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February 29, 2004

Prospectus Q&A

Bill Bavasi, Part I

by Jonah Keri

The Seattle Mariners hired Bill Bavasi as their new general manager Nov. 7, replacing Pat Gillick. Bavasi spent 19 years with the Angels, working his way up from his first job as a minor league administrator. As general manager from 1994 to 1999, the team finished below .500 in four of six seasons. But the farm system that Bavasi presided over during that time would generate much of the core for the Angels' 2002 championship team, including Troy Glaus, Troy Percival, Darin Erstad and others.

Bavasi spent the last two years overseeing the Dodgers' farm system as director of player development. He takes over the Mariners coming off four straight years of 90+ wins, with Gillick staying on as a consultant. BP spoke to Bavasi about the team's off-season signings, the risk of long-term contracts, the changing nature of major league talent and more.

Baseball Prospectus: How do you try to assimilate the Mariners' existing organizational philosophy while also moving forward with your own ideas? What type of freedom did you see the Mariners giving you as you came into the job?

Bill Bavasi: The way I took it was that the new GM would be afforded the latitude to make changes as he saw fit. Of course the hope would be that the GM would take into consideration what had already been done--and rightly so, considering the Mariners have more wins the last four years than anybody. They're properly proud of what they have done, but if they were going to bring in a new GM, from the inside or the outside, they wanted to make sure that the person be given free reign to make the changes he felt were important, within reason.

From my point of view, I've seen the success they'd had here. Having the respect that I do for Pat, as well as for Benny Looper, Roger Jongewaard, and Lee Pelekoudas, you'd like to try to make the change as seamless as possible. As time goes by, we'll make our evaluations as a group as to what we might want to do differently.

BP: How do your team-building philosophies differ from Pat Gillick's and the previous regime's? What changes should we expect to see as a result?