Dec 6, 2011; Dallas, TX, USA; Seattle Mariners general manager Jack Zduriencik answers questions on the MLB.com set during the MLB winter meetings at Hilton Anatole. What will happen during the 2012 MLB winter meeting and will Zduriencik be able to bring home a team that will win this year? Mandatory Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports

It’s no secret that the Seattle Mariners are in big need of some strong offense. General Manager Jack Zduriencik is very active at the 2012 winter MLB meetings in Nashville, Tennessee.

Rumor has it that there are three prospects for pitchers for the Seattle team: Danny Hultzen, James Paxton, and Taijuan Walker who may be up for trade when the Mariners go batter-hunting. While the Mariners do have some funds freed up to pick up a free agent this year, they may still need to pull some trade strings to get someone who will work hard for their team. It boils down to a big decision for the Mariners’ team management: Trade away young, unproven prospects for players that have shown their stuff or spend more money on their payroll for the roster.

With attendance falling, and confidence in the team low, the pressure is on for Zduriencik to build a team that can compete. A lot more than bringing in the walls at SafeCo Field is necessary in order to develop a winning team. The question is, will the team be able to gain the members it needs in order to compete against big-budget teams like the New York Yankees?

If the Oakland Athletics could pull out of a slump to become the AL West Champions this past year under the logic put forth by the Billy Beane Moneyball tactics that changed the face of baseball, perhaps the Mariners need to start thinking in an out-of-the box way as well.Who will get on base, and more importantly, once on base, who will be able to get home for the all-important score?

Some of the players the Mariners are rumored to be interested in include:

• Josh Hamilton
• Justin Upton
• Mike Napoli
• Nick Swisher
• Cody Ross
• Ryan Ludwick
• Mark Reynolds
• Garrett Jones

A lot of this will be contingent upon how much the M’s are able to put forward financially and who they are willing to trade for the various players on their wish list. What do you think the beloved Seattle team should be looking at in order to get to a pennant win in the 2013 season?

Not the West Coast.

[Note: This post was conceived by the darkest recesses of my brain.  The issues I will discuss may not even exist.  It is entirely possible that I made them up.  But please, enjoy the forthcoming rant.]

The East Coast Bias is, as defined by Wikipedia, “an expression referring to the tendency for sports writers in the United States to give greater weight and credibility to teams on the East Coast of the United States.”  The existence of this aspect of the bias is difficult to doubt, and, for the purpose of this article, I won’t bother to.  Whether the bias stems from East Coast cities being geographically centered (as opposed to West Coast cities, which are spread apart and considerably out of the way for a sports writer to travel to) or because most West Coast games finish too late to be written about in the next day’s newspaper (around 1 PM ET) is pretty irrelevant.  Either way, major sports media like ESPN do cover East Coast teams almost exclusively, which causes the end result of East Coast fans knowing virtually nothing about West Coast teams.  And it isn’t fair.  CC Sabathia’s probably going to win the Cy Young because he plays for the Yankees, and ESPN loves the Yanks; If CC played for the Mariners, he wouldn’t get nearly as much coverage.  It’s a vicious cycle of ignorance and contempt toward teams from the Westernmost third of the country.  Right?

Or so I thought.

I’m currently completing my second week as an undergraduate at Williams College.  I’ve encountered lots of people from lots of places, and the majority of them are from New York and Boston.  Having a chip on my shoulder about being a fan of a West Coast team, I was reluctant to talk about the Mariners for a while.  Eventually, someone brought up Seattle sports in conversation, asking me how Chone Figgins could have tanked as badly as he has.  Okay, at least the guy knows Chone Figgins.  Lots of people know who Chone Figgins is.  I was not ready to shed my cynicism.  More guys joined the discussion, commenting on the emergence of Jason Vargas and Doug Fister as dependable starters this year.  Wait, what?  Who are you people, and why do you know about a struggling team from Seattle?  Pretty soon the conversation had turned into a discussion of which AL West team had the best utility outfielder.  I was floored.  People know who Ryan Langerhans is?  Maybe the vicious cycle of ignorance and contempt wasn’t really a problem after all.

So my original hypothesis – that E.C. sports fans are sorely uneducated about W.C. teams – was, in a relatively small sample size of a school of about 2100 total students, apparently wrong.  I don’t know why this is.  It could be that increased use of the internet in the last decade allows people from either coast to check out teams from all time zones.  Maybe people are staying up later to catch Pacific time zone games.  Who knows.  Or it could be that the problem never existed in the first place.

Score one for Ryan Langerhans.