actually, my playing time was so limited I didn’t give them a chance to eat me up. But you have to have a special mentality to play in New York.”
Seattle, too, in a different way. The M’s will miss Blowers and Martinez for more than their run production. Though neither was the driving force in the locker room that Buhner is, they were hard-work types relatively short on ego.
“I can’t come in and tell myself that I’ve got to do what Blowers did last year,” Davis said, “because he had such a good year and meant so much to this team. I just want to be myself.”
Too bad. For now, both he and Sorrento have to be someone else. Baseball’s logic demands it.
You can contact John Blanchette by voice mail at 459-5577, extension 5509.
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