OAKLAND – The last time Robinson Cano was seen in a Mariners’ uniform, he was walking in pain back to the dugout in Detroit on a chilly spring Sunday.

The Mariners lost that May 13 game, 5-4, and lost Cano when a pitch from Blaine Hardy broke a bone in the second baseman's  hand. Two days later, the baseball world was rocked by news that Cano tested positive for a banned diuretic, the masking drug  furosemide.

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 OAKLAND – It’s been 16 years since their Moneyball season elevated the Oakland A’s, and seven summers since the movie about that summer had Brad Pitt make Billy Beane look cooler than any sports executive ever.

The excitement about that 2002 season was somewhat muted up to Aug. 13, when the A’s beat Toronto 5-4. The Mariners, coming off back-to-back AL West titles, had a 72-46 record Aug. 12. They had a 2½-game lead in the division over the Angels and 4½ over the A’s. Seattle was in good shape to make it three in a row.

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The Seattle Mariners had a guy in their system in 2009 with some serious offensive promise.

His name? Mike Morse. He came up in 2005 and played bits of the next four seasons in Seattle, but never saw a 2009 big league game with the Mariners. It was in the middle of that season that first-year general manager Jack Zduriencik, feeling the need to get a more balanced defensive player, dipped into Triple-A Tacoma roster.

Just like that, Morse was dealt to the Washington Nationals.

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There will be a new look to Safeco Field in 2013, with the walls from the left field corner to right-center coming closer to the plate.

The cozier distances are going to make it tougher on fly ball pitchers, and that’s one reason the Mariners traded veteran left-handed starter Jason Vargas to the Angels Wednesday. Vargas has a great history in Safeco – 21-20, 3.38 – while he’s 21-30, 5.10 everywhere else.

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It’s been four years now that Jack Zduriencik has been at the helm of the Mariners. He brought home a winning record in 2009, not since. In the ensuing building process over the past three seasons, the Mariners have been more than occasionally difficult to watch.

So with the winter meetings, baseball’s prime-time off-season swap-a-thon, starting Monday in Nashville, one question facing the Mariners is whether Zduriencik feels pressure to knock one out of the park.

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Free at last. Free at last. Free at last.

That describes Chone Figgins, released with one year left on his contract.

It also describes the Mariners, who won’t have a veteran with no future clogging up the roster.

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No one wearing a Mariners uniform in 2013 has more of an uphill battle than Dave Hansen.

A two-time Mariner as an infielder and pinch-hitter, Hansen was named hitting coach Monday, replacing Chris Chambliss, who was let go at the end of another of a series of unproductive seasons for the offense.

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From the first game in July 1999, there have been complaints from hitters and from fans of hitting about the spacious dimensions of Safeco Field.

Through good offensive years and bad, the criticism hasn’t gone away.

Safeco is too tough on right-handed hitters, some said. Others would bemoan the way the elements conspire to keep the ball from going over the fence.

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In the middle of election season, one is led to wonder what Major League Baseball franchises might be like if they were like a democracy subject to a vote.

Imagine if the sports public, which supports the franchise with taxes and fees in the same way the electorate supports the government, had the opportunity to convey or withdraw legitimacy on the local squad.

Below is our suggested ballot, with a preceding pamphlet for voters.

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If Mike Zunino comes to the Mariners spring training came in 2013 with a chance to make the big league roster, will you be surprised?

You shouldn’t be. Not after Zunino, the third overall pick in the June draft out of the University of Florida, hit .373 with 10 homers and 35 RBIs in 29 games playing rookie league ball with Everett, then went to Double-A Jackson and hit .333 in 15 games with  three homers and eight RBIs.

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Outfielder Sam Fuld could have been grinding his teeth after his Tampa Bay Rays lost a 1-0 decision after Felix Hernandez showed his Kingship Wednesday with baseball’s third perfect game of the season.

But it would have been little more than screaming into the darkness. Fuld chose to embrace the moment.

“Felix and (Detroit’s Justin) Verlander are the two most dominant pitchers in the league,” Fuld said. “Just like Verlander, Felix just got stronger as the game went longer. You never want to resign yourself to that, but he was as dominant in the ninth inning as he was in the first.”

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Retooling of the Good Ship Mariner never ends.

Even with Seattle owning one of the best records in baseball since the All-Star break, the Mariners aren’t going anywhere. So in the wake of Monday’s 4-1 win over Toronto, in which Hisashi Iwakuma struck out 13 Blue Jays, the highest-scoring team in the majors, the club started dismantling its bullpen.

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In his last start, Felix Hernandez threw a pitch that fractured a bone in the left hand of Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees.

Sunday, the Seattle starter got a little reverse mojo. He was hit by a pitch on his left hand, just about at the same spot where Rodriguez was hit. But by fortunate happenstance, Hernandez won’t miss a start; Rodriguez could miss two months.

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The mid-season mini-calendar is turning, page after page, for the Mariners.

The time between the All-Star break and the July 31 trade deadline is about more than the chatter last weekend over whether Ichiro will be back in a Seattle uniform in 2013 and beyond.

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The local mid-season analyses of the Mariners share a similar dour view. Sometimes it’s worthwhile, however, to take a step back and let an outsider offer a look.

It's easy to be consumed by the split between the .197 team batting average at home and the .259 batting average on the road. Does Safeco Field really matter so much? Are the Mariners really so schizophrenic? Are we schizophrenic?

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Ask anybody who plays baseball, and they’ll tell you it’s a team game.

It does, however, have some very individual components. Of those, one of the most notable is the no-hitter.

Teams have been held without a hit 276 times in major league history. And 266 of those have been thrown by just one pitcher.

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The second half of Wednesday's game in Anaheim did more than provide the Mariners a winning record at the end of a tough road trip.

It gave some evidence that the club may yet get the kind of jump from the top of the batting order that manager Eric Wedge was counting on when he scrapped his early season plans after the first three games of the trip in Texas.

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No place like home? Not if you're a hitter for the Mariners, who are batting .193 as a team at Safeco Field.

The Mariners finished a 2-5 homestand Sunday by pounding out three hits in a 4-2 loss to the Angels. Three whole hits.

The man who had two of those hits, first baseman Justin Smoak, was asked about the Seattle offense, or lack of same, on a homestand when the Mariners hit a ghastly .167 and averaged three runs per game.

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One thing the Mariners can always count on every game is there will be plenty of friendly faces in the other dugout.

This weekend in Yankee Stadium, Alex Rodriguez and Raul Ibanez will be in the middle of the New York lineup and Rafael Soriano will be in the bullpen. Ex-Mariners, all.

The Mariners' rookie All-Star pitcher from a year ago, Michael Pineda, is on the disabled list. Freddy Garcia, who was a Mariner 14 years ago, was in the rotation but is now in the bullpen.

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The Mariners have tough choices in the absence, for four to six weeks, of injured catcher Miguel Olivo.

Like a seasoned politician, Mariner manager Eric Wedge says he will use a combination of veteran John Jaso and rookie Jesus Montero to fill in behind the plate, but avoids specifics.

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