John Hickey | Sportspress Northwest

John is a longtime West Coast-based baseball writer who covered the Oakland As for two decades with The (Hayward) Daily Review and the Oakland Tribune.

He headed north in 2000 to cover the Mariners for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, starting on the day Ken Griffey Jr. was traded to Cincinnati. After the print P-I closed in 2009, he joined the national sports staff of AOL FanHouse and contributes to Seattlepostglobe.org. He is a longtime baseball correspondent for the Tokyo Chunichi Press.

A member of the Baseball Writers Association of America (BBWAA) for two-plus decades, Hickey is a Hall of Fame voter. When hes not covering baseball, he has written about pro football, college sports, tennis, golf and winter sports.

A University of California grad, Hickey is a fan of rock and jazz music, traveling, reading and cooking. He proved in high school that hes no athlete, but he does like to ski.

Hickey and his wife live in Seattle in a house ruled by two magnanimous cats.

Hickey: Texas HRs save Darvish; Mariners Fall 11-5

BY John Hickey 08:46PM 04/09/2012

For Yu Darvish, Monday will go down as the night he won his Major League debut. For the Mariners (3-2), it will go down as the night they let Darvish and the Rangers get away.

Seattle sent 11 men to the plate in the first inning against the Japanese pitcher, who was in danger of not even getting three outs in his first inning after the Rangers spent $60 million in salary and $51-plus million in posting fees to pry him loose from Japan.

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Hickey: Mariners pay too much to too few

BY John Hickey 08:00AM 04/06/2012

Not only is it time for baseball teams to play games that count, it's time to count the money.

A list of Major League Baseball salaries released by USA Today Thursday showed the New York Yankees ready to pay $197.96 million to players on their opening day roster. The San Diego Padres pay barely a quarter of that, $55.24 million.

The Mariners rank 18^th among the 30 teams with a projected payroll of $81.98 million.

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Mariners Set Their 30-Man Roster, Jet To Japan

BY John Hickey 12:19PM 03/22/2012

The Mariners Mariners left from Peoria, Ariz., about noon Thursday for the 45-minute drive to Phoenixs Sky Harbor Airport and then for the 13-hour flight across the Pacific Ocean to Japan.

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Hickey: Bullpen lefties a problem for Mariners

BY John Hickey 07:30AM 03/19/2012

Reasons were many for the Mariners lack of success in 2011, most having to do with an offense that was unproductive in the extreme. Seattle scored 556 runs when the American League team average for runs scored was 723, and when the next-worst offense, the Minnesota Twins, scored 619.

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Hickey: Mariners live/die on trades of starters

BY John Hickey 06:30AM 03/14/2012

Ask any major league general manager about the most difficult position on a roster to fill, the answer is the same: Starting pitching.

New York Mets GM Sandy Alderson described starting pitchers as baseballs "coin of the realm."

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Hickey: Mariners' young arms staying on farm

BY John Hickey 06:30AM 03/09/2012

Optimism about the Mariners starting rotation in the future is so high that it tends to overshadow the Mariner starters here and now.

Manager Eric Wedge and pitching coach Carl Willis can see a 2013 or 2014 rotation that might include two former first-round draft picks of their own, Danny Hultzen and Taijuan Walker, and a first-round pick of the Toronto Blue Jays, James Paxton.

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Hickey: Montero means big help for Olivo

BY John Hickey 06:00AM 03/05/2012

Led by Miguel Olivo, Mariners catchers contributed 21 homers, 75 RBIs and a .214 batting average to the meager Seattle cause in 2011. Of that, 19 homers and 62 RBIs belonged to Olivo.

The power totals werent all that bad. The homers were sixth-most by an American League catching corps. The RBIs were seventh-best.

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Mariners Have 4 Options With Gutierrez Out

BY John Hickey 08:12PM 02/29/2012

The focus of the Seattle Mariners spring training hopes migrated north Wednesday from Peoria, AZ., to Seattle.

That was the route taken by center fielder Franklin Gutierrez, who learned from an MRI and the team's medical chief, Dr. Edward Khalfayan, that he has a partial tear in his right pectoral muscle.

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If offense picks up, 200 hits still there for Ichiro

BY John Hickey 04:00PM 02/23/2012

Its long been assumed that one of the reasons Ichiro preferred to lead off, to the exclusion of any other spot in the Mariners batting order, is that batting first is the easiest way to get to 200 hits.

Its all about math and plate appearances. The leadoff hitter gets more chances to come to the plate. The more chances a good hitter gets, the more hits hes likely to have.

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Butler Presented Hutch Award At Safeco

BY John Hickey 04:42PM 02/01/2012

Two great things happened Wednesday for Kansas City designated hitter Billy Butler.

One was that he was able to visit the school at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and meet kids who were under treatment or whose siblings were being treated.

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Dinner with Jack Z closed the deal for Iwakuma

BY John Hickey 05:31PM 01/29/2012

Hisashi Iwakuma had plenty of options.

Why Seattle? The 11-year veteran of the Japanese major leagues had a number of big league suitors this winter. He chose to wear a Mariners uniform a year after he couldnt work out a deal with the Oakland Athletics.

Credit Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik and the dinner he had with Iwakuma in December.

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Hickey: Mariners focusing on center field

BY John Hickey 11:12AM 08/06/2011

With all the emphasis that has been placed on the Mariners rotten hitting and occasionally spectacular hitting, not all that much focus has been placed on the Seattle defense.

The trades of the last week have changed that, particularly in the outfield. Center fielders are almost by definition the best defenders, and Seattle is loading up on center fielders.

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With Bedard, Fister gone, Mariners rotation a shadow

BY John Hickey 08:42PM 07/31/2011

There is a good chance that the trades the Mariners made over the weekend will make Seattles baseball prospects worse before theyre better.

They almost have to. Seattle stripped two of its five starters from the rotation in deals with Detroit Saturday and Boston Sunday. Given that the rotation was the strength of the club, theres no way to spin these deals making the club better immediately.

With lefty Erik Bedard off to Boston and Doug Fister accompanying reliever David Pauley to Detroit, the Mariners will have to find replacements in-house.

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Hickey: Mariners' Bedard unlikely to appeal to buyers

BY John Hickey 11:48PM 07/29/2011

From the beginning, Jack Cust and the Seattle Mariners seemed an oddly matched pair.

He is a designated hitter with a strikeout-or-homer mentality, and was asked to come to a Seattle team that was mostly about making contact and living without the long ball.

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Hickey: After historic 14th loss, next year is here

BY John Hickey 08:56PM 07/23/2011

What is there to say about the Seattle Mariners, now that the 2011 team is virtually the equivalent of the woebegone 1992 team?

Well, how about the fact that the season is over?

If that wasnt clear after the 13 previous losses, Saturdays 3-1 disaster in Boston underscored the point. Sure, this was game 100, with 62 games are left in the "to do box, but in the last two weeks the 2011 season abruptly has ceased to be a priority.

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Hickey: Mariners have lost their sense of fun

BY John Hickey 03:16PM 07/19/2011

Besides a .186 team batting average for July, what exactly is wrong with the Mariners?

"Ive been watching them for the last few weeks, an American League executive said, "and the change is really remarkable.

"A month ago they looked like they were having fun lots of fun. Now they look they like theyre having no fun at all.

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Hickey: Mariners find nine-game skid 'maddening'

BY John Hickey 09:04PM 07/17/2011

Eric Wedges favorite saying of late is that the Mariners have no place to go but up.

Seattle keeps proving the manager wrong, though. The Mariners keep going sideways.

The offense, which is primarily to blame for a losing streak that reached nine games with a 3-1 loss to Texas Sunday, cant get any worse. But there's no sign any hitter is getting better, either.

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Hickey: Mariners' time to panic drawing near

BY John Hickey 10:40PM 07/15/2011

In the first two days after the All-Star break, the Mariners have lost two games, have fallen a couple of games further behind in the American League West standings and gotten the news that their closer of the previous two seasons needs season-ending surgery.

David Aardsma, who at this time a month ago seemed ready for a return to the big leagues after January hip surgery, now needs Tommy John surgery that will end his season and put his 2012 season in doubt.

As for the team he's leaving behind, they havent scored a run yet in the second half and only gotten one runner as far as third base. In 12 July games, the Mariners have been shut out four times in the wake of Fridays 4-0 loss to Texas.

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Hickey: There's no fresh start for Mariners

BY John Hickey 06:50AM 07/15/2011

The first game back from the All-Star break is, for teams who have been struggling, always a chance for a new beginning.

They get three days off when they dont have to go the ballpark, dont have to work out unless you want to and dont have to think about baseball.

The break is mental and emotional as much as physical.

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Hickey: Mariners in free fall at the break

BY John Hickey 09:20AM 07/11/2011

If there is a team that needs the All-Star Game break to take a step back and purge the system before the season resumes, that team would be the Mariners.

For a month and a half the Mariners played at a level that suggested Seattle could be a contender in the American League West. In the final five days before the break, the Mariners gave away all of that.

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