19

Winning Now

Pat Gillick’s first division championship, with the 1985 Toronto Blue Jays, testified to the strong team and superb organization he had built. He was chosen to run the Blue Jays because of his record in scouting and player development, and he used those skills, plus creativity and a knack for leadership and management, to create a great farm system and developmental program. By the mid-1980s Gillick was no longer in charge of a developing expansion team, but head of one of baseball’s model franchises.

Over the rest of Gillick’s outstanding career as a baseball executive, a career that would be recognized in 2011 by induction into the Hall of Fame, he would never again be in charge of a new or struggling team. Because of what he did next in Toronto and then later in Baltimore, Seattle, and Philadelphia, Gillick became known for a different skill: using a large budget to take a talented team over the top, either by making the playoffs or by winning a championship. Gillick still needed to call on many of the same resources he had used so well in his early years: managing people, judging talent, and expanding his “many rivers” philosophy in finding players. For now, though, his work in Toronto was not finished.

Having reached the postseason in 1985, the Blue Jays’ future looked promising. All of the key regulars, save catcher Ernie Whitt and designated hitter Cliff Johnson, were under thirty years old. Dave Stieb (twenty-five) and Jimmy Key (twenty-four) anchored the pitching staff, and only thirty-five-year-old Doyle Alexander was near the end of his career. Gillick replaced his great manager, Bobby Cox, by promoting third base coach Jimy Williams, a natural choice. Otherwise Gillick returned almost the same team that fell one game short of the World Series.

Nonetheless, the 1986 team struggled early, mostly due to a regression among its pitchers, whose ERA jumped from a league-leading 3.31 to 4.08, fourth in the division. With his team nine and a half games back in July, Gillick swapped Alexander, whose ERA was a run higher than the previous season, to Atlanta for twenty-two-year-old Duane Ward, who within a few years would become a key Toronto relief pitcher. The team climbed to within three and a half in early September but faded to 86-76, nine and a half games behind the Red Sox.

Williams appeared overmatched his first year on the job. “He dealt with players in a far less sophisticated manner than Cox, both strategically and emotionally,” wrote Tom Cheek later. “His persona was difficult to penetrate and he often found himself hypersensitive to media criticism, which can be a killer in big-time professional sports.”1

During spring training in 1987, a scout was watching the Blue Jays work out. “They remind me of one of those circus cars where all the clowns keep getting out,” he said. “Toronto opens the clubhouse door and one potential star after another pops out.”2 The latest round included twenty-three-year-old Fred McGriff, newly installed as the designated hitter, since first base was still manned by Willie Upshaw, coming off a subpar season. At second base Gillick had tired of Damaso Garcia’s relatively empty batting average and traded him to Atlanta, though Williams struggled to find an adequate replacement. More positively, Kelly Gruber joined the club and shared third base with Rance Mulliniks.

Gillick preferred to promote from within, a fine strategy as long as the farm system produces talent on a regular basis, but more limiting when it experiences an inevitable fallow period. The Blue Jays could have used a free-agent signing or two, but the team’s budget combined with the baseball owners’ collective collusion not to pursue other teams’ free agents (an agreement that later cost owners $280 million in legal damages) limited Gillick’s freedom of action. He also had difficulty convincing players to play in Canada. “There’s a psychological barrier,” he said. “There is a reluctance to go to a foreign country.” Moreover, “there is absolutely no way we can overcome the taxes, even if we pay a 10 or 15 percent premium.”3

The 1987 Blue Jays experienced a rebound thanks to their pitchers’ league-best ERA and an MVP season from left fielder George Bell (47 home runs, 134 RBI, .308 batting average). In the end the Blue Jays won ninety-six games but unfortunately lost shortstop Tony Fernandez to an elbow injury and then dropped the last seven games of the season, finishing two games behind the streaking Detroit Tigers.

The next spring McGriff took over at first for Upshaw, who was sold to Cleveland; Rule 5 Draftee Manny Lee was installed at second; Fernandez returned at short; and Gruber was poised for full-time duty at third. Although now thirty-six, Ernie Whitt returned as the regular catcher, and Jesse Barfield, still only twenty-eight, remained anchored in right. More dramatically, Williams had grown unhappy with Bell’s defense in left and wanted to shift him to DH, move Lloyd Moseby from center to left, and install one of the organization’s young prospects, Sil Campusano or Rob Ducey, in center.

Complicating matters, Bell was due to become a free agent at the end of 1988 and said he would leave if not signed to a long-term contract. This threat worried the Blue Jays less than it normally would—with baseball teams still colluding, Bell might not find any bidders. Gillick and vice president Paul Beeston tried instead to sign Bell to a one-year deal.

In January 1988 Gillick convened several key executives, including Beeston, Williams, and scout Al LaMacchia, to meet with Bell and his agents. When negotiating potentially large contracts, Beeston often took a leadership role, with Gillick and assistant GM Gordon Ash also involved. Occasionally, this led to confusion: Whitt once called Gillick to accept a Blue Jay deadline offer, only to have Gillick initially demur because he was unaware of a concession made by Beeston.4

In this meeting Gillick told Bell that the team wanted him to play some games at DH, to save wear and tear on his knees. Bell interpreted this request to mean about ten or fifteen games at DH and acquiesced. Williams interjected that he actually wanted Bell to primarily DH. Not surprisingly, the twenty-eight-year-old Bell balked. “Fuck you, Jimy,” Bell responded, and the conference broke up, with Williams feeling he had made his case and Bell believing he had agreed to DH about fifteen games.5 Several weeks later Bell agreed to a three-year, $5.8 million contract, a healthy deal but less than his current market value and not enough, as time would tell, to convince him that he should leave the outfield.

The Blue Jays’ 1988 spring training was dominated by the Williams-Bell feud. Things came to a head on St. Patrick’s Day when Bell, in the lineup as the DH, refused to play. Bell was later informed that if he did such a thing again, he would be subject to a thirty-day suspension and fine. Bell seemed surprised by the uproar his action caused and subsequently begrudgingly agreed to Williams’s plan. When the season opened Bell served as DH in five of the team’s first ten games, while Campusano, the youngster upon whom this drama hinged, hit just .115. Williams and the Blue Jays thereupon abandoned the move, returning Bell to left and Moseby to center, but the tension festered.

In retrospect, Gillick could have managed this situation better. Most players of Bell’s stature, in the prime of their career, would have been sensitive to such a slight, and the Blue Jays should have quietly lobbied their star or offered additional financial inducements. The controversy also likely put additional pressure on the young Campusano, who never did learn to hit in the big leagues.

With all the turmoil the Blue Jays came in at 87-75 in 1988, finishing two games behind the Red Sox in a very winnable division race. Gillick, who earned the nickname “Stand Pat” for his perceived reluctance to make trades or sign free agents to shake up his club, definitely lived up to this moniker in 1988. In fact, he did not make a single trade all calendar year, while the Red Sox (acquiring pitcher Mike Boddicker) and Tigers (outfielder Fred Lynn) added players during the pennant race.

Gillick was inactive again before the 1989 season, but with the team at 9-16 on April 30 he finally made a deal, trading Barfield to the Yankees for left-handed pitcher Al Leiter. Barfield and Moseby had declined rather suddenly from their mid-1980s stardom, and the deal opened up a spot for twenty-one-year-old Dominican phenom Junior Felix.

When the team’s slump reached 12-24, Gillick fired Williams, a move most of the fans and media had been calling for. Gillick first hoped to land Lou Piniella, let go as Yankees manager at the end of 1988, but Piniella surprised Gillick by telling him he had a personal-services contract with George Steinbrenner (which involved scouting, doing TV work, and making a few speeches) and would need permission to join the Blue Jays. Steinbrenner well remembered Gillick leaving him thirteen years earlier and now demanded young hurler Todd Stottlemyre as compensation. Gillick wanted Piniella, but not at the price of the well-regarded pitcher.6

While he was deliberating Gillick had given the reins to batting coach Cito Gaston, who was eventually hired to finish the season. The well-liked and mild-mannered Gaston created a more relaxed clubhouse atmosphere, and the team responded with a 77-49 record after the change, enough to win the division by two games over Baltimore. Gillick helped out by acquiring Mookie Wilson from the Mets in late July, solidifying the outfield and the clubhouse. “He leads the way George Brett and Reggie Jackson lead,” said Gillick. “By example.”7 McGriff had a great season (36 home runs and 119 walks), Stieb turned in another excellent year to lead a solid group of starters, while Henke and Ward anchored the bullpen. The team again fell short in the playoffs, losing the LCS to the A’s in five games. Most people credited Gaston for the club’s turnaround. “Sometimes teams with the most talent don’t win,” said Gillick. “Sometimes players like ours take a while to learn how to win. Cito has tried to teach them that.”8

More significantly for the future of the club, on June 5 the Blue Jays opened SkyDome (now Rogers Centre), the start of what was to become a baseball stadium boom in North America. With the stadium funded by three levels of government (federal, provincial, and city) and by large corporate donations and prepaid luxury-box leases, the grand opening (two days before the Jays played there) was broadcast on Canadian television and featured performances from Canada’s elite entertainers. With its one-of-a-kind retractable roof (Montreal’s Olympic Stadium had one, though it had worked only sporadically), SkyDome was hailed as an engineering marvel and a new standard-bearer. Using SkyDome for two-thirds of the year, Toronto set the all-time attendance record (which they broke the next year) with more than 3.375 million fans.

Helped immeasurably by their new stadium, over the next five years Toronto consistently ranked among baseball’s top three teams in total revenue.9 Although ownership had generally provided Gillick with a competitive budget, in the early SkyDome years the Blue Jays were one of the wealthiest teams in the game, and his budget increased accordingly. Over the next twenty years high-revenue stadiums opened nearly every year, lessening the advantages, but the teams that built their parks in the first wave—Toronto, the Chicago White Sox, Baltimore, and Cleveland—had a financial advantage that could allow historically lower-revenue teams to leap ahead of their competitors. If a general manager could build a strong nucleus prior to the opening, he could use some of the revenue windfall on high-level free agents to augment the club. It would take him one more year, but Pat Gillick would prove a master of this strategy.

In the 1989 amateur draft Gillick selected Washington State pitcher–first baseman John Olerud in the third round. The Baseball America college player of the year as a sophomore in 1988 (when he hit 23 home runs while going 15-0 as a pitcher), before his junior season Olerud underwent surgery for a brain aneurysm, putting his future in doubt. Blue Jay scouts had been following Olerud closely, and Gillick sent him a get-well card during his recovery. Olerud played that spring, but told scouts he would return to college for his senior season. Gillick chose him anyway and visited him nine times before Olerud finally signed a contract. Along with a bonus of three hundred thousand dollars, Gillick agreed to start him in the Major Leagues, and Olerud got into 6 games that September, going 3 for 8. In 1990 he made the team and played 115 games mainly at designated hitter, becoming one of the team’s most productive hitters (17 home runs, 68 RBI). Gillick always considered Olerud his favorite draft pick, enough so that Beeston often joked, “He cries every time Olerud gets a single.”10

The Blue Jays returned most of their lineup (led by McGriff, Fernandez, Bell, and Gruber) and pitching staff (Stieb, Key, Henke, Ward) for 1990. Other than Olerud newcomer David Wells (11-6, 3.14) joined the pitching rotation and contributed, while Ernie Whitt, after a decade of solid service at catcher, finally gave way to Pat Borders. Despite the new talent the Blue Jays fell to 86 wins and finished 2 games behind the Red Sox.

For eight seasons, from 1983 to 1990, the Blue Jays had been remarkably consistent. In six of the eight years they had won between 86 and 89 games, over 95 in the other two, and had captured two division titles. Gillick had integrated a number of young stars in this period, one or two at a time, while continuing to win: Bell, Fernandez, Henke, McGriff, Ward, Olerud, Wells, and Borders gave the Blue Jays a young core in 1990.

In the following off-season Gillick shifted to a new gear. With baseball’s ill-considered collusion finally a thing of the past, and an increased budget due to the new stadium revenues, Gillick was freed to enter the marketplace. Now fifty-four, he had been running the Blue Jays’ front office for fourteen years and had experienced some health issues. He told Beeston he intended to retire in three years.11

Early in the 1990 winter meetings Gillick traded Felix to the Angels for twenty-eight-year-old Devon White, one of baseball’s best defensive center fielders (a deal that also included several less notable players). Three days later he made much larger headlines when he swapped McGriff and Fernandez, two of his best players, to San Diego for second baseman Roberto Alomar and left fielder Joe Carter. McGriff and Fernandez would be missed, but the thirty-one-year-old Carter was a valuable run producer, and Alomar, the best player in the deal, was a great offensive and defensive player and still only twenty-three. Olerud took over at first base and replaced McGriff’s production, while Manny Lee shifted from second to shortstop to complete the infield. With their rebuilt offense the Blue Jays seemed poised to retake the division.

The club suffered a huge setback in late May when Dave Stieb, an underappreciated pitching star for a decade, was injured in a collision with a base runner and never recovered his previous form. Rookie Juan Guzman joined the team in June and finished 10-3 with a 2.69 ERA, and a few weeks later Gillick landed knuckleballer Tom Candiotti from Cleveland. The reworked rotation of Key, Stottlemyre, Wells, Guzman, and Candiotti led the league in ERA, and Ward and Henke saved 55 games in 157 innings pitched between them. This great pitching led Toronto to a 91-71 record and their third division crown. Disappointingly, they again lost in the ALCS, this time to the Twins.

In the 1991–92 offseason Gillick made his first significant foray into the free-agent market, by signing thirty-seven-year-old Twins pitcher Jack Morris, a five-time All-Star fresh off a 10-inning complete-game shutout to win Game Seven of the World Series, and aging Angels slugger Dave Winfield. When Gillick called Beeston, recently named CEO, to tell him he had reached an agreement with Winfield, Beeston complained, “I didn’t know we were even interested in this guy. I know where he ain’t playing. He ain’t playing here.”

Gillick considered Winfield a leader and called Winfield’s agent, Jeff Klein. “I’m going to be in the air,” Gillick told him. “But I think you should talk to Paul. He really wants to talk to you. You’d better call him right away.”

“The phone rings in my office,” Beeston related. “The guy says, ‘Hello this is Jeff Klein, Dave Winfield’s agent. Pat Gillick says you want to talk to me.’” After his initial consternation, Beeston consummated a one-year deal with Klein for $2.3 million.12

By the 1980s most front offices included a team president or CEO, who ran the ever more complicated business and directed the general manager or head of baseball operations. Although Gillick and Beeston had grown up together in the Toronto organization, Beeston was now technically his boss, having been named president in 1989. Don McDougall, who was on the Blue Jays’ original board of directors, later downplayed this hierarchy: “Paul Beeston is the heart of the Blue Jays. And Pat Gillick is the head.”13 The two maintained a smooth working relationship based on years of mutual respect.

Peter Bavasi described this shift: “Up until the late ’70s, the ‘general manager’ ran both the business and baseball sides of the operation. Buzzie [Bavasi], Joe Brown, Jim Campbell, Gabe Paul, fellows like that. Most of those men came out of the minor league system, where they learned every aspect of the business—on and off the field—by running the minor league teams.”

“Beginning in the early 80s I noticed that clubs were beginning to split the organization into baseball ops and business ops,” Bavasi added. “With an executive vice president/general manager for baseball and an executive vice president for business, each reporting to a nonowner president who reported directly to the owner or the ownership board. Clubs began to take on a more corporate structure, in part because the economics of the business had become both fragile and complex. Owners didn’t have the time or inclination to stay as deeply involved in day-to-day operations as they had once been.”14

With essentially the same lineup the 1992 Blue Jays led the AL in slugging and were second in runs scored. Carter (119 RBI) and Winfield (108 RBI) received a good deal of the headlines, but Alomar’s overall excellence (.310 with 43 extra base hits, 88 walks, 49 stolen bases, and a Gold Glove at second base) led the club. Morris won 21 games, albeit with a 4.04 ERA, while Juan Guzman finished 16-5, 2.64. To reinforce their rotation for the stretch run, Gillick acquired free-agent-to-be David Cone for three then-unneeded players. “Pat would always make a trade to put us over the top, and he was making a statement.” Beeston recalled. “You’re telling the team, ‘We (the front office) are trying, too.’”15 Gillick agreed: “One of the guys [we gave up] probably is a marginal Hall of Famer, Jeff Kent. We thought about it and said, ‘David Cone is a guy we think can get us over the hump,’ and at the same time a deal like that kind of deflates your competition.”16

The 1992 Blue Jays won 96 games and their fourth division title, before finally breaking through in the ALCS, topping the A’s in six games, then beating the Atlanta Braves in six games to give Canada its first-ever World Series championship. Winfield’s two-run double in the top of the eleventh in the final game proved to be the deciding blow. “This is really a tremendous evening for everybody in the organization,” said Beeston, accepting the trophy.17

Gillick’s strategy of signing or dealing for short-term solutions worked because he had a young core to build around and the money to find new solutions when the old ones left or declined. After the 1992 season Gillick faced just this problem when seven key Blue Jays became free agents: Key, Cone, Henke, Winfield, Carter, Lee, and left fielder Candy Maldonado. Of the seven Gillick re-signed only Carter.

Though he had entered the free-agent market a year earlier, Gillick still would not compete for the best midcareer players because he would not offer contracts longer than three years. He had hoped to re-sign Key, but the pitcher instead inked a four-year deal with the Yankees. Cone took three years from the Royals but received a nine-million-dollar signing bonus that Gillick would not match.18

His three-year limit instead led Gillick to short-term players in their midthirties. Gillick signed veteran Dave Stewart to bolster the pitching staff and veteran Paul Molitor to replace Winfield at DH. The team also had a couple of prospects ready for regular roles: starting pitcher Pat Hentgen and third baseman Ed Sprague. The Toronto core, however, had gotten older. Only Olerud and Alomar were established stars under thirty, and among the pitchers only Guzman and Ward had significant remaining service time under Toronto’s control.

Toronto’s reliance on veteran players can be seen in the team’s balance sheet. After ranking thirteenth in payroll in 1990, the team had climbed to ninth in 1991, it was third in 1992, and finally, in 1993, the team had the highest payroll in the game.19 To Gillick’s credit the money was well spent; he and his scouts correctly identified veterans—particularly Winfield, Morris, Molitor, Stewart, and Carter—who still offered valuable production. Money mattered, but one still needed to identify the right pieces.

By the middle of July 1993 the AL East was a wide-open pennant race, with five teams—Baltimore, New York, Toronto, Boston, and Detroit—within two games of first. With several of his pitchers, especially Morris, struggling, Gillick worked the phones to look for mound help. Gillick and Ash especially coveted Seattle ace Randy Johnson. In return, Seattle demanded Steve Karsay, one of the top pitching prospects in baseball. Gillick and Ash offered Todd Stottlemyre, but the two sides could not reach an agreement.

In June Gillick had traded struggling left fielder Darrin Jackson to the New York Mets to reacquire shortstop Tony Fernandez, whom the Blue Jays had never adequately replaced. To fill the hole in left the team had plugged in youngster Rob Butler, who tore a ligament in his thumb soon thereafter. As he had no luck finding an ace pitcher, Gillick called Oakland GM Sandy Alderson to inquire about Rickey Henderson, their star left fielder having another great season and in the final year of his contract.

Like the Mariners, Alderson demanded Karsay or another top pitching prospect. Gillick suggested instead that Alderson list three pitchers in the Toronto organization, allow Toronto to remove one, and then select either of the other two. Reportedly, Alderson listed Karsay, Jose Silva, and Paul Spoljaric. Gillick called an all-hands-on-deck meeting of his front office: Ash, Beeston, Al LaMacchia, Bobby Mattick, onetime pitching coach Al Widmar, and a few scouts. The group agreed that the deal was worth the chance to get back to the World Series. The A’s ended up with Karsay. (In the end, none of the three pitchers had much of a career.) Alderson had to work on Henderson to waive his no-trade clause (giving Seattle another chance to revive a Randy Johnson deal), but Toronto and Oakland completed their trade on July 31.20

Though Henderson hurt his hands and struggled over the regular season’s final two months, the trade did what it was supposed to do: solidify the outfield and leadoff spot of an already formidable team.21 Unlike the 1980s teams this Toronto club was led by its extraordinary offense, especially Olerud (24 home runs, .363) and Alomar (17 homers, .326, 55 steals). The Blue Jays finished 95-67 to win the division easily and then dispatched the White Sox and Phillies to capture their second world championship.

Gillick reconfirmed that 1994 would be his last season, and he and Ash were hopeful that the roster of 1993 could win again. The club lost Morris, Henderson, and Fernandez, at the end of their contracts, but otherwise returned intact. Once the season began, both the offense and pitching took steps backward, and the team was only 55-60 in August when the players went out on strike, ultimately ending the season. In the fall Gillick formally retired, staying on only as a consultant.

Gillick’s legacy in Toronto, besides his two championships, is the remarkable amount of talent he and his scouts managed to unearth. From 1983, when the team first became competitive, until 1993, the Blue Jays won eighty-six or more games every year. In order to do this, Gillick needed to continually feed new talent into his team, and until the last few years it was nearly always from his farm system. Over the thirteen-year period from 1979 through 1991, an average Major League team debuted players who went on to total 471 WAR over their careers. The Blue Jays introduced players who totaled 731, 55 percent more than the average club. That difference is the biggest reason they could win so consistently.

Using the same methodology, in the 1977–91 period the Blue Jays outperformed the average team in the amateur draft (617 WAR to 460) and in undrafted amateur free agents, mostly Latino players (156 WAR to 92). In the Rule 5 Draft, which rearranged players from the above categories, the Blue Jays brought in another 77 WAR.

In the twenty years following Gillick’s departure, the Blue Jays finished over .500 ten times and have yet to return to the playoffs. The rest of baseball caught up in Latin America, and the wave of new stadiums curtailed the Blue Jays’ brief revenue advantage. But the job Pat Gillick and his staff did to create a brand-new team and make it consistently one of the best in baseball deserves to be remembered.

While consulting for the Blue Jays in 1995, Pat Gillick drew interest from several teams looking for a GM, notably Arizona, Tampa Bay (two expansion teams that would start play in 1998), Florida, and the Cubs. While he expected to run a ball club again, he felt he could wait for the right opportunity. After the 1995 season Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos reached out to Gillick, who again said he was not interested. But at the general managers’ meetings in Scottsdale that November, Gillick ran into Davey Johnson, an old Minor League teammate who had recently become the Orioles’ manager. Gillick congratulated Johnson on his new position and asked what he was doing in town. Johnson told Gillick he was helping Angelos find a general manager and convinced him to accept the job.22

Angelos gave Gillick a three-year contract for $2.4 million, one of the highest packages ever for a general manager. Moreover, Angelos promised Gillick complete freedom to run the baseball side of the organization, as he had in Toronto. “He has all the leeway a general manager should have and probably more. I don’t tell the GM who to get, or the manager who to play, he knows that.”23

Angelos had led a syndicate of investors in 1993 to purchase the Orioles for $173 million, the highest price ever paid for a baseball team. Angelos had made his fortune principally as a plaintiff’s attorney in asbestos litigation, and his consortium bought the team at a bankruptcy auction necessitated by the financial problems of previous owner Eli Jacobs. The Angelos syndicate included Bill DeWitt Jr., who would later buy the St. Louis Cardinals, but Angelos was in charge. He promised to spend money and build a winning team.

Angelos retained the incumbent GM, Roland Hemond, who had twice been named Executive of the Year by the Sporting News, including as recently as four years earlier with Baltimore. The well-liked Hemond had overseen several teams that finished well above preseason expectations and believed that a GM should “always be positive and feel he has a chance to turn things around.”24 Angelos asked team president Larry Lucchino to stay on and run the baseball side of the operation as vice chairman (Angelos brought in Joe Foss to run the business side), which would have undercut Hemond. Lucchino declined, believing that Angelos would not allow him the freedom to run the team.25

Lucchino’s belief proved correct. Angelos lived up to his promise to spend money, but he repeatedly intervened in the management of the team. Early in 1994, Angelos’s first year, Hemond became so frustrated by his new boss that he decided to resign. Angelos talked him out of it, but the match was not destined to last.26

The Orioles had been a good club, finishing third in both 1992 and 1993. With the 1992 opening of their wildly successful and influential new home, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, the Orioles consistently drew more than three million fans, second in attendance only to Toronto’s more spacious SkyDome. Armed with this revenue, Angelos allowed Hemond to sign several high-profile free agents: first baseman Rafael Palmeiro, third baseman Chris Sabo, DH Harold Baines, starting pitcher Sid Fernandez, and relievers Mark Eichhorn and Lee Smith.

When the 1994 strike hit the team was in second (in the new five-team AL East) with a record of 63-49. Angelos spent the year badgering manager Johnny Oates, repeatedly threatening to fire him.27 At the end of the season he followed through, and his search committee, which included (but was not led by) Hemond, surprised most everyone by hiring Cleveland pitching coach Phil Regan. To lead the farm system Angelos hired Syd Thrift, the iconoclast who had run the Kansas City Baseball Academy in the 1970s and served as Pirates GM in the late 1980s.

When the strike ended in early 1995 Baltimore jumped in and landed starter Kevin Brown, relievers Jesse Orosco and Doug Jones, and outfielder Kevin Bass. The season highlight was the September 6 celebration for Cal Ripken breaking Lou Gehrig’s consecutive-game streak, but the rest of the season was a disappointment. The Orioles fell to 71-73 and a distant third place.

After the season Angelos forced both Hemond and Regan out. “I wish I could have had more direct contact with [Angelos],” Hemond recalled. “He was a very busy man. I had to go through other people sometimes to pass on my thoughts. That was my only difficulty.”28 Unusually, Angelos hired his manager first: Davey Johnson, who had enjoyed great success managing the Mets in the 1980s and had just been let go by the Reds. Angelos then turned his attention to finding a general manager. With Johnson’s help he hired Gillick, promising control.

Not everyone was convinced. “It’s silly to believe that Angelos will simply sit back and watch Gillick run the operations without a few suggestions here and there,” wrote sportswriter Bob Nightengale.29 Prescient words, it would turn out.

The challenge ahead of Gillick was similar to that of his final years in Toronto: get into the playoffs by building on the team’s revenue advantage and solid talent base. As his assistant Gillick brought in Kevin Malone, most recently general manager for the Montreal Expos. At Angelos’s request he kept Thrift to run the farm system. Like in his later stops, Gillick did not bring an entourage with him; he evaluated the front-office staff just as he did his players and came to recognize that many were sound baseball men. The departed Hemond praised his successor: “He has an analytical mind, and he doesn’t panic.”30

Gillick inherited a team with several excellent players, including Palmeiro, Ripken, catcher Chris Hoiles, outfielders Bobby Bonilla and Brady Anderson, and pitchers Mike Mussina and Scott Erickson. The team’s two biggest deficiencies were at second and third bases and the balance of its pitching staff. The farm system, ranked twenty-fourth of twenty-eight teams by Baseball America, did not offer much help.

Gillick filled many of these holes rather quickly and effectively, while still holding to the three-year contract limit he had used in Toronto. He signed free agents Robbie Alomar, his old Toronto standout, to play second, and Milwaukee veteran B. J. Surhoff to play third. To shore up the bullpen, he signed Randy Myers (with help from Thrift) and Roger McDowell (who had played for Johnson in New York).31 Finally, to make up for the loss of departing free-agent hurler Kevin Brown, Gillick traded young outfielder Curtis Goodwin to the Reds for David Wells, another former Blue Jay.

Although many of these moves worked out quite well, the Orioles were hovering just over .500 around midseason in 1996, and Gillick wanted to cash in a couple of his veterans for younger players. He first worked out a trade of the underperforming Wells to Seattle. Gillick also hoped to move Bonilla, who had played well, offering him to Cincinnati for pitcher John Smiley and to Chicago for outfielder Brian McRae. Both teams turned him down, so Gillick eventually settled on a deal with Cleveland for twenty-seven-year-old Jeromy Burnitz, who Gillick thought could become a big home run threat in Oriole Park.32

Angelos stepped in and vetoed both trades, telling Gillick it was not a baseball decision but one that concerned his relationship with the city and the fans. Faced with the undermining of his position, “Gillick’s appetite for the job was never the same,” Tom Verducci later wrote.33

Vice chairman and chief operating officer (effectively club president) Joe Foss felt Gillick handled the situation poorly: “The problem was our baseball front office went public that Peter had disagreed with their recommendation. I personally was dumbfounded to read about that meeting the next day in the paper. I’d been in the business world for twenty-five years, and it’s a normal occurrence to sit down and then, once the boss makes a decision, you jump on it and make it work.”34

Angelos’s meddling clearly stung Gillick, but once committed he went back to the trading block, this time looking to stock up for the stretch run. Accordingly, he traded pitcher Kent Mercker to the Indians for aging but still effective DH Eddie Murray and acquired slugging third baseman Todd Zeile, allowing Surhoff to move to fill a hole in left field.

Gillick’s biggest frustration was that he could not land a frontline starter to strengthen the Orioles’ mediocre rotation. He liked Florida’s John Burkett and was furious when GM Dave Dombrowski traded him to the Rangers after telling Malone he was unavailable. “The guy lied to Kevin,” Gillick fumed. Dombrowski shrugged off the accusation: “A good amount of time had passed from the time we spoke. They weren’t even one of the teams I was talking to at the [July 31 trading] deadline. Things change all the time.”35

Even without an additional ace, the team rebounded over the last two months of the season to finish 88-74, four games behind the Yankees but good enough to earn the AL’s wild card. The Orioles overcame a mediocre rotation by slugging a then-record 257 home runs, including a remarkable 50 by Anderson. The Orioles defeated defending AL champion Cleveland to reach their first League Championship Series in fourteen years, before falling to the Yankees.

Despite a fairly successful year, Angelos fought with manager Davey Johnson throughout the season and off-season. For starters, Johnson had shifted the aging icon Ripken to third base in July for a few days, an act not appreciated by either the player or the owner. Angelos was also unhappy with Johnson’s handling of the pitching staff, his moving of Bonilla to DH at the start of the season, and his response to a September incident when Alomar spit in the face of umpire John Hirschbeck. (Angelos wanted Johnson to go public that he thought Hirschbeck had used “motherfucker” in the exchange before Alomar spit on him.) Moreover, both sides were leaking matters to the press to the detriment of the other: Johnson that Angelos wanted to reduce the payroll from fifty to forty million dollars and Angelos that Johnson routinely arrived at the ballpark too close to game time.36 In a show of authority Angelos fired pitching coach Pat Dobson and brought in Ray Miller. Johnson stayed on for 1997, but he was clearly unhappy with his situation.

The Orioles were a good team, though every key regular other than Alomar and Hammonds was over thirty. Johnson and Gillick both wanted to pursue younger players, but Angelos insisted that they not sacrifice the talent on the present team. The Orioles lost both Bonilla and Wells to free agency after the season, and Gillick responded by signing another of his old Toronto favorites, Jimmy Key, to replace Wells and veteran Eric Davis to replace Bonilla. “Personally, I like both Bobby and David, but they didn’t respect authority,” says Gillick. “Bobby didn’t get along with the manager, and it got to the point where he was always upset. It got to be a distraction.”37

More significantly, Gillick signed shortstop Mike Bordick, paving the path for Johnson to move Ripken permanently to third base. Though Ripken had initially been reluctant, he indicated that he would make the shift if Baltimore had a quality defensive replacement whose work ethic he respected. Bordick’s presence helped Johnson convince Ripken to make the move, alleviating a potentially uncomfortable situation.38 “We’ve got guys who I like to call just baseball players,” said a pleased Gillick. “They’re not concerned with peripheral stuff. They’re not worrying about what the press says or whether the manager is going to DH them instead of play them in the field. They just play.”39

Gillick’s moves generally played out well for 1997. Key had a strong season, while a more unheralded signing, pitcher Scott Kamieniecki, turned in the best season of his career. Mussina and Erickson also had strong seasons, Myers saved forty-five games with a 1.51 ERA, and the pitching staff allowed the fewest runs in the league. The offense fell off by sixty-one home runs, but remained above average. Davis missed most of the season while being treated for colon cancer, but his return for the playoffs was one of the feel-good stories of the year. The Orioles finished 98-64, the American League’s best record. The team dispatched Seattle in the Division Series, before falling to Cleveland in six games in the LCS. The Indians, winners of just eighty-six games, were not nearly the team they had been a few years earlier, so Baltimore’s loss was particularly disappointing. Every Cleveland victory was by just one run, two in extra innings and one in the bottom of the ninth. Many Oriole players felt they should have won the series.

Johnson and Angelos continued to spar throughout the season, and this time Gillick could not prevent a final breakup. Johnson fined Alomar for missing a team function and an exhibition game during the season and directed his player to send the payment to a charity for which Johnson’s wife worked. Angelos was angry that he had not been consulted about the fine and was further upset when news about the charity leaked out. Johnson admitted he had mishandled the situation, but not that Angelos should have been involved. Gillick reportedly brokered a truce, but when Johnson, whose contract expired at the end of 1998 and who had just been named Manager of the Year, threatened to quit without an extension, an incensed Angelos accepted his resignation.40 Angelos named Miller the new manager, and Gillick, in the unfamiliar role of bystander in baseball matters, likely had no interest in staying beyond the remaining year of his own deal.

With his aging team, Gillick once again went back to the free-agent well for 1998, but this time his signings were over-the-hill veterans who did not produce: thirty-eight-year-old Joe Carter, who had little left, and pitchers Doug Drabek and Norm Charlton, who put up ERAs of 7.29 and 6.94. The club finally found some production from their farm system, as twenty-one-year-old Sidney Ponson pitched adequately in twenty starts and had several useful seasons ahead.

As Gillick knew, a team can be bandaged with free agents and other veterans only so many times. At some point a team needs to find young stars, players who could be long-term solutions and, importantly, perform at a lower salary than older players. By 1998 thirty-year-old Roberto Alomar was the youngest player of the eleven Orioles who received two hundred at bats. In the end the 1998 Orioles did not respond well to Miller, and the team fell to 79-83. Even worse, this mediocre team of veterans had the highest payroll in baseball.

In late September Malone left to take the GM job with the Dodgers, tellingly before waiting to see if the Oriole job would be available. A week later Gillick made his resignation official. In his three years with the Orioles he had performed the job he had been hired to do. Angelos wanted to put off a rebuild so that his team could win, and Gillick put together a team that played in two consecutive ALCS’s, their first postseason appearances since 1983.

As a longtime proponent of scouting and player development, Gillick hoped to improve the farm system and produce young talent for the Orioles. In this he was less successful: according to the annual rankings by Baseball America, the system improved modestly from twenty-fourth out of twenty-eight when he joined the Orioles to nineteenth out of thirty when he left. Of their top prospects Jayson Werth and Jerry Hairston developed into quality Major Leaguers. On Gillick’s watch the Orioles drafted a couple of multisport athletes and some other high-ceiling prep players who never developed as hoped. Moreover, several top-ranked pitchers suffered serious injuries. The Orioles paid the price for not rebuilding in the 1990s, as they finished below .500 for fourteen consecutive seasons beginning in 1998.

Joe Foss defended Angelos, his friend and boss, over his meddling in baseball operations: “Frankly I don’t think you have owners delegating or abdicating all responsibility anymore. I think that’s a dated model.”41 Speaking years later San Francisco Giants CEO Larry Baer defined ownership’s role in slightly different terms: “What I’ve tried to do is to make sure people who do good jobs stay focused and intensify the focus even more. My job is to empower the good people here and provide the leadership and focus and be available.”42

Dave Johnson later summed up Gillick’s tenure with the Orioles: “He put the farm system back together, he created harmony in the office, and he really was just a wonderful human being and executive. . . . The bottom line is you knew what Pat was trying to do; he knew what we needed to do to be a real championship club, not just a good club. And Mr. Angelos didn’t really use that knowledge.”43 Gillick would not have to wait long for another chance to use that knowledge.

Pat Gillick spent the 1999 season outside of Major League Baseball, enjoying what he called a “sabbatical.” He and his wife, Doris, had settled in Toronto, where she had opened an art gallery. When the Seattle Mariners approached him about taking their GM position, he initially declined because he did not want to live apart from his wife. Eventually, Doris worked out an arrangement whereby she could spend three weeks a month in Seattle, allowing Gillick to take the job. “I’m really happy to be here and that they had patience with me,” he said. The Mariners gave him a three-year contract at $750,000 per year.44

Eight years earlier, in early 1992, the Mariners had been sold to a local syndicate backed by Japanese national Hiroshi Yamauchi, the president of Nintendo, who delegated baseball matters to Nintendo of America’s senior vice president Howard Lincoln. The group also included Microsoft executive Chris Lawson and John Ellis, CEO of Puget Sound Power & Light, who was named the team’s chairman and CEO. The new ownership returned Chuck Armstrong to his former role of team president, where he actively oversaw the operations of the ball club, occasionally encroaching on baseball decisions.

At the time of the sale to Nintendo, the Mariners were not without assets: in 1991 the team posted its first winning season, and the club featured twenty-one-year-old center-field star Ken Griffey Jr., third baseman Edgar Martinez, right fielder Jay Buhner, first baseman Tino Martinez, and pitcher Randy Johnson.

When the Mariners fell back in 1992 general manager Woody Woodward hired manager Lou Piniella, who had recently led the Reds to the 1990 World Series title. After two mediocre Mariner seasons, the Mariners finally broke through in 1995 with a division title and a dramatic playoff win over the Yankees. Seattle fell in the ALCS to Cleveland, but this iconic club is credited with saving baseball in Seattle because, after much political wrangling, the team secured a deal to build what would become Safeco Field.

The next few years were awkward for Woodward. Ownership wanted to keep momentum while negotiating the details of their stadium, but they also wanted to limit payroll. The 1995 Mariners had finished nineteenth in revenue with the tenth-highest payroll in baseball. Woodward had acquired veterans Andy Benes, Vince Coleman, and Norm Charlton to help push the team to the playoffs. But after the season, to save money, Woodward dealt Tino Martinez and pitchers Jeff Nelson and Jim Mecir to the Yankees for young hurler Sterling Hitchcock and third baseman Russ Davis.45 This disastrous trade left Seattle without its star first baseman and most effective relief pitcher. To his credit Woodward signed Paul Sorrento and Mike Jackson to replace the departed players, two moves that worked out very well.

In 1996 twenty-one-year-old Alex Rodriguez became the team’s shortstop, giving the Mariners the two best players in the league with Griffey (49 homers, .303) and Rodriguez (36 homers, .358), but poor pitching (an injury to Johnson limited him to eight starts) kept the team to an 85-76 record. In midsummer Woodward made his best trade, sending outfielder Darren Bragg to the Red Sox for Jamie Moyer, who became one of the best pitchers in club history. A month later Woodward less successfully swapped Minor Leaguer David Ortiz to the Twins for Dave Hollins, who hit well down the stretch, while the Mariners ultimately fell short of the postseason.

After losing reliever Jackson to free agency, Woodward spent much of 1997 trying to fix a terrible bullpen that posted a 5.47 ERA on the season. At the July 31 deadline Woodward traded promising outfielder Jose Cruz Jr. for journeyman relievers Paul Spoljaric and Mike Timlin. Even worse, he followed this up by swapping two future stars, hurler Derek Lowe and catcher Jason Varitek, to the Red Sox for reliever Heathcliff Slocumb, who bombed with the Mariners.

Despite these disastrous deals, an all-time record 261 home runs and excellent starting pitching helped the Mariners to a 90-72 record and another division title. The Mariners were led by Johnson (20-4, 2.28) and league MVP Griffey (56 home runs). In the Division Series the Mariners faced Gillick’s Orioles and dropped three out of four games.

At the end of the 1997 season the Mariner brain trust found itself at a self-imposed crossroads. The new stadium and its associated revenue would not open until mid-1999, yet the window to win with the current team appeared to be shrinking. Johnson’s contract expired after the 1998 season and both Rodriguez’s and Griffey’s after 2000. Even with the coming stadium revenues, there was no guarantee that the team would be able to keep any of them. The Mariners needed to decide whether to expand their payroll to acquire the necessary players to get over the top or consider trading their stars for younger players and build a new team with the coming revenues. They could no longer trade prospects for veterans because their prospects were gone; over a twenty-six-month period from 1995 to 1997, the team had dealt seven former first-round draft picks.46 These trades had denuded the farm system, ranked fifth by Baseball America in 1994 but last by 1998.

In the end the team decided to build for the future while hoping they could re-sign Rodriguez and Griffey, who were still in their twenties. “We were tearing down to get ready for the new park,” Piniella recalled later. “You couldn’t do it at once. It had to be done over a two-year period. We took our lumps, but it was the right thing to do. . . . No question there was a conscious decision.”47 Whether this was the right decision remains highly debatable; there have been few teams in history with as much topflight talent as the Mariners had, with Griffey, Johnson, Rodriguez, and Edgar Martinez in their prime. But the Mariners had made their choice.

When the team started poorly in 1998—they were 34-49 at the end of June—the Mariner ownership instructed Woodward to deal Johnson rather than lose him to free agency at the end of the season. Woodward did surprisingly well, shipping the Big Unit to the Astros for what proved to be three valuable players: pitchers Freddie Garcia and John Halama and infielder Carlos Guillen. Although the fans and media would eventually come to appreciate this good deal, at the time everyone was disappointed. The team appeared to be dumping salary after getting the public to fund an expensive new stadium. Worse, the team finished 76-85.

The Mariners finally opened Safeco Field in July 1999 to great fanfare, but once again the team finished below .500. Without Johnson, the pitching staff in particular pulled down the team’s season, finishing with the league’s second-highest ERA. Although Moyer, Garcia, and Halama pitched well at the top of the rotation, the club gave a remarkable 342 1/3 innings to pitchers with an ERA of 7.38 or higher.

At the end of the 1999 season John Ellis retired as CEO and was replaced by Howard Lincoln. With their two stars just a year from free agency, Woodward and the owners presented Griffey and Rodriguez with huge contract extensions—Griffey’s would have made him the highest-paid player in the game—but both players declined. Woodward knew that he had unpleasant work ahead.

Lincoln made it clear that he was not a supporter of Woodward, the long-serving GM.48 After the season Woodward resigned. Lincoln and Armstrong wanted a veteran baseball man who could produce a winner in their new stadium, and not surprisingly they turned to Pat Gillick.

Early in his Seattle tenure Gillick discussed his approach to player evaluation, stressing character, makeup, and chemistry. “When I’m scouting, I take character over physical ability every time.” He also knew that the prevailing free-agent market might require him to move beyond his self-imposed three-year limit for players whose character met his test: “I hate to say I put makeup ahead of ability, but the more I’m around the more I believe you have to do this. With the multi-year contracts we give out, makeup becomes more important. When you’re in the midst of a five-year contract, one side is going to be upset.” Gillick also maintained, “Chemistry is unbelievably critical. If you come into the workplace, and there is inconsistency, there are disruptive employees or you don’t know what to expect, then you won’t be a motivated employee.” Gillick extended this concept to the players’ wives as well, because “there can be a lot of one-upmanship with the ladies.”49

With Safeco Field open, Seattle’s management finally agreed to increase payroll as a means to improve the team. Gillick knew that signing free agents was a risky strategy, because most available players tend to be overpriced and declining. Many teams have assumed that adding payroll would lead to success on the field, only to be surprised when it does not. Gillick was one of the few general managers who had proved capable of finding the right players and not overpaying.

One of Gillick’s first chores, though, was to address the situation with his franchise’s all-time greatest player. In November 1999 Griffey told Gillick and Lincoln that he planned to leave as a free agent after the 2000 season and asked to be traded. Wanting to avoid potential disruption from a disgruntled superstar, the Mariners reluctantly agreed. As a so-called ten-and-five player (a ten-year veteran, including five with his current team), Griffey had the right to approve any trade. When Griffey gave Gillick a list of only four teams to which he was willing to be dealt, the outfielder greatly hampered Gillick’s leverage.

As Gillick went through his limited options, he mainly demanded top prospects. When it became clear that the Reds, Griffey’s hometown team and his father’s longtime organization, were the most likely suitor, Gillick initially asked for a mother lode of young ballplayers, including second baseman Pokey Reese, first baseman Sean Casey, starter Denny Neagle, reliever Scott Williamson, and a top prospect. Fortunately, this overreach did not derail negotiations, and in the end he was forced to settle for center fielder Mike Cameron, pitcher Brett Tomko, and two Minor Leaguers. Of the four only Cameron, who turned in four excellent seasons in Seattle, proved a valuable addition.

Back in Toronto Gillick had benefited from his “many rivers” approach to team building, being willing to use nontraditional sources to find talent. In Seattle Gillick fished a new river, signing Japanese relief pitcher Kaz Sasaki in December. A few days later he secured one of baseball’s best left-handed relievers, Arthur Rhodes, with a four-year deal, helping to turn the club’s biggest weakness into a strength.50

In finding a starter Gillick was the beneficiary of some good fortune. The Rangers’ Aaron Sele, a solid midrotation pitcher, had agreed to a four-year, $29 million deal with the Orioles. After Sele took his physical, Baltimore scaled back its offer. The annoyed Sele instead signed with Seattle, in his home state, even though the terms were only two years and $15 million.51 With Sele added to Jamie Moyer and twenty-three-year-old Freddie Garcia (acquired in the Johnson deal), the Mariners anticipated a stronger rotation in 2000.

Turning to the offense, Gillick again looked to the free-agent market. As he had in Baltimore, Gillick targeted one of his former Blue Jays, and one of his favorites, star first baseman John Olerud. He also signed infielder-outfielder Mark McLemore, a veteran with much-needed on-base skills. McLemore proved to be an extremely valuable player, filling in at a number of positions and regularly getting on base over the next few years. Finally, the club signed utility outfielder Stan Javier to bolster the bench. Piniella liked switch hitters, and McLemore and Javier provided him with two. With all the new additions the team’s payroll increased only moderately, from $54.1 million to $60.5 million, because their two largest salaries from 1999—Griffey and pitcher Jeff Fassero—both came off the roster.

All six off-season free-agent acquisitions—Sasaki (the Rookie of the Year), Rhodes, Sele (17 wins), Olerud (103 RBI), Javier, and McLemore—delivered what the Mariners hoped for, as did trade acquisition Cameron. The team rebounded to 91 wins and a return to the playoffs, where they beat the White Sox in the Division Series before losing the ALCS to the Yankees. The revamped squad improved in all facets of the game: run scoring increased from sixth to fourth in the league, despite playing a full season in pitcher-friendly Safeco Field; the team improved from twelfth to second in fewest runs allowed; and the defense had become one of the league’s best.

Gillick’s second off-season in Seattle might have been even more dramatic than his first. The overriding story, once again, was the disposition of a Mariner superstar, this time free-agent shortstop Alex Rodriguez. Unlike the situations with Randy Johnson and Ken Griffey, the Mariners believed that they could retain their shortstop and worked to that end for a few months.

Meanwhile, Gillick turned back to Japan, where the Orix team in the Japanese Pacific League made star outfielder Ichiro Suzuki available to the U.S. Major Leagues. Although Ichiro was one of Japan’s best players, there was some doubt regarding how he would perform, because a Japanese nonpitcher had yet to excel in the United States. Jim Colborn, the Mariners’ director of Pacific Rim scouting, had been a pitching coach in Japan in the early 1990s when he had befriended the young outfielder, and he vouched for Ichiro’s skills.52 With this endorsement Gillick and the Mariners sought and landed Ichiro, first sending $13.125 million to Orix for the right to negotiate with the player and then, on November 30, signing him to a three-year deal for $14.088 million.

In December Gillick reinforced his bullpen by signing skilled setup man Jeff Nelson, whom the Mariners had traded away several years earlier. He also inked veteran second baseman Bret Boone, also a former Mariner, filling one of the larger holes on the team. McLemore returned to a multiposition role, primarily sharing left field with the returning Al Martin.

Gillick and ownership remained active in their pursuit of Rodriguez. When the team offered a three-year contract for $54 million plus a two-year option, bringing the contract value to $92 million—believing Rodriguez and his agent, Scott Boras, were looking for a short-term contract—Boras told the Mariner delegation, “You’re not even close.”53 Boras was correct. In late January word came that the Texas Rangers had landed Rodriguez with a ten-year, $252 million contract, well beyond the terms of any previous baseball contract. Gillick knew that he could not possibly replace Rodriguez at shortstop, but he and Piniella decided to try young infielder Carlos Guillen, who had failed to win the third base job in 2000. Despite the loss of the league’s best player, the off-season moves increased the team’s payroll to $74.7 million.

Heading into the 2001 season the Mariners were seen as a good, but not great, ball club. Both Sports Illustrated and the Sporting News projected a second-place finish in the AL West. While the pitching was solid, the offense was considered suspect. Boone and Ichiro could not be expected to offset the loss of Rodriguez and the anticipated falloff in production from the injury-plagued Jay Buhner. The experts turned out to have underestimated things considerably, as the team started quickly and never slowed down, reaching a high-water mark of 47-12 after the games of June 8. At the All-Star break the team sat 63-24 and led the division by nineteen games.

Gillick tried to improve his great team at midseason. First, he argued that “if you want to go to the end (the World Series) you basically have to have a number one starter.” And while Gillick liked Freddie Garcia (who would lead the league in ERA that year), he thought him not quite ready: “Freddie Garcia might be at some point a number one starter, and hopefully he will be. He has the potential to be. (But) Freddie’s 24 years old.”54 He tried to improve his offense, inquiring about San Diego third baseman Phil Nevin, New York Yankee left fielder Chuck Knoblauch, Toronto left fielder Shannon Stewart, and Detroit outfielder Juan Encarnacion.55 In the end Gillick left his team alone.

The 2001 Seattle Mariners set the AL record and tied the 1906 Chicago Cubs’ Major League record, with 116 wins. In addition to their 116-46 record, the Mariners led the league in runs scored, fewest runs allowed, and attendance. The team had several excellent individual seasons, especially from Bret Boone (.337 with 37 home runs) and Rookie of the Year and MVP Ichiro Suzuki (.350). In the playoffs the Mariners first squeaked by the 91-win Cleveland Indians, 3 games to 2 in the Division Series, before falling once again to the Yankees in the ALCS, a disappointing end to a historic season.

The 2001 Mariners dramatically highlight how free agency could be used as a tool for assembling a team. Table 11 summarizes how their most significant eighteen players were acquired.

Table 11. Key 2001 contributors

Position	Name	How acquired
C	Dan Wilson	Trade with Cincinnati, November 2, 1993
1B	John Olerud	Free agent, December 15, 1999
2B	Bret Boone	Free agent, December 22, 2000
3B	David Bell	Trade with Cleveland, August 31, 1998
SS	Carlos Guillen	Randy Johnson trade, July 31, 1998
LF	Al Martin	Trade with San Diego, July 31, 2000
CF	Mike Cameron	Ken Griffey trade, February 10, 2000
RF	Ichiro Suzuki	Free agent, November 30, 2000
DH	Edgar Martinez	Nondrafted free agent, December 19, 1982
UT	Mark McLemore	Free agent, December 20, 1999
UT	Stan Javier	Free agent, December 20, 1999
SP	Freddy Garcia	Randy Johnson trade, July 31, 1998
SP	Aaron Sele	Free agent, January 10, 2000
SP	Jamie Moyer	Trade with Boston, July 31, 1996; re-signed November 20, 1996
SP	Paul Abbott	Free agent, January 10, 1997; re-signed January 4, 1999
RP	Jeff Nelson	Free agent, December 4, 2000
RP	Arthur Rhodes	Free agent, December 21, 1999
RP	Kazuhiro Sasaki	Free agent, December 18, 1999

Source: http://BaseballReference.com.

Only Edgar Martinez and Bret Boone (who was traded away and reacquired) were products of the Mariner farm system. Just seven of these players were on the roster during the 1999 season, two of whom arrived via a trade-deadline deal in mid-1998. Nine free agents were signed during the two subsequent off-seasons. Several other players were acquired as an indirect result of free agency, in the forced trades of Johnson and Griffey.

The transformation of a mediocre 79-win team to the 116-win juggernaut in just two years was quite an accomplishment by Gillick and the front office, especially considering that they lost two of the greatest players in the game in the process. Prior to free agency such a dramatic leap forward would have required an unusually strong crop of rookies, a lopsided trade or two, or player purchases from a struggling franchise. Free agency changed this paradigm. Moreover, the newly available players from Japan provided Gillick another river to fish in. Teams today can add a lot of talent on short notice.

One of the pitfalls of this approach is that free-market players are generally nearing or past thirty, since they must have accrued six years of service time. For that reason they often need to be replaced quickly, requiring either a productive farm system or continually guessing correctly in a risky marketplace.

Gillick lost his magic touch during the 2001–2 offseason. He acquired three players to shore up his three weakest offensive positions—left fielder Ruben Sierra, third baseman Jeff Cirillo, and catcher Ben Davis—but none of them made an impact. On the pitching staff the Mariners lost Sele to free agency, and Gillick could bring in only James Baldwin, a bottom-of-the-rotation starter. With this new batch of free agents Seattle’s payroll continued to climb, jumping to $80.3 million in 2002, the fourth highest in the league.

Even with an aging squad and a less than stellar offseason, the Mariners were 60-36 on July 18 with a four-game lead in the division. Gillick hoped to make one of his patented midseason trades, but ownership told him the budget was firm. “We could probably use a starting pitcher,” Gillick remarked. “But from a standpoint of budget, we are more than maxed out.”56 Lincoln concurred publicly: “If you don’t operate as a business, all sorts of bad things happen. People want us to do something exceptional, but what we want to do is have discipline and stick with our plan. . . . We absolutely have to make money. No question, end of story.”57

The budget limitations surely frustrated Gillick because the Mariners had become extremely profitable. Lincoln confirmed to the press that the team made $9.6 million in 2000 and likely exceeded that amount in 2001. Total revenue for the Mariners was the second highest in baseball behind only the Yankees and had more than doubled from $82.67 million the last year in the Kingdome to $183.64 million in 2001.58 Moreover, Lincoln believed Gillick could deliver the same product for less money: “I think we can actually spend less money with our Major League payroll simply because Pat Gillick and his staff are much more efficient than some general managers on how they spend money.”59 Plus the owners had a long memory. Armstrong, conscious of the importance of financial matters in his position as team president, even kept a card in his pocket reminding him of the $77 million the club reportedly lost between 1992 and the opening of Safeco Field.60 Without any midseason additions, the team slumped over the last two months, winning ninety-three games, a dramatic falloff from 2001 but still the second most in Seattle history and a record often sufficient to reach the postseason. In a very strong AL West, however, ninety-three wins was only third best, behind Oakland and Anaheim.

In retrospect, the talent on the 2001 Mariners was not as outstanding as its record implied—the club benefited from several players having the best season of their careers. Researcher Phil Birnbaum developed an objective method for measuring this phenomenon. After examining several factors, including how well a team converts its runs into wins and how players performed compared to previous and subsequent seasons, Birnbaum concluded several years ago that the 2001 Seattle Mariners were the “luckiest” team since at least 1965. None of this should detract in any way from the achievements of the team—the term luckiest is ill-suited, as the Mariners won the games and deserve the record. But in evaluating the potential for the following season, recognizing unaccountably strong seasons from players is essential. The thirty-two-year-old Bret Boone was a lifetime .255 hitter with a .312 on-base percentage and .413 slugging percentage, who recorded averages of .331, .372, and .578 in 2001, with 141 RBI. Looking forward, one should have expected a sharp dropoff, which is what transpired.

Gillick still believed he could deliver a title to Seattle and re-upped with the team for one year after the 2002 season. He believed ownership would allow him to hold on to several key players nearing the end of their contracts plus pursue a pitcher and outfielder.61 For the most part his expectations held up, and for 2003 Gillick returned essentially the same squad, adding left fielder Randy Winn as compensation from Tampa Bay for the signing of manager Lou Piniella, who left after having developed a rocky relationship with Lincoln. “In my ten years in Seattle, the Mariners never got a left fielder for me,” cracked an obviously relieved Piniella.62 As his replacement Gillick and the ownership team brought in Bob Melvin, giving the ex-catcher his first Major League managerial opportunity. Gillick could not find a frontline pitcher, however.

At the July 31 trading deadline the Mariners were leading the division by four games. Once again Gillick made no moves. Though he returned with the hope of winning a title, he was not going to mortgage the future if they could not get over the top. “Don’t read too much into this for the offseason, but there are certain players I won’t give up, because it didn’t make sense,” Gillick recalled. “Legitimately there are eight to ten solid prospects, say eight, and I’d be willing to give up four. But of that four, I might be willing to give up one. I’m not going to give up two.”63 The team again won ninety-three games and fell short of the playoffs.

Though Gillick wanted to rebuild the farm system during his years in Seattle, that goal was secondary to delivering a title. He was hampered by the loss of draft choices from all his free-agent signings, another pitfall of relying heavily on free agency. In fact, the Mariners had only one first-round draft choice during his four years at the helm and failed to sign him (John Mayberry Jr.). Gillick’s scouts remained active internationally, and the team signed four impact players (career WAR over 10) for the Minor League system during Gillick’s tenure: outfielder Shin-Soo Choo, second baseman Jose Lopez, pitcher Felix Hernandez, and shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera. The farm system that ranked twenty-fourth when he took over had improved to twelfth by the start of the 2004 season (as rated by Baseball America).

By the end of 2003 Gillick had spent four years with the Mariners and was ready to move on. Gillick never really offered an explanation beyond “feeling it was time to give someone else a chance.”64 Most likely, he knew that his two talented free-agent classes had run their course, as most of these players were past their prime. Moreover, he was reportedly frustrated that the ownership group vetoed a couple of trade-deadline deals during the season.65 The farm system was stronger than when he arrived, and the team had several quality young pitchers, but it was time for a new challenge. Once again, Gillick signed on as a consultant.

Getting a veteran team with core talent over the top is a much different challenge than building an expansion franchise. By correctly evaluating and sifting through his inherited players and using all available avenues to surround his nucleus with stars and capable role players, Gillick crafted a team that won Canada’s first two World Series, went to two consecutive American League Championship Series in Baltimore, and won a record 116 games in Seattle. Along with his genius, Gillick had two advantages, although not unique, that he relied on: an ownership willing and able to occasionally outspend the competition and enough status that ownership was usually leery about meddling too directly in his baseball sphere.