Ryan Braun and Hanley Rameriez are just the latest of the very young stars to ink long term contracts. With their signings the question becomes, why haven’t the Mariners locked up Felix yet?

The idea behind the new big contracts for young players makes a lot of sense. In a time when contracts for mediocre talent are spiraling out of control, teams should invest in the talent that comes up through their farm systems.

While the ends of these contracts seem so far off, by the time a player reaches the last few years of one of these mega-contracts he’ll be a bargain relative to other free agents.

The trend of teams wising up and locking up their young talent isn’t even limited to proven talent anymore.

For heavens sake, Evan Longoria had a huge contract to keep him under team control through 2016 one week after having been called up from AAA.

Felix is clearly a (if not the) key component to the franchise’s long term success. The Mariners seemed to have no problem giving Lopez and Betencourt long term deals even when they were far less proven (and far less talented) than Felix. Then again no one ever accused the Mariners of making the right moves for the franchise’s future.

Additionally, the longer the front office holds off on signing Felix, the more money they’ll be costing themselves. One of the reason these young players get locked up for reasonable terms is that they haven’t truly proven themselves.

Maybe they’ve had one successful season, or show tremendous potential, but they don’t have a history to point to. Felix is only getting better and has 2 1/2 seasons of MLB experience to back up that he can produce.

While his track record may be inconsistent, recent free agent markets have proven that consistency isn’t necessary when dolling out huge chunks of cash.

The more time Felix has to prove himself the more cash he’ll be able to demand. It cannot be that difficult to work out a deal (as proven by all these other contracts getting done). The holdup is probably a issue of years or dollars, but that’s ridiculous figuring the franchise has no problem dolling out 4-years, $48 million for Carlos Silva.

The front office needs to just cave already if they want to keep the future of the franchise happy.

So come on guys, lock The King up.

The Mariners need help and they need it fast. They need more than just another bat or two that might help wake up an offense that has been dreadful for the first month and a half of the season. They need more than an outfielder capable of chasing down fly balls in left field at the spacious Safeco Field. They need more than Erik Bedard and J.J. Putz to get back to 100% physically. What the Mariners really need is a leader.

If you look up and down the Mariners roster you see some quality names like Ichiro, Adrian Beltre and Raul Ibanez. You see promising youngsters like Jeff Clement and Wlad Balentien. You’ve got ace pitchers in Erik Bedard and Felix Hernandez, and a dominant closer in J.J. Putz, but what you don’t see is a true leader.

You might be able to make the argument that the above names lead in their own ways, but the problem from afar is that they all lead in the same way, with actions not words, and as of right now their “actions” are not all that inspiring.

Ichiro would be the most logical choice for leader of the team as he is the face of the franchise, but Ichiro obviously has shied away from that role since the day he came here. Ibanez is a quality guy, much like Edgar Martinez in the way he handles himself, but is he really going to chew on guys when they need their butts kicked? Beltre is a tremendous talent but again is more of the silent type. The pitchers, well, they are pitchers. Putz is the closest thing that resembles a leader, but he’s the closer. He might lead the pitching staff, but that’s not enough.

Manager John McLaren has tried to wake the team up with outbursts in the clubhouse and ejections from games, but it hasn’t seemed to do much yet. McLaren, as the manager, can only do so much. He isn’t on the field playing the game, he doesn’t run out of the dugout with the rest of that team with an attitude that says, “we are going to win this game.”



This is an issue that has plagued the Mariners for year. If you look back to the glory years of Mariners baseball it is easy to pin point a leader on each of those teams. The teams in the 90s had Ken Griffey Jr. and Jay Buhner to lead vocally while 2001 had an injured Buhner serving as a cheerleader and Brett Boone. Other than that, this is a team that has been struggling to find it’s identity since 2001.

The Mariners last year clearly over achieved. I am not in the group that believes this team was truly a condender. I do believe however that this team had a leader, one that it could use right now. A guy by the name of Jose Guillen. While Guillen isn’t off to a great start with Kansas City (.185/.217/.339) he is the vocal leader that this team sorely needs. Even though he was new to the organization last year, the casual fan could see the team rallied around Guillen. He could motivate guys and push guys. Guillen had a swagger, something that the Mariners do not have this year. His production on the field can be replaced (it can be replaced right? someday?), but right now his leadership and swagger is sorely missed.

No, not a good one.

The Seattle Mariners traded Greg Norton to the Atlanta Braves for a player to be named or cash.

Unless the cash totals enough to cover Vidro’s 2008 contract, it wasn’t worth it.

It’s small potatoes, but another sign that the Mariners don’t really have a clue.

Great.

Now that the Jeff Clement and Wladimir Balentien are in the big leagues, seemingly for the long haul, what should be expected of them?

Click Here for the scouting report on Clement, as seen in the 2008 Prospect Insider Handbook, and Click Here for the scouting report on Balentien.

Not stardom, at least not this year. While neither is necessarily raw, they are inexperienced at the Major League level and will need several hundred at-bats to become acclimated.

By acclimated, I really mean that both Clement and Balentien will need to go around the block a few times, be forced to make adjustments as pitchers adjust to them as hitters, and be able to sustain strong performances.

But as far as 2008 goes, I expect a lot of ups and downs from Balentien, with several multiple strikeout games to go with his good power.

He’ll play solid defense and won’t clog up the base paths. He may steal a bag on occasion, too.

Defensively, Clement is still going to show areas where he’s below average, but he’s not going to catch much anyway.

With the bat, Clement is a good fit for Safeco Field with good pull power and has been better using the rest of the field since the second half of last season. That progress may allow him to hit for a little more average than originally thought.

Clement is much more selective at the plate than is Wlad, but will also pile up his share of strikeouts.  Clement fanned just 12 times in his stay in Triple-A, perhaps serving as evidence that when he’s locked in his plate skills are good enough to produce much better contact rates than was previously scouted.

2008 Projections:

Jeff Clement - .270/.330/.450
Wladimir Balentien - .250/.300/.420

It doesn’t appear that Michael Saunders (No. 5 in the PI Handbook) is going to be promoted to replace Balentien in Tacoma’s outfield and it’s also probably too early for Adam Moore (No. 8 in the Prospect Handbook) to take Clement’s spot as Rob Johnson’s catching partner.

Erick Monzon has already arrived in Tacoma to take up one of the vacated roster spots. No word as of Wednesday night who the other catcher is going to be, but the smart money is on Moore or organizational backstop Luis Oliveros

To get more scouting reports on Saunders, Moore and the rest of the top prospects in the Mariners farm system, Download the 2008 Prospect Insider Handbook Here.