Mariners team president Chuck Armstrong told Ken Rosenthal of FOXSports.com that general manager Jack Zduriencik will be back in 2011, which isn’t a surprise. In fact, given the praise heaped on him during Zduriencik’s first year on the job the surprising part is that his status is even in question near the end of Year 2.
Zduriencik made some very shrewd moves after being hired in October of 2008, and was quickly singled out as the next big thing in GMs. Too quickly, as it turned out. In his second year on the job Zduriencik went from turning everything he touched into gold to turning everything he touched into … well, Milton Bradley.
Bradley’s inept bat was far more of an issue than his personality, Cliff Lee’s time in Seattle lasted all of three months, Chone Figgins is having the worst season of his career after signing a $36 million deal as a free agent, the Mariners’ offense has been historically inept thanks to a combination of substandard production and Zduriencik’s failure to stockpile any lineup depth, and the front office has come under fire for their handling of the Josh Lueke situation.
Here’s how the GM described the Mariners’ mess of a season:
What I’ve said all along is that we are building this for the long haul, while attempting to stay as competitive as we can. We would all like to win now and are disappointed in how this season has gone, but you can never lose sight of the big picture. Our minor-league system had six of seven clubs in the playoffs, and two league champions. We’ve had two good drafts, we got back some very good pieces in trades. It was a tough year where we never got anything going. We needed a lot of things to go right, and it just didn’t happen.
Zduriencik looked like a genius last year and has looked pretty clueless this year, but as usual the truth is somewhere in between. He has a lot of work to do this offseason, but I still think the Mariners are in good hands long term, and if nothing else they’re certainly right not to panic and let him go because everything went wrong this season.
