Seattle Mariners rejected deal with Nelson Cruz, big mistake
The Baltimore Orioles are going to be playing in game one of the American League Championship Series tonight while “King” Felix Hernandez and the rest of the Seattle Mariners all watch the game from their respective homes. Oh, how things could have been different.
According to Bob Dutton of the Tacoma News Tribune, Nelson Cruz was very close to signing with the Mariners before he inked his one-year $8 million contract with the Baltimore Orioles. Dutton writes,
"The Mariners had a deal in place last winter with Cruz, then a free agent, for roughly $7.5 million in 2014 with a club option of about $9 million for 2015…before ownership backed away.The primary concern, which all clubs shared, was how Cruz, then 33, would respond after being caught and suspended as part of the Biogenesis drug scandal.Still, officials with several clubs say they stopped viewing Cruz as a potential target because they expected he would bridge any differences with the Mariners.“I still don’t know what happened there,” an official with a rival club said. “We were told it was done. And it seemed such an obvious fit for both sides. There was risk, certainly, but…”"
The really crazy part? Is that having Cruz on the team may have actually gotten the Mariners into the playoffs. They finished one game behind the Oakland A’s and the Kansas City Royals, who went on to play in the American League Wild Card Game.
The Royals eventually moving on through the playoffs to the ALCS where they will play the Baltimore Orioles, the team who had Cruz and his MLB leading 40 home runs during the 2014 season.
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You can’t tell me that those 40 homers and his 108 RBI wouldn’t have made a difference in the Mariners’ season. Of course they would have, likely enough that the Mariners could have made the postseason.
It’s true that Safeco Field in Seattle is not a hitter-friendly ballpark but Cruz would still have likely hit over 30 homers which still could have negated that one game defecit.
How far they would have gone in the postseason is anybody’s guess, but having Cruz would have helped them get there for the first time since 2001, when the team won 116 regular season games.
As CBSSports’ Matt Synder points out, with the injury to Matt Weiters, the loss of Manny Machado and the under-performance of Chris Davis, Nelson Cruz really helped get the Orioles where they are today. He goes on to say,
"“the Mariners were 10th in the AL in home runs and 11th in runs. Cruz’s right-handed power could have greatly helped balance a lineup with left-handers Robinson Cano, Kyle Seager and Dustin Ackley, among others.”"
The Mariners ownership made a HUGE mistake in not signing Cruz. Their season and the seasons of the A’s, Orioles and even the Los Angeles Angels could have turned out quite differently if Cruz had been a Mariner.