If you are a Seattle fan you have to be a little excited, a lot worried, and wondering whether the team made the right move in acquiring Erik Bedard.   Without a question the Mariners landed the third best pitcher shipped in trade this season but how much better does it make them?  And did they overpay?

Those are hard questions to answer but perhaps the real issue is whether the 2007 Mariners were for real, or were they overachievers?  They ranked 7th in runs scored among the 14 AL teams and 10th in terms of pitching - yet for much of the season it looked like they could actually win the West.  That of course did not happen.   The Angels managed that, by a healthy six game margin.

Yet, 2008 is a whole new year and these two teams (The Mariners and Angels) are realistically the only contenders for the Western title and presumably one of the two could be a Wild Card contender too.   That is, if the Mariners are for real.

The Mariners certainly made an effort to upgrade their pitching for this upcoming season adding not only the left handed Bedard, but free agent righty Carlos Silva, and former Rangers’ starter R.A. Dickey (who they claimed in the the Rule 5 draft).   It’s unlikely that Dickey would get a chance to start in Seattle but he should fit well into the bullpen.   The changes should offer the Mariners a chance to throw a respectable starting rotation of Eric Bedard, Felix Hernandez, Carlos Silva, Miguel Batista and Jarrod Washburn which stacks up fairly nicely against anyone in the West.

And in fact, their bullpen may be better than the Angels’ if the shoulder injury suffered by Kelvim Escobar turns out to be something serious.   But that comes with a caveat; the Angels have a tremendous depth of starting pitching - and a lot of talent that is still developing including Joe Saunders, Ervin Santana and Jered Weaver all of whom look to improve upon what they have accomplished at the big league level so far.

But it’s not the pitching which the Mariners need to be concerned with, it’s the offense.  Unless you count Brad Wilkerson the Mariners did nothing to upgrade their offense in the offseason while losing Jose Guillen who went .290-23-99 last season, and by trading away Adam Jones as part of the Bedard deal.  Jones might well be the best positional prospect to come from the Mariners system in a long time (last year at AAA he hit .314-25-84 in 420 AB), and was certain to be the starting right fielder for the M’s before the trigger was pulled on the Bedard deal.

That leaves the Mariners fans wondering who will be playing right field and where the lost offense is going to come from.  For that the M’s may be counting on improved offense from last year’s underachievers including Jose Lopez and Richie Sexson and the newly acquired Brad Wilkerson who last year, at age 30, had his second best season in terms of power (20 home runs and a .234 average) in hitter friendly Texas and will be favored to win the RF job.

But the Angels may have upgraded a bit offensively and put the M’s deeper into the hole. While the Angels didn’t manage to find the protection for Vladimir Guerrero they really needed, they did manage to sign free agent Torii Hunter who should more than make up for the loss of Orlando Cabrera, who was traded for RHP Jon Garland.  This means that the Mariners will have to step up somewhere to counter their rivals.

Their best hope for doing that is in their farm system where catcher Jeff Clement (AAA .275-20-80 in 455 AB) and OF Wladimir Balentien (.291-24-84 in 477 AB) are waiting for a chance to show what the can do.   Clement is ready for the big show, but with Kenji Johjima locked into the catcher’s slot he’s probably more likely to be trade bait than to get a chance to play.   Balentien, has an outside chance at taking the right field job out of spring training, but his age (22) and strikeout ratio 105 Ks in 477 AB reminds us an awful lot of Richie Sexson.  With just one season of AAA ball under his belt and that apparent weakness he just might not be ready - but could be an interesting trade chip.

So while adding Erik Bedard certainly will help the team in some ways it seems that the Mariners will need to get lucky, not just to win the division, but to even take a run at the Wild Card.  Stranger things have happened, and this team could find itself closer to the Angels than they did last year, or they could find themselves 15 games out with a month still to play.  And without at least another free agent signing that seems to be far more likely. 

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