Dear Mr. Bavasi,

I'm sure you are very busy right now (at least I hope you are, your immediate predecessor as GM often spent the trade deadline helping his wife move or working with orphans in Bangledesh or vacationing in Hawaii), but I'd like to bring a few things to your attention.

Randy Winn, Aaron Sele, Jeff Nelson, and Jamie Moyer are not under contract next year. They will not be a part of the next good Mariner ballclub (now perhaps 2 seasons away) and should be sold to the highest bidder.

Eddie Guardado is a great guy, who is absolutely pitching his heart out, considering he has a torn rotator cuff AND a sub 2.00 ERA. But highly paid closers are luxuries that terrible teams cannot afford. Further he has tremendous value right now. Any number of playoff teams, notably the Red Sox and Braves, badly need bullpen help. Truly he should fetch a tasty passel of players, should you feel so inclined. I understand that you think we can contend next year, and I surely hope you are right, but we can contend almost as well next year with Putz or Soriano closing games as our sack-clutching amigo.

Other guys you should consider moving would include Ron Villone, Gil Meche and Joel Piniero. Pretty much, they all suck and if you got something for them, you'd be the winner.

I also want to point out that your best hope for juicing the gate a little bit in the last two months of the season is to bring up Snelling and Felix and hope they catch fire. You are in a bit of tough spot right now, in that it might be more fun for your fans to go to Tacoma or even Everett (since Clement just signed) rather than come to the Safe.

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know about these things, just on the off chance you hadn't thought of them already!

Your Pal,

Tad