Busy day, lots of stuff. First off, the trade deadline. Arthur Rhodes to the Marlins was the lone move the club made. Arthur’s spot on the twenty five man roster will go to either Ryan Rowland-Smith or Jared Wells. Other deals did not get done for the simple fact that the Mariners knew what they wanted from other clubs and the other clubs did not want to meet the M’s asking price. Simple enough.

Plenty of folk around baseball are saying that the M’s asking price on everyone was far too high. It very well may have been, but from what I am hearing, for the most part what was being offered to the Mariners in exchange was little more than “organizational players” which basically are players who would do little more than help round out the farm teams.

I spoke with Lee Pelekoudas earlier this evening about how close they came to making a deal and he answered, “There were a few tough decision to be made last night and today but (what was offered) just wasn’t quite good enough.”

It isn’t necessarily over however. “The other moves we didn’t make,” Pelekoudas continued, “were moves that the offers we had coming back didn’t quite make our expectations of what we thought the value of the players were at this moment. That doesn’t mean we can’t relook at some of the opportunities that were presented to us in the future, either in August or the off season.”

There is no question the team wanted to make moves. Howard Lincoln said just a month ago that everything was on the table yet Rhodes is the only one who is traded. Some of the national baseball media are saying that the Mariners are big losers at this deadline. I disagree. I think they got something very important established. They had a plan and they stuck to it. They put their asking price out there, and right or wrong as far as value goes, they did not cave.

The Mariners as an organization have a reputation, a very bad reputation as far as trades go that must be repaired. In recent years the club has rarely been able to pull off a deal even when they desperately wanted to deal. On the occasion when they could make a trade they were always on the short end of it. The very short end. In what was probably the undoing of Bill Bavasi, the Erik Bedard deal (which has the potential to go down as the worst deal in club history eclipsing Jason Varitek and Derek Lowe for Heathcliff Slocumb) Bavasi spent the better half of the winter saying that if he made a deal, the other team would either get quality or quantity. Well the deal with Baltimore took a ridiculous amount of time backing right up into spring training and in the end, the Orioles got both quality and quantity. Big time. It was time that the Mariners draw a line in the sand. The only way to repair the reputation is to not cave.

Were their expectations too high? Were their internal evaluations of their own player talent too high? Well, we can’t very well know that without knowing what they were asking for. Regardless, they didn’t make a bad deal. It is a step in the right direction.

News and notes…Yuniesky Betancourt was an early scratch today with a sore elbow. He experienced similar soreness late last season. One encouraging sign on the Yuni front. After spending his day off yesterday on the couch watching videos and listening to music, trainer Rick Griffin grabbed him today and put him through some rigorous leg drills on the field before the game…Erik Bedard (remember him?) is scheduled to play catch on Sunday…Jeff Clement should be good to go tomorrow after tearing his thumbnail last week but may not get into the lineup as the M’s are facing a lefty…Mark Lowe who told me the Arthur Rhodes would be sorely missed also told me that he always won the boat, dot, hydro whatever race was on the video board, home and away. “He gets it right every single time, it’s every ball park we go to. There’s sixteen years of experience for you and I haven’t figured it out yet.”…Willie Bloomquist played tonight despite some residual gimpiness after getting caught in some poor groundskeepering in front of home plate last night…On Manny Ramirez to the Dodgers, one player told me Manny told him last week he would love to play in Seattle…The M’s drew for the fantasy football draft today and JJ got the number 1 pick..