To put it in the nicest possible way: “Mariners fans, it’s time to move on.”
Seriously, it’s for your own good. Sitting there wondering what might have been will only bring an ache to your insides like a fastball to the ribs.
It’s time to put the past in the past. Besides the attachment to him was flimsy at best. He was really never yours, not completely. He played in fewer games for the Mariners (73) than Al Martin (142) or Scott Spiezio (141).
He was more of an idea. He was a hope. He was possibility. He was the future.
But he’s none of those for you anymore. Maybe it wasn’t your choice to let him go. And right now, no Mariners fan would say they ever wanted him to leave. But he’s gone nonetheless.
Mariners fans, it’s time to permanently say goodbye to Adam Jones, if for no other reasons than your personal sanity and more importantly, because he has let it go. Completely.
The one-time Mariners prospect, now a budding Baltimore Orioles star, returned to Safeco Field on Monday. It was his third trip back since being traded along with four other players for pitcher Erik Bedard before spring training 2008.
If he had any special feelings of nostalgia in his first trip back last season, they were minimal.
And now? They are nonexistent.
“Nothing,” he said flatly when asked if he had any special feelings coming back.
No sentimentality? Nothing?
“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just a regular city. We’re on the road. We just got to come here and do what our team tries to accomplish on the road.”
It sounds like cold words for a group of fans who feel like they’ve been robbed of something special by a bald-headed assailant named Bill Bavasi.
Yet, it’s hard to blame Jones. His 73 games with the Mariners are now more than doubled with the Orioles. If anything, he has stronger memories of his time in Tacoma.
“I got to know a lot of the fans there, because I was in Tacoma for most of the time,” he said. “They’re great people.”
And that’s where it ends. Yes, the Mariners drafted him and nurtured him in the minor leagues, while the fan base’s anticipation grew with each season of success. But Seattle never gave him a full chance, choosing to acquire a pitcher in the present (Erik Bedard) rather than waiting for the center fielder of the future.
“It wasn’t frustrating,” he said. “I knew my role and I knew the situation they were in. I worked my tail off to get better and tried to get in the lineup. It didn’t work out here. I got the opportunity to go to Baltimore and play. Hopefully, I can have a long career over in Baltimore. I love it there.”
More stinging words for a fan base stuck somewhere between anger and bargaining in the five stages of grief. The final step – acceptance –seems like an impossibility.
Perhaps what hurts the most is that Jones has exceeded the expectations Mariners fans had for him. At age 23, in his second full season of major league baseball, he appears headed for the All-Star Game. He came into Monday’s game ranked in the top 10 in the American League in batting average (.344), slugging percentage (.607), runs scored (40), total bases (111), batting average with runners in scoring position (.447), multi-hit games (22) and a few other stats.
“I’ve just matured as a baseball player,” he said. “I figured out my role and I’m not trying to do too much. I’m just playing the way I know how to play … and the results are there.”
It doesn’t hurt batting behind one of the best leadoff men in the American League in Brian Roberts and ahead of the dangerous Nick Markakis.
“I couldn’t be in any better spot,” he said. “Forty percent of the time I’m hitting, I have a guy on first or second. I have a lot of fastballs to hit.”
And if you have watched Jones, you know he can pulverize fastballs.
“I’m trying to drive the ball,” Jones said. “I’m not trying to be a hit-and-run guy. I’m trying to drive the ball to the gap.”
The transformation in him from last season is evident not only on the field, but in the way he carries himself in the clubhouse. He is a leader. He is good. And he knows it.
It makes one wonder at what point we stop referring to “the Bedard trade” and start referring to “the Jones trade.” He may end up being the more relevant and valued player.
That is of course unless one of the other players in the trade – right-handed pitcher Chris Tillman, a top pitching prospect for the Orioles – doesn’t also become a star. Then it may be referred to “the Jones-Tillman trade.”
Right now, Mariners fans might as well call it “the worst trade in franchise history.”
It seemed like nothing would surpass Woody Woodward giving up Jason Varitek and Derek Lowe for Heathcliff Slocumb in 1997, but this might.
Jones admitted last week that it is not a contender for the best trade in the Orioles’ team history. That would be Baltimore acquiring Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas before the 1966 season.
That thought makes Mariners fans groan a little more. But the sooner they accept that Jones is gone and is never coming back, the better. Baltimore would not even swap him straight up for Bedard now.
“I’m an Oriole,” Jones said. “I began as a Mariner, but I’m an Oriole now and I hope to stay one for my whole career.”
If that doesn’t provide the closure to move on, nothing will.
Ryan Divish: 253-597-8483
ryan.divish@thenewstribune.com
blogs.thenewstribune.com/mariners
BIG O
Categories in which Jones leads Orioles this season (as of Sunday): Batting average Homers * On-base percentage Total bases Strikeouts
* shared lead with Luke Scott
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