Valentine, Piniella Manage to Stay

Bobby Valentine and Lou Piniella aren’t going anywhere.

Putting stock in a season in which the New York Mets reached the World Series for the first time since 1986, the team agreed to three-year contracts with Manager Valentine and General Manager Steve Phillips. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“What’s happening here is a sign of some stability,” Valentine, the only manager to take the Mets to the playoffs in consecutive years, said Tuesday. “It’s a lot of weight off my mind. We’re going forward absolutely together, absolutely on the same page. Steve and I are going to demonstrate that this is a team effort.”

Piniella agreed to a three-year contract to remain manager of the Seattle Mariners.

“We had a very successful season in Seattle, and we’re looking forward to building on that,” Piniella said. “I’ve been in Seattle for eight years, and there’s a lot of loyalty there.”

Piniella’s contract will pay him $6.5 million to $7 million over three years, according to several reports. Piniella reportedly earned $1.3 million last season.

Valentine is 379-301 during his four-plus seasons in New York, second to Davey Johnson’s 595 victories with the Mets. Valentine is 960-906 overall in the majors, having also managed the Texas Rangers.

He thought he should be compensated at least as well as Dusty Baker, who just signed a $5.3-million, two-year deal with the San Francisco Giants. The new deals for Valentine and Phillips contain team options for 2004.

Under Piniella, the Mariners have been to the playoffs three times in six seasons. They won a franchise-best 91 games and lost in six games to the New York Yankees in the league championship series.

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Roger Clemens will appeal a $50,000 fine for throwing the jagged barrel of Mike Piazza’s bat toward the Met catcher during Game 2 of the World Series.

“The excessiveness of the fine suggests that they believe he intended to hit Piazza when Roger knows he did not,” said Clemens’ agent, Randy Hendricks.

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Randy Johnson not only was baseball’s top pitcher for the first time, he was the sport’s top player, according to the annual statistical rankings released by the Elias Sports Bureau.

Johnson received a score of 99.227 out of 100, based on statistics from the last two seasons. The Arizona Diamondback left-hander replaced Kevin Brown of the Dodgers, who dropped from 98.232 to 97.595.

Cleveland Indian outfielder Manny Ramirez was the top-rated position player, at 97.284.

The rankings, created by owners and the players’ association in the 1981 strike settlement, are used to divide free agents into groups that determine draft-pick compensation for a player’s former club if he signs with a new team.

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Baseball owners meeting in Chicago approved a new TV deal with Fox and also gave OK to a contract with the new umpires union, but deferred a vote on the proposed sale of the Toronto Blue Jays.

Commissioner Bud Selig said there was no discussion of the collective-bargaining agreement that expires in one year, which could lead to baseball’s ninth work stoppage since 1972.

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Saying he thinks he’s finished with the San Diego Padres, Tony Gwynn, a member of the 3,000-hit club and an eight-time NL batting champion, filed for free agency.

The move has been expected since Oct. 4, when the Padres said they would not pick up the right fielder’s $6-million option for next year. The Padres, however, say they still would like Gwynn, 40, back, but at a much lower salary.

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Angel third baseman Troy Glaus, Colorado Rocky first baseman Todd Helton and St. Louis Cardinal outfielder Jim Edmonds were among six first-time players on the Associated Press major league all-star team.

The team: C--Piazza, Mets; 1B--Helton; 2B--Jeff Kent, San Francisco; 3B--Glaus; SS--Alex Rodriguez, Seattle; OF--Edmonds, Barry Bonds, San Francisco, and Vladimir Guerrero, Montreal Expos; DH--Frank Thomas, White Sox; RHP--Pedro Martinez, Boston Red Sox; LHP--Johnson, Arizona; Reliever--Robb Nen, San Francisco.

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Outfielder Todd Hollandsworth and the Rockies agreed to a $5.5-million, two-year contract.

Hollandsworth, acquired July 31 from the Dodgers, batted .323 with 11 home runs and 23 runs batted in in 167 at-bats with Colorado.

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The Rangers exercised a $4.5-million option on outfielder Rusty Greer and a $1.4-million option on right-hander Tim Crabtree, but declined their $1-million option of left-hander Mike Munoz. . . . The Red Sox declined to exercise options fort next season in the contracts of pitchers Ramon Martinez, Tim Wakefield, Tom Gordon and Pete Schourek. . . . Tony Saunders, who was the Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ first pick in the 1997 expansion draft and twice suffered a broken arm while playing for the Devil Rays, is retiring to become the team’s assistant to the president of scouting and player development. . . . Catcher Eddie Taubensee’s $1.8-million option for next season was picked up by the Cincinnati Reds. . . . Former major league player Andujar Cedeno, 31, was killed in a car crash in the Dominican Republic. Cedeno played parts of seven seasons with the Houston Astros, San Diego Padres and Detroit Tigers.