by Jerry Feitelberg

The Oakland A’s end their dismal season against the almost equal underperforming Seattle Mariners. The A’s made a lot of moves after the 2014 season. They added young pitching and received some position players in the trades with the Toronto Blue Jays, Chicago White Sox and the San Diego Padres. The A’s also made controversial trades during the 2014 season, too. They sent Yoenis Cespedes to Boston for Jon Lester. They sent prized shortstop prospect, Addison Russell, to the Chicago Cubs for Samarzidja and Hammels. The A’s barely made it to the playoff and were eliminated by the Kansas City Royals. The A’s hoped the moves would work. However, they had a terrible season. The A’s starting pitching rotation suffered a lot of injuries. Graveman, Hahn, Chavez, Bassitt all spent time on the disabled list Closer Sean Doolittle, a former All-Star, missed most of the season due to a shoulder injury. Evan Scribner and Drew Pomeranz are also on the Disabled list. The A’s used thirty pitchers in 2015, a new club record. The bullpen was a disaster.They blew a ton of saves and just couldn’t get anyone out.

The Mariners also had high hopes for the season. The Mariners General Manager Jack Zduriencik made some moves after the 2014 season to help the offense. The Mariners signed Nelson Cruz as a free agent from the Orioles. Cruz hit 40 homers in 2014 and has surpassed that total this year. Zduriencik increased the Mariners payroll. Robinson Cano, Nelson Cruz, Felix Hernandez, Kyle Seager and Seth Smith add up to 80 million dollars. Many of the baseball “insiders” picked the Mariners to win the AL West. The Mariners felt they had a strong rotation with Hernandez, Tijuan Walker, James Paxton and Hisashi Iwakuma. Unfortunately for Seattle, Iwakuma and Paxton were both injured. Iwakuma made just nineteen starts. His record is 9-5 with a 3.67 ERA. The lefty Paxton is on the DL and posted a 3-4 win-loss record but had a decent 3.90 ERA. The Mariners bullpen also suffered injuries. Mike Montgomery had sixteen saves in sixteen opportunities, but he is on the DL. Reliever Danny Farquhar joined him on the DL. The closer’s role was handled by Carson Smith with thirteen saves and Tom Wilhelmsen, who appeared in 51 games and recorded twelve saves.

The Mariner offense was sluggish all year. Zduriencik made a trade with the Arizona D-Backs and brought in Mark Trumbo to help with the offense. The Mariners could not get it going all season. On August 28th, the Mariners relieved him of his duties and just announced the hiring of Jerry DiPoto as the new  GM this past Monday.

The Mariners also announce that their ace, Felix Hernandez is done for the year. Hernandez’ record is 18-9 with a 3.53 ERA. The A’s are not unhappy about him not being available to pitch against them this weekend. Mariner manager Lloyd McClendon said this about Hernandez “Felix has given me his heart and soul this year, and I don’t want to stress him anymore than I have to. This is the right thing to do. Felix is, I’m sure, not happy about this.”

Let’s take a look at what’s at stake this weekend. For both the A’s and Mariners, the games are meaningless. The Mariners are going to finish in fourth place in the AL West and the A’s are will finish last.  The players on both teams, however, will not go through the motions even with nothing on the line. The players want to show the manager, coaches and General Managers of the respective teams that they are valuable and should be included in the teams plans for 2016. The A’s have not done well against the Mariners this year as they have lost twelve of the sixteen games played. They would like to send a message to Seattle that they are not patsies and to be on the lookout for them in 2016.

However, with Billy Beane running the show in Oakland, no one on the roster is safe with the exception of Sonny Gray. On the other hand, Jerry DiPoto will be scrutinizing his 40 man roster and may be moving players, too.

The pitching matchups have been announced. For the Mariners, Hisashi Iwakuma pitches Friday night, Vidal Nuno (1-5,3.80 ERA in nine starts) on Saturday and Roenis Elias(5-8 3.39 ERA)  on Sunday. The A’s counter with Aaron Brooks(2-4) on Friday, left Sean Nolin on Saturday and a pitcher to be named later on Sunday. That’s it for 2015. Neither team will be in the playoffs and rebuilding appears to be in both teams immediate future. Stay tuned, fans.