Well, I was hoping anyway and, I think I had pretty good reason behind that hope . . .
will he won’t he, will he won’t he stand pat today?

And, sure enough, he did!

Here’s Jack’s reasoning via Greg Johns’ Mariner Musings blog . . .

“There were discussions,” Zduriencik said. “But at the end, I didn’t think there was the right situation for us at this time. There’s an obligation here to our fans and certainly to the players here on this team. They’ve played well recently.”

Zduriencik chose to hang on to veteran hitters Kendrys Morales, Michael Morse and Raul Ibanez, as well as reliever Oliver Perez, starter Joe Saunders and shortstop Brendan Ryan, all players on one-year deals who could become free agents at season’s end in the hope of finishing strong and setting the right tone going forward.

“I think we have a good young big league club right now. You see that in front of your eyes,” he said. “To detract from it, I think it would have been devastating to some of the guys in this clubhouse. I think it would have been the wrong message to send. So you stay the course and watch this club play the next couple months.”

While the Mariners could lose those key veterans without any return, Zduriencik says there is a benefit to keep them for the final two months.

“When you let a guy leave, it’s harder to get a guy back,” he said. “Once you break your marriage up and you want to go back and ask that player to come back, it’s much harder to do. He probably feels somewhat betrayed. Now you have to start all over again.

“Having these guys here – certainly they have the right to walk – but we also have the first right to re-sign them if we choose,” he said. “And I think that’s important to a player, especially if they like Seattle. If they are saying, ‘I’d like to be part of this thing going forward. I like what’s going on. It would be great.’ Who knows, we may have the inside track on some of these players back here. That was a little bit of the thinking as well.”

OK, they didn’t stand totally pat . . .