My hope was that he would put in a stellar outing in ’09, sign for ’10, and wear the veteran presence in the clubhouse hat. There has been a general feeling that Griffey would be around, but a hope that Wilson would eliminate the need.

First – you could assume they are idiots, they don’t know what they are doing, and they have no comprehension that having a guy on the roster with Griffey’s offensive productivity last season and defensive limitations significantly hurts the teams ability to compete.

Personally I don’t think that’s a very good set of assumptions, but feel free to disagree.

Or you could assume that the Front Office is well aware of those issues and knowing all of that proceeded to make the deal anyway. If you make that assumption then I think it’s only logical to consider what else might have gone on to lead them to do the deal anyway. It’s evident from the information that there were discussions with Griffey about what his role would be. It’s unfathomable to me that there would have have been such discussions and there would not have also been discussions about his disappointing overall offensive performance.

I think it also likely that, beyond the numbers, the did some old-fashioned scouting type assessment of his peformance at the end of last season and decided that he might have something left to contribute. We often stress the importance of combining both numeric and observational analysis to make more informed decisions; perhaps we might consider that they may have done exactly that and decided that bringing back Griffey had more substance than just a PR stunt.

If I were sitting in the Mariners side in a negotiation such as this I would certainly be extremely clear that a season with production such as the last one is not an acceptable outcome. Last season it could be tolerated due to the circumstances of the team, but that won’t be acceptable come 2010. I would say that we are having these negotiations because we think there’s a good possibility that Griffey can be substantially more productive. But we also need to consider what happens if he isn’t cutting it.

I really can’t imagine the Mariners having negotiations with Griffery for 2010 and not addressing those types of issues as part of the process. Failing to address those issues would be incompetent, and I don’t think the Mariners front office is incompetent.

I doubt this, even though I would still go with 11 and the Tacoma express.