25 for 25: Mariners

I'm actually a St. Louis Cardinals fan, but over the past few months I've been working on a roster for each franchise in the majors, composed of players over the last 25 years. The way this works is that I pick one player from each season and I have to fill out an entire roster (for AL teams, 2 catchers, 2 infielders at each position, 5 total outfielders, one designated hitter, 5 starting pitchers, 4 relievers)*. I can't take more than one player for each year, I have to take one player each season even in the bad years, and I can't use the same player for multiple positions or years. If a player played the majority of his games at one position, I can't use that season for another position even if he's played it before. And I used basic minimums of 60 innings or 250 PA's (prorated for strike seasons). I primarily utilized WAR from Baseball-Reference (Fangraphs numbers only go back to 2002), WARP1 from Baseball Prospectus, Win Shares, and OPS+/ERA+ to determine season value.

* I made a special exception for the Mariners. Because Edgar Martinez had 4 of the 5 best 3B seasons in the past 25 years (and your other options besides Adrian Beltre did not impress), I decided that the 2nd third baseman slot would be claimed by the Designated Hitter and a sixth Outfield slot would be added. It just makes sense given how much Edgar dominates both leaderboards.

The interesting part with this are the decisions that have to be made, whether it is, "Dang, there are some really nice outfielder seasons to choose from, who gets left out?", or, "Does this team even have two decent catchers in a 25-year span?", or, "This guy had so many great years - which one do I choose?" Sometimes a great year gets left out, sometimes a fluke, partial season gets tabbed for the team. I actually posted a fully researched extended version for the Cardinals from 1910 to 1934. The NL versions for this era are there as well (linky, linky, linky, linky).

You're welcome to pick apart my choices and make suggestions of your own. I'm looking forward to hearing from everybody.

C – Dan Wilson (1996), Kenji Johjima (2007)

1B – Alvin Davis (1988), John Olerud (2002)

2B – Harold Reynolds (1989), Bret Boone (2001)

3B – Adrian Beltre (2008)

SS – Omar Vizquel (1992), Alex Rodriguez (2000)

OF – Phil Bradley (1985), Jay Buhner (1993), Ken Griffey Jr. (1997), Mike Cameron (2003), Ichiro Suzuki (2004), Franklin Gutierrez (2009)

DH – Edgar Martinez (1995)

SP – Mark Langston (1987), Erik Hanson (1990), Randy Johnson (1994), Jamie Moyer (1999), Felix Hernandez (2005)

RP – Matt Young (1986), Bill Swift (1991), Mike Timlin (1998), J.J. Putz (2006)

Notable exceptions: Dave Valle (1993), Richie Sexson (2005), Jose Lopez (2008), Carlos Guillen (2001), Mark McLemore (2001), Dave Fleming (1992), Jeff Fassero (1997), Freddy Garcia (1999), Bill Risley (1994), Jeff Nelson (1995)