The Mariners are hilarious

Last week, during the course of crowning the Twins division champs, TwinsGeek wrote,

...all you need to do is look at what Twins fans are debating. Who should the 25th man on the roster be? Should there be a 3rd backup catcher? Can we find room for a Rochester reliever on the 40 man roster?

Seriously? Those are the concerns? The Tigers have Brennan Boesch, who has all of 58 AB above AA, hitting fifth in their lineup. And we’re worried about when an injured Red Wing can be put on the 60 day dl?

And it's true. Twins fans don't really have much to gripe about. Arguing about Wilson Ramos is the most popular thing for fans to do over the past week. We don't have to complain about Tony Batista or Juan Castro like a few years ago. And last season we were biting our finger nails all April in anticipation of Joe Mauer's return.

A lot of other teams spring optimism has already turned to ugly desperation. The Royals somehow have a bleaker (more bleak?) outlook than ever. The Reds can't seem to manage young pitching talent. And then there's the Mariners. I'm sure you've heard all this, but it's too much of a shipwreck to see just once.

First, there's a guy names Eric Byrnes, who the M's picked up from the Diamondbacks. Hilariously, Arizona decided they'd rather pay Byrnes $10.6 million bucks to not play for them than pay him $11 million to return. Anyway, Byrnes was only hitting like .115 for his new team, so when he came to the plate during a tie game in the bottom of the 11th and Ichiro on third, manager Don Wakamatsu made the easy decision to try the suicide squeeze.

The first rule of the suicide squeeze is to get the bat on the ball. No matter if it's in the strikezone or not. If you don't get the ball away from the catcher, the runner, who took off with the pitch, will be dead meat.




Byrnes pulls the bat back to take ball one. And sure enough, Ichiro is dead meat. Rangers manager Ron Washington gets tossed for arguing that the pitch should have been a strike, because he can't grasp the fact that anyone would pull the bat back.

Byrnes is always good for a funny quote or a dumb soundbite, but instead of meeting reporters after the game, he wordlessly rode his bicycle past them. He continued down the ballpark hallway and outside into the rainy night.

He was cut two days later. He's now being paid $11 million dollars to play beer league softball.

Then there's Milton Bradley.

After getting into an argument with his manager about who runs the team, Bradley left a game. He then asked for "help." It was the most predictable thing to ever happen.

Finally, there's old man Griffey. Reportedly, he can't sleep when he's away from home, so he takes naps in the Mariners clubhouse because he feels comfortable there. And that's what Junior was doing during a game last week when he was called upon to pinch-hit. And that's what he kept doing after that opportunity passed. He'll probably be forced into retirement soon, not because of that incident, but because he's old and hitting under .200.

So be happy you're not a Mariners fan. Or at least be happy that your team wasn't in position to sign Eric Byrnes, Milton Bradley and a sleepy hall of famer. Yeah, they brought this on themselves.