The Z-Factor

It's been less than a week since the Mariners announced Jack Zduriencik (zur-EN-sik) as their new GM and I'm already back against the dike, plugging holes with my little rationalizing fingers. On the other side is that vast sea of Mariners pessimism filled with the tears of the last five years.

Jack Zduriencik was a disappointing selection.

That's not to say that he's not qualified for the job. As scouting director for the Brewers, he rebuilt a tattered farm system, providing the solid core of young players that (with a healthy dose of Sabathia) put Milwaukee in the playoffs for the first time in my life. He's also famous for being the first non-GM to win Baseball America's Executive of the Year award.

But what the Mariners desperately needed was an analyst. The Mariners are a backwards, 20th-century organization, with weak technological infrastructure and little understanding of the advances in baseball research in the last 20 years. We just got rid of our Dan Duquette, our Chuck LaMar, but we didn't replace him with a Theo Epstein or Andrew Friedman. Instead, the Mariners tried to find the next John Schuerholz or Terry Ryan. If they found him, it's going to be a great decade of Mariners baseball, but it's a risk that just doesn't make a lot of sense.

Bill Bavasi was a terrible general manager at the major league level, but he oversaw huge increases and improvements in our amateur and international scouting programs. Scouting director Bob Fontaine and international scouting director Bob Engle are outstanding, by all accounts. And, although the Mariners player development program has been dubious at best, the amount of talent flowing into the system increased dramatically under Bavasi.

Though Bavasi's gone, all of those people and improvements are still in place. Scouting is a Mariner strength. Analysis is our glaring weakness. We consistently overpaid for the wrong skills, gave away far too much in trade, and assembled an expensive team of hacktastic lead gloves who slapped and bobbled their way to 101 losses. Given the budget the Mariners have run the last few years and our scouting success, there is absolutely no reason we shouldn't be contending for the division every year. And with a GM who really understands modern player valuation, we could.

Instead, the Mariners went out and got another top-notch scouting guy, making our current front-office talent redundant, and not addressing our major weaknesses at all.

But, here's the thing: I'm an optimist at heart, much to the chagrin of my biggest fan. I want to like Zduriencik and I want to be excited about the M's again. So, I convince myself that an old scout like Jack-Z must've learned a thing or two about modern statistical analysis from Doug Melvin in Milwaukee. He must notice the sustained success of the Red Sox, and the rapid improvement of the Rays. Or maybe he doesn't, but maybe it doesn't matter because the three-headed super-scouting team of Zduriencik, Fontaine, and Engle actually will turn us into the next Minnesota or Atlanta. Maybe Howie and Chuck knew what they were doing after all...

Jack Zduriencik's first move as general manager? Bob Fontaine was fired yesterday. And that dike just sprung another leak.