It isn't the Mariners, which is good or bad, depending on your perspective. It isn't the Rangers, which is good or bad, depending on your perspective. It isn't the Nationals, which, whatever, I don't know. It's the Tigers. It's the Detroit flipping Tigers.
I only have a few minutes to write this up before I need to run out the door, so I'm not going to go into detail. I don't really need to go into detail, anyway, not here - it's the Tigers, and we don't care about the Tigers. Speaking for myself, I have absolutely no feeling either way about the Tigers at all. I don't really care if this ends up a great move, and I don't really care if this ends up a mistake.
You have to appreciate what Scott Boras has done. You might not want to, but you have to. Boras waited until the end of January. He waited until the end of January with a hugely impressive client. He got the contract he wanted from the very beginning, and he got it from a team that was never really on the radar, at least publicly. That's amazing. Sure, you could say maybe he got lucky because the Victor Martinez injury might have opened the door, but I think we might be beyond the point at which we can ascribe Boras' successes to luck.
I'm pretty sure the Boras household is like the Wallace & Gromit household, except that all the contraptions were wished by Boras into existence, and they're controlled by his mind.
What does this mean for the Mariners? It means the Mariners aren't signing Prince Fielder, which had looked increasingly less and less likely. From the start, the Mariners didn't look like a very appealing destination for Fielder, since they're rebuilding, they play in a big park, and they're super far away from his home. Recently, there was talk that Fielder didn't want to play for Seattle. This morning, there was this, from Softy:
Ken Rosenthal just told us on air he's been told that Prince Fielder does not want to play in Seattle
Maybe that would hurt if Fielder wound up signing a reasonable contract. He wound up signing a $214 million contract for nine years. Even if the Mariners could have put together a comparable offer, or a bigger offer, would that have been smart? I can't imagine that that would've been smart. Whatever short-term improvement and appeal might've been there would almost inevitably and invariably disintegrate with the passing of time.
Based on the odds, it's good that the Mariners didn't do this. I don't know where they go from here. Over the rest of this particular offseason, I mean. They still seem to have money available. Maybe they don't spend it. Maybe they spend it on a surprise. Maybe they save it for next year, which sounds nice, but which isn't often done.
We'll see. In the big picture, what's important to realize is that the Mariners are on the right path, and missing out on Fielder doesn't do anything to change that. Given the contract terms, it probably helps that. Don't be disappointed by what the Mariners don't have. Be excited about what they do. They're not whole, but they're getting there.