The Montreal Expos made a huge (a literal 6’ 10” mistake) when they dealt a young Randy Johnson to the Seattle Mariners early in the 1989 season.  It was evident immediately that there was something special as Johnson could strike out a lot of batters, but he had control problems.  It would, however, not take long for the "Big Unit" to become one of the stud pitchers in baseball.

From Venezuela, Felix Hernandez signed with the Seattle Mariners as an Amateur Free Agent in 2002, with the hopes of following the footsteps of his idol, Freddy Garcia. 

In 2005, at age 19, Hernandez made his debut and would start 12 Games.  From there, Hernandez would begin his slow ascent to one of the best hurlers in the Game.  He would break out in 2009, with a league-leading 19 Wins, his first All-Star Game, and a second place finish in Cy Young voting. 

Like Edgar Martinez, Ichiro Suzuki received some consideration as the top Seattle Mariner of all time, but instead, he will have to labeled the best hitter for average in team history.

A case can be made that Ichiro was one of the greatest hitters of the game period.  The Japanese native did not debut in the Majors until he was 27, and he was still able to collect 3,089 Hits, 2,542 of them with Seattle.  If you add his hits in the Japanese League, he has more combined than Pete Rose.

We almost put him number one, and would there not be a lot of logic for us to do so?

We can go to our grave jumping up and down that Ken Griffey Jr. is the better baseball player, and since his prime (which was a long one) was exclusively in Seattle, placing “Junior” at the top makes sense.