Soaring in Seattle

Lou Piniella rubbed his chin as he paused to ponder the question of how good would his Seattle Mariners be if they hadn’t lost Alex Rodriguez, Ken Griffey Jr. and Randy Johnson.

“In baseball you can’t think that way,” Piniella said. “A manager can only concern himself with the guys he has.”

None of the guys Piniella does have are as accomplished as the three future Hall of Famers who left Seattle in less than three years. But it is the Mariners--not Rodriguez, Griffey or Johnson--who are in first place with the best record in baseball.

“Obviously, people point to us losing Randy and Junior and Alex and ask what will happen to us,” starting pitcher Jamie Moyer said. “We’re showing that not much has changed. This is a club that always finds a way to win.”

It is a remarkable feat that few experts predicted and few teams could have pulled off.

Boston has survived the loss of Nomar Garciaparra so far this season, but take away Carl Everett and Pedro Martinez and where would the Red Sox be?

Try to imagine Atlanta minus Chipper Jones, Andruw Jones and Greg Maddux, or the New York Yankees without Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams and Andy Pettitte.

But that’s just what Seattle has endured.

The Mariners have gone from a last-place team when they traded Johnson to Houston in July 1998, to a wild-card winner last season without Griffey, to baseball’s best start in 14 years without Rodriguez.

“I told them that last year we had won without Junior and now this year we face a bigger challenge now that Alex isn’t here,” Piniella said of a spring-training talk with his team. “I told them I thought we were fully capable of doing it. And that was it. I never brought it up again.

“Why spend any time on negatives about guys not being here? It’s going to happen in this era of free agency, and not just in Seattle. You can’t dwell on it. You just move on.”

But doing that without three of the best players in baseball isn’t easy.

Rodriguez hit more than 40 home runs his last three seasons in Seattle and is considered by many to be the best all-around player in baseball.

If that player is not A-Rod, it could be Griffey, whose combination of power, speed and grace in the field are unmatched by any outfielder.

Then there’s Johnson, who has gone 49-19 with two Cy Young awards since being traded from Seattle.

“It would be nice to have a couple of those guys,” general manager Pat Gillick said. “We’d find some place for them in the lineup. But they just didn’t fit in with our salary structure. This is a team sport. One player can’t do it all. You need a supporting cast.”

What the Mariners do have is starters Freddy Garcia, John Halama and shortstop Carlos Guillen from the Johnson trade; center fielder Mike Cameron and pitcher Brett Tomko from the Griffey deal; and the money to spend on Japanese outfielder Ichiro Suzuki, reliever Jeff Nelson and second baseman Bret Boone because Rodriguez left.

There’s also a new philosophy.

While past Seattle teams won by outslugging teams when the Big Unit didn’t pitch and overpowering them when he did, these Mariners play a different style of game.

They win on Suzuki’s legs and throwing arm, the plate discipline of Edgar Martinez and John Olerud, a timely hit by Boone or Cameron, an airtight defense, or the deep bullpen headed by Kazuhiro Sasaki.

“Everything is going right,” said Nelson, who won four World Series in five years with the Yankees before returning to Seattle in the offseason. “We’re playing great defense, and we’re getting great pitching. That’s how we won in New York. We played good defense and had good pitching, and we scored enough runs to win. And that’s what we’re doing right now.”

The good start bodes well for Seattle. After sweeping the New York Yankees this week, the Mariners became just the fifth team in the past 20 years to win 18 of its first 22 games. Two of those teams won the World Series and only one--the 1987 Milwaukee Brewers--failed to make the postseason.

“We’re doing everything right right now,” Martinez said. “That’s what we need to do from now on, keep playing this way as long as we can. It does help to come in here and play the New York Yankees and play as well as we did. It really helps our confidence.”

Martinez is one of the few links to the slugging Mariners’ teams of the mid-’90s, who slugged their way to two division titles in the pinball-like Kingdome.

The success of Griffey, Johnson and Rodriguez on those teams helped convince Seattle to keep the Mariners by building the $517.6 million Safeco Field--one of the biggest contributors to the team’s success.

“They have retooled from a team that really concentrated on the long ball,” Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. “That was what they lived and died for. They have retooled to their ballpark, which is a lot more of a run-generating, little-ball approach.”

Unable to build a pitching staff with the Kingdome’s ultra-quick artificial turf and close fences, the Mariners have had success in spacious Safeco.

They entered the weekend with a 3.52 ERA--second best in the AL.

“We’re not going to score 10 runs a game, but we score enough because of our pitching and defense,” reliever Norm Charlton said. “That’s what drives this team. It would be nice to have Texas’ offense. But do you want Texas’ pitching and defense too? No. That’s no secret.”

Neither are the Mariners.