Jayson Stark

"They've been the best team in baseball for five weeks. But to hear people talk about the Seattle Mariners, you would think they were the '98 Marlins or the '93 Pirates or the post-Michael Chicago Bulls. Uh, guess again. It's easy to look at the Mariners and think about the players they don't have. True, A-Rod doesn't work here anymore. Junior Griffey's hamstring isn't pulled here now. Randy Johnson wins his Cy Youngs elsewhere. Those are facts. But it's time to debunk the myth right now that this is some poor little talent-less team winning without its superstars. From the Randy Johnson trade, the Mariners got their No. 1 starter (Freddy Garcia), a left-handed starter who has never had a losing season (John Halama) and their starting shortstop (Carlos Guillen). From the Griffey deal, they got a starting center fielder who has scored more runs than Ichiro (Mike Cameron), their fifth starter (Brett Tomko) and a 19-year-old shortstop prospect (Antonio Perez) "who we like a lot," Gillick said. With the money they didn't spend on Griffey two off seasons ago, they brought in Kazuhiro Sasaki, Aaron Sele, John Olerud, Arthur Rhodes, Stan Javier and Mark McLemore. With money they didn't spend on A-Rod last winter, they added Ichiro, Jeff Nelson and Bret Boone. Add all that up, and the Mariners essentially got 15 frontline players for the price of three superstars. And as grand team-building philosophies go, that's not a bad one to trot out. Yet here they are, 23-8 after 31 games, eight games up on May 7. And they know most of the free world is waiting for them to wake up and start playing like the poor, downtrodden team they aren't. This is a team that can steal a base (23 steals, only 5 base-stealers thrown out so far). This is a team that catches everything that lands between the Space Needle and Vancouver (only four unearned runs all season before allowing five this weekend). And this is a team with the best pitching staff, one through 12, in the American League. So let's all wake up and recognize this team for what it is. And what it isn't. It isn't the '95 Expos. It is a team that's a lot better and a lot deeper than it's been given credit for -- by just about anybody outside the greater Seattle metropolitan area." -Jayson Stark, sportswriter, and quite possibly my new hero.