I'm not a big "what if" person when it comes to looking back into the past, but a Larry Stone blog post this week hit on the one "what if" I often come back to when looking back at the Mariners.

Larry pointed to the Carlos Guillen trade before the 2004 season as being the move at the forefront of the Mariners' decline. The drop-off was indeed spectacular, going from a 93-win season to 63, 69, and 78 win seasons the following three years. Of course, over those same years Guillen became an All-Star and posted OPS of .921, .803 and .920, finishing 10th in MVP voting in 2006. Needless to say he thrived in Detroit when he was healthy.

I wasn't a fan of the trade at the time and would wonder from time to time if Guillen would have had the same breakout seasons had he stayed in Seattle, but it was a move that didn't happen that winter that I think hurt the Mariners even more. It was a move that appeared to be possible at the time and not only would have helped the team avoid a huge slide, but very well could have put them on the winning path.

The Mariners missed out on their offseason target that year -- shortstop Miguel Tejada. Tejada was a free agent for the first time in his career and a highly sought bat. General manager Bill Bavasi had discussions with Tejada's agent, Fern Cuza, at the winter meetings but Tejada would leave New Orleans with a six-year, $72 million contract from the Baltimore Orioles.

The deal at the time raised some eyebrows, not so much for the dollar amount, but rather the amount of the years. Six years was something Bavasi was clearly not willing to do. Throughout the offseason he talked about not being a fan of long-term deals because, in his words, they always seemed to end badly. There were reports at the time that he may have gone five years with Tejada but six was out of the question.

What happened next? Many will remember what happened down the road with Tejada. In 2007 he was listed in the Mitchell Report as having received a shipment of steroids and in 2009 he pleaded guilty of perjury for lying to Congress in his testimony about performance-enhancing drugs. There were certainly headaches that came with Tejada, but let's take a look at what he did on the field over the length of that contract.

In the first four years of the deal he put up OPS numbers of .894 .865 .878 and .799. His wins above replacement (WAR) for the same years: 6.5, 5.1, 5.2, 2.4. In 2004 he drove in 150 runs. Over the life of the contract he posted a 25.3 WAR and Fangraphs put his overall value at $94.3 million ($66.7 million in the first four years alone).

After failing to land Tejada, the Mariners went with Plan B. They signed Scott Spiezio (yes, that still hurts to type) and traded Guillen. They then embarked on the beginning of their downfall as Stone wrote, or the "era of the black hole at shortstop" as I prefer to call it.

Rich Aurilia was the first to take the ball and didn't last long, hitting .241/.304/.337/.641 before being traded to the San Diego Padres. Who would take his place? None other than a 20-year-old Jose Lopez, who played 57 games at short that year.

The following year the unforgettable Wilson Valdez was claimed off waivers just three days before the start of the season. He got the start at shortstop on Opening Day after Pokey Reese missed most of spring training and all of his Mariners career with a bad shoulder. Lopez eventually underwent wrist surgery that would sideline him for over a month and Valdez ended up sharing the position with Mike Morse and Yuniesky Betancourt.

In 2006, order would be restored at shortstop with Betancourt taking over the position. Yes, I am being very sarcastic here.

To recap, in the six years after Guillen was traded and after they whiffed on Tejada, the Mariners' shortstops were: Rich Aurilia, Jose Lopez, Wilson Valdez, Mike Morse, Yuniesky Betancourt and Ronny Cedeno after Betancourt was traded. The total WAR for that group over that time span? A whopping 0.8, not quite a full win.

Over a six year period, Tejada: 25.3 WAR; Assorted Mariners: 0.8 WAR.

It gets worse. One of the first moves after failing to land Tejada was to sign Spiezio to a three-year, $9 million contract. Spiezio, as you no doubt remember, was a disaster, putting up a negative WAR, and was released in the second year of his deal after playing in just 29 games.

Hindsight, of course, is always 20/20 and no one knows what would have happened if the Mariners had taken a different path in the winter of 2003, but that is the time period I always go back to when I look at pinpointing what went wrong. The kicker is, they could have made the decision to land Tejada and keep Guillen, moving him to third.

If those two had duplicated their 2004 numbers in Seattle things could have looked very different.

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