There seems to have been, as I've noted before, a kind of backlash against Mariners GM Jack Zduriencik. And I can understand that, I suppose. He's made some great moves and everything, but you look at a guy who has had the job for one year -- a successful year, but one with a lot of luck, too, if Pythagoras is to be believed -- and it's hard to hear people anoint him the Best GM in Baseball. Especially when the heart of his team's lineup seems likely to end up looking about as fearsome as the Pirates' 7-8-9 punch (yeah, including the pitcher). Now, again, I happen to believe that Z is the best GM in baseball -- or in a fight for the title with BillyB and Theo, anyway -- but I get where the backlash is coming from.

 

Trouble is, there hasn't been much to pick apart in his record, setting aside what he hasn't done (i.e. get a power hitter). Everything he's done so far has been pretty brilliant. So thank the Mariners for this e-mail that made its way to my inbox yesterday:

 

That image on the bottom is this page, the Season Ticket Save-O-Meter. You pick the number of seats, location and the package you're interested in buying, and up on what I guess is supposed to be the Safeco manual scoreboard pops what it'll cost you, what it would cost you if you bought single-game tickets in the same location to that exact same number of games for some reason, and how much money you're "saving" by getting the season package.

 

The interesting thing, of course, is that picture of Jack Z along the right side. All along, he's been looking at you (er, out of the screen, sort of in your general direction) kind of incredulously, like he can't believe it's really taking you this long to make this kind of obvious decision. And then you click "Calculate" to make the awesome savings pop up, and a speech bubble immediately appears over his head that says one of at least six things that are equally viewable as GM-y or used-car-salesman-y, things like "I say make the deal." "Now that's a valuable pickup." "Talk about a blockbuster deal." "It's like a signing bonus." Et cetera.

 

Nothing particularly noteworthy about this, I suppose; it just made me laugh. Let's be honest, it's not as though Z's the most photogenic GM in baseball anyway, and it's just funny to see him with the silly little cartoon bubble over his head uttering trite contract-related sayings to try to sell you tickets. We couldn't have equally cartoonish representations of Ichiro or Griffey or Felix telling us what an unsurpassable deal we're getting? 

 

Anyway, so Zduriencik finally looks kind of dumb, in a way. Enjoy!