Losses wash over Mariners

NEW YORK — There will be no changes to the captaincy of a Mariners ship plummeting to the bottom of the ocean.

That was the word out of Mariners headquarters before Saturday afternoon's game as general manager Bill Bavasi said manager John McLaren is doing a good job and won't be replaced. Bavasi then ripped into the team's players for an overall lack of leadership and inability to police their own clubhouse.

"I think they need that player that will grab somebody by the throat and say: 'We don't do that here,' " Bavasi said. "The best teams take care of stuff in the clubhouse. They make demands of each other, and I'm not sure we've got that going on right now."

The Mariners were then promptly routed for a fifth straight game, going down 12-6 to the New York Yankees. Seattle lost for the 18th time in the past 23 games and maintained its record as the worst team in the American League.

"From our point of view, this is not a field managerial issue," Bavasi said. "It's more an issue of player performance and roster and the like. To that end, right now, probably our biggest issues are not playing the game clean. We're not in a position to be talking about wins and losses. We have not yet, since spring training, played three clean baseball games in a row.

"We're ending up with a man on second, or a man on third, or men on second and third with nobody out and they stay there. And then we may run into a period where we can't get out of the first three innings without giving up 20 runs.

"Unfortunately for us," he added, "we don't have on this club so far, that player, or players — it takes more than one — that has enough in his gut to take care of himself, with enough left over to take care of somebody else, and help somebody else do his job. We don't get a runner over, we don't get a runner in and as a group of individuals, the players tolerate it. And good teams just don't tolerate that."

The Mariners and starter Carlos Silva fell behind 4-0 in the second inning but rallied to tie it in the third on a three-run homer by Jose Vidro and a solo shot by Adrian Beltre. They were the first home runs allowed by Yankees starter Mike Mussina since August, but the tie was short-lived.

New York added another run in the bottom of the frame, then two unearned markers in the sixth. Both runs scored on a Bobby Abreu home run off Silva, which came immediately after second baseman Jose Lopez flubbed a routine grounder that would have ended the inning.

That made it a 7-4 game. New York then piled on five more runs against the Seattle bullpen in the seventh.

"It seems like that's the way it's going right now," said McLaren, whose team has been outscored 55-22 the first five games of this trip. "When we do make a mistake, it comes back and haunts us."

McLaren said he appreciated Bavasi's pregame support.

"I've got a lot of pride, and I'll take my hits," he said. "I'll take my hits."

Bavasi sees potential leaders who can do the things needed in the clubhouse.

"You see the guys who can [be leaders] in all walks of life," he said. "But you have to be willing to take that first step out of your shell."

Bavasi mentioned that every pundit had the Mariners pegged to finish first, or second, or contend for the wild card. And while there were some skeptics — mainly prognosticators from sabermetric-inclined Web sites — who warned this could be a sub-.500 team, no one predicted the club would be the worst in the major leagues by late May.

"I take it to heart in that it's my responsibility," Bavasi said. "The buck stops here. This is a club that we all had higher expectations on."

But there is, apparently, a limit to what Bavasi can or will do as a quick response to the team's terrible slide — either in dumping current players, or screening future ones for better character traits.

"Every club pays close attention to the character of guys," Bavasi said. "But you never know what their character is truly like until they get into the heat of battle."

He remains on the lookout for potential deals. But at this time of the season, he added, with the July 31 trade deadline still more than two months away, there are not a whole lot of deals out there.

"I don't know that that's something that we want to react to right now," he said. "If we had a magic bullet, we would fire it. I think we have to — from our point of view as a staff — in the office we have to keep looking for player personnel, deals, but like I said, we're going to be hard-pressed to find somebody better right now than what we have. We have to keep looking for those guys. It doesn't mean you stop looking."

Bavasi understands that players will boot balls from time to time, or make mistakes. But it's their unwillingness to hold themselves, or their teammates, accountable for raising their level of play that has him beyond frustrated.

"We're looking for them to step up and play like they can," he said. "Not like they want to. But like they can."

Geoff Baker: 206-464-8286 or gbaker@seattletimes.com