According to Ryan Divish here, Guti’s had stomach problems for a year-and-a-half prior to March ’11.

If that year-and-a-half is very accurate, Gutierrez MAY HAVE experienced stomach pain in September of ’09. Considering he started 30 games in Sep-Oct ’09 and put up offensive numbers in that month that were similar to the rest of his season, I would expect that the stomach pain after that point.

I get the feeling that they were too wrapped up in on-field scouting reports and lovely looking advanced statistics (Figgins had 6 WAR in 2009!) and didn’t adequately investigate potentially influential personality/character/attitude problems. Griffey, Figgins, Snell, and Jack Wilson, to varying degrees, have demonstrated bad clubhouse behavior (Griffey FURY, Figgins showing his manager up, Snell being Snell, Jack Wilson pouting about being moved to second and taking himself out of the ballgame) of which these players almost certainly gave indications with their old ballclubs in some form.

It also seems like they dropped the ball with physical and medical evaluations in at least a few cases. Cust, I firmly believe, has nothing more than average power at best. They signed Franklin Gutierrez to a five-year deal, what, four months after unusual stomach problems arose. They signed Jack Wilson to an extension despite his being obviously fragile and, in light of the twenty pounds he lost in spring training 2011, overweight.

I still don’t like debacle caused by Z’s miscommunications with the ownership over Josh Lueke because it has clearly shortened Jack Z’s leash with the team and constrained his decision-making and shortened the timetable he has for developing the team. That was a pretty huge unforced error.

I don’t like how the front office and the coaching staff have let Brandon League and Luke French cut the frequency of their use of their respective out-pitches in half, even if it’s not entirely a front office thing.

Lasty, I really don’t like how the Valley of Death in left-center field at Safeco is still where it was ten years ago. It’s still hurting the team. Either Matthew or Dave Cameron pointed out that it might have tipped the balance between choosing Smoak over Montero even though more people (at least among scouts and prospect writers) thought Montero had the better future. I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other, but the vast left field really hurts our ability to lure or develop the 60% of major league hitters who bat right-handed. I have heard rumors that the left-center field wall is 15 or so feet further from home plate that the actual markings and that the M’s operations didn’t want to change or correct it (probably just an urban legend, but it raises a real issue).

I guess the point of all this is that, while I would not rather not see Jack Z fired and his team fired, I wouldn’t be heartbroken at all at this point if it happened. There have been too many bad-process mistakes made by it for me to be confident that they’re on the right course.