When I noticed how deep the designated hitter market for the upcoming offseason was, my initial thought was that the Seattle Mariners could wind up with a solid DH by process of elimination.  But after looking through team depth charts it looks like there will be more ballclubs looking for DHs this year than normal.

The DH market figures to be made up of Jim Thome, Carlos Delgado, Bobby Abreu, Vladimir Guerrero, Aubrey Huff, Hideki Matsui, Gary Sheffield, and Jason Giambi among others, and could be bolstered by Jermaine Dye (club option not expected to be picked up) and Jack Cust (supposed non-tender candidate after down year at the plate at age 30).  That’s ten guys, some much better than others, which would normally make the DH supply much greater than the demand.  After all, there are only 14 American League teams.

But it seems to me that the Mariners, Blue Jays, Royals, Tigers, White Sox, Rangers, Angels, Athletics and perhaps the Yankees could be in the market for a DH.  That is over half the AL teams.  In the end, not all of these teams will sign a free agent DH, but a few will sign as position players meaning there will still be a more teams competing within the DH market than normal.  If the Mariners want to get one of the better players they’ll have to be somewhat aggressive, rather than waiting to see who’s left like last offseason (which left them with Ken Griffey).

There is a major difference between the 2008/2009 offseason and the 2009/2010 offseason for the Mariners however, and that is money.  Last offseason the team had to wait to see who was left teamless in hopes of landing a bargain.  This upcoming offseason they’ll have a lot more money to play with.  That doesn’t mean they’ll be sinking a ton of cash into these aging sluggers, but they’ll probably use more than the $4-5M or so that they had left last winter.

Vladimir Guerrero doesn't even bother taking his mitt onto the field anymore.