By BEN MCCARTY
News staff writer
June 7, 2008

All baseball players, whether they be in T-ball, Little League, JBO players or high school take notes, summer school is in session: Baseball 99 – A remedial course in how not to play baseball: A case study of the 2008 Seattle Mariners.

Objective: To learn how (and more importantly, how not) to build, play and be a part of a successful baseball team.

Syllabus:

Lesson 1) Plate discipline – It’s OK to take a walk. Plate discipline is a good thing. If you can make a starting pitcher get to half his pitch count in the first inning by waiting for your pitch and seeing six to eight pitches in an at-bat, you are helping your team. If you let him get through an inning in five pitches, this is a bad thing. 

Lesson 2) “The little things” – These are things that should be taught at the Little League level, ie, fielding ground balls, knowing which players are able to execute a hit and run or a steal constantly, when (if ever) if is the right time to lay down a bunt (hint, your cleanup hitter should not be the guy to do this 99.9 percent of the time).

If you are talking about a failure to execute “the little things” at a big league level, it is likely because the team’s front office or coaching staff has severely flawed ability to run a baseball team.

Lesson 3) The value of pitching – Having good starting pitching is a good thing. The old adage “You can never have too much good pitching” is true. But if you have no defense behind said pitchers, have no offense to support the pitchers, and have vastly overvalued the ability of some of said pitchers, you are in a world of hurt, which leads us to our next lesson…

Lesson 4) Creating lots of small holes in a dam by trying to fill one big hole – The Mariners dealt a potential star outfielder and solid reliever (along with other top minor league prospects) to the Orioles in the off-season to acquire ace pitcher Erik Bedard to fix up the team’s starting rotation.

Bedard has provided some strong outings, but the team’s offense, defense and bullpen, three elements that the team traded to acquire him in the first place, have all combined to fail him.

Lesson 5) When the manager starts crying it may be time to change strategy – Mariners’ manager John McLaren had an absolute meltdown on Wednesday, delivering a profanity-filled tirade for the cameras. He didn’t look angry, though, more like he was upset that someone on the team had kicked his puppy.

This came after repeated attempts  to get a poor team to play better failed. When players have tuned the coach out, there are bigger problems than an embarrassing outburst will solve.

Summary of course: At the most basic levels of baseball players should learn how to be patient at the plate, how to execute the fundamental skills and strategies of the game and coaches need to know how to take responsibility, and make sure players understand the consequences when things go wrong.

Keep those lessons in mind, all you young baseball players, because you are now more prepared for the big leagues than anyone on the Northwest’s major league club.