Big weekend ahead for the Mariners

On a positive note, I suppose you could say the Mariners have come a long way from where they were a year ago today. That's when John McLaren was fired as manager, just three days after the dismissal of Bill Bavasi as GM. Today, the Mariners are nowhere close to grumbling about their manager, off to the all-star game, and GM, whose trade of J.J. Putz and company to the Mets keeps paying off dividends. As of right now, the Mariners have six guys on their 25-man roster who were fruits of that trade: Franklin Gutierrez, Endy Chavez, Mike Carp, Ronny Cedeno, Garrett Olson (acquired in a flip of trade product Aaron Heilman) and Jason Vargas. The Mariners are also still trying to take a stab at .500 and sit only 5 1/2 games out of the division lead. That's right: over the last 10 days of going 5-5, including being swept in Colorado, the M's lost no ground to the struggling Texas Rangers. But things are getting complicated on that front as this team now faces its toughest task...