Odd Thoughts

Mariner Report

In this very special nail-in-the-coffin edition of MR, I'm going to truncate the usual leadoff info and get to the broader picture. We went 1 and 5 and got swept by Texas. We have Texas again and St. Louis this week. Joel Pineiro has the double duty.

What little hope the Mariner nation had left for the 2004 season is gone. Our season is over, and I'll tel you when it ended: When Alfonso Soriano hit his 18th-inning home run off Jamie Moyer to give Texas the sweep - that was it. I told Amy at that time that Freddy Garcia would be gone in the next few weeks. The trade happened in less than a week. In the next week or two, I'll take a look at what we got (Miguel Olivo, Jeremy Reed, and a kid named Morse), but this week I'd like to bid farwell to Freddy.

Freddy made his majort league debut with the Mariners at the beginning of the 1999 season. He came as the principle prospect in the Randy Johnson deal (along with Carlos Guillen and John Halama). Freddy went 17 and 8 that year for the 3rd place Mariners. He finished second in Rookie of the Year voting (Carlos Beltran won) and ninth in the Cy Young race. He battled injury problems early in 2000, but finished 9 and 5, and came up huge against the Yankees in the ALCS, winning both games he started (which accounted for the only Mariner victories in the series) and allowing only 2 runs for a 1.54 ERA. He stepped up another notch in 2001 being the ace pitcher for the winningest team of all time. He made his first All-Star team (a game he won), finished third in Cy Young voting, 4th in wins (18), and first in innings pitched (238.2) AND era (3.05). Freddy was sharp enough in the first half of 2002 to make a second All-Star game, gaining the ultimate no-decision as the final pitcher in the tied contest. His second half was not nearly as good and he finished 16 and 10 with a career high 4.39 ERA. 2003 was inconsistent for Freddy from start to finish, and while it was frustrating at times, he was brilliant on accasion too, and still logged another 200+ inning season. Freddy has pitched every bit as well in 2004 as he did in 2001, but the Mariner offense has let him down time and again, and he leaves Seattle with a 4 and 7 mark, a 3.20 ERA, and the best strikeout to walk ratio of his career. Freddy also moved up the Mariner's all-time list in several catagories. He is third on the teams win list (76), 5th in innings (1096.1), and fifth in strikeouts (819). Though the mariners have only a 26-year history, five and a half seasons has left Fredy with a definite place in that history ranking behind only Randy Johnson and Jamie Moyer as the greatest Mariner pitcher of all-time.