The Seattle Mariners rolled out their top two offseason acquisitions Ryon Healy, Dee Gordon and spread some of that feel good magic dust during the team’s annual media luncheon last Thursday afternoon at Safeco Field.
When you have the Major Leagues longest playoff drought that being 16 years and counting you always have to look at the bright side of things. On Thursday General Manager Jerry Dipoto did just that. The Mariners GM started his portion of the program defending his minor league system that was voted worst in baseball by Baseball America.
” It’s hard to move forward in the ranking when two things hit at the same time such as us trading our top prospects and the effect it has on our depth and it does not help that our top four prospects according to Baseball America and internally have suffered injuries, “Dipoto said. ” Subjective ranking are what they are and I too respect Baseball America but I am very bullish about our prospect ”
As for the offseason, Dipito feels that the team checked off all of its to do boxes to prepare for the upcoming season. ” Going into the offseason I felt our biggest needs were Center Field, First Base a better utility option and we wanted to beef up our pitching staff and we did that with Dee Gordon, Andrew Romine, and Juan Nicasio Dipoto said of the team’s offseason acquisitions.
The Mariners are hoping Gordon will be a stalwart in Center Field and Healey will continue to be productive with his bat. Healey batted 271 and blasted 25 home runs with the Oakland Athletics.
” What we need is the fortune of good health, the young players to step up and if we can get close to a full season from Felix Hernandez, Mike Leake and Erasmus Ramirez we should be okay for the upcoming season, “said Dipoto of his team’s outlook for the upcoming season.
