Thursday, June 7, 2001 | 11:21 a.m.
Even from the inside looking in, Justin Kaye has been surprised with the success of baseball's hottest team, the Seattle Mariners.
The Mariners improved on their major league best 46-12 record by whipping the Texas Rangers 7-3 Wednesday night at Safeco Field for their 14th straight win.
Kaye, a reliever who was drafted by the Mariners out of Bishop Gorman High School in 1995, was finally invited to big league camp in March.
He remembered the team's outlook at spring training in Peoria, Ariz.
"In spring training, it was bad because (Mariners manager) Lou Piniella was talking about the hitting not coming around," Kaye recalled. "But it's been amazing what the team has done.
"It's good to see. One of my good friends, (pitcher) Brian Fuentes, is up there now. I'm excited to see him up there. If the big league team is doing well, it makes everything at ease in the minor league system."
Make that easy and uneasy at the same time.
Because Seattle is playing so well, there are fewer reasons to tinker with the team and promote guys such as Kaye, who have started the year just as hot.
So far, Kaye is 2-1 with a 3.24 ERA. In 27 2/3 innings pitched, he has struck out 38 and allowed only 19 hits.
The 6-foot-4 righty started spring training with the Mariners and appeared in three games before being sent to triple-A.
In his spring big league debut against the St. Louis Cardinals, Kaye was so wired that he still can't remember what happened against the first batter (his mom, Rita, believes he gave up a home run). But he retired the next three.
"It was amazing," Kaye said. "It's something I wish all minor league players could see and experience.
"It's so different. The atmosphere is so exciting. Everything they ever told you about being in the big leagues, it's almost mulitiplied by 100. The food's better, the service, the crowd at the stadium. It's amazing."
So, too, has been Kaye's transformation from a skate-boarding football player to a baseball prospect.
Kaye began playing baseball when he was around 12 at the suggestion of his friend's dad after he and his mother moved to Las Vegas from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.
It became immediately apparent that Kaye could throw the ball hard, but he had control problems.
That didn't stop Kaye from predicting he'd one day be drafted by a major league team.
"I thought about turning pro in junior high," Kaye said, laughing. "In eighth grade, I bet a friend $5,000, I'll get drafted one day.
"He was Steve Humm, a Bishop Gorman quarterback. Now when I'm home, I always say 'you owe me $5,000.' "
Kaye made the bet more in jest than as a testament to his ability as he opted to play football as a freshman at Bishop Gorman instead of baseball.
Kaye credits CCSN coach (then Bishop Gorman coach) Tim Chambers for urging him to play baseball the following year.
"Chambers had said to me, 'What are you doing? Get your act together.' So I played Legion ball after that year and realized that I had some sort of talent in pitching.
"I came back sophomore year and one-hit Green Valley in my first start. Then I realized I think I have a shot at doing it."
For a while, Kaye looked like a long shot to make it.
Drafted by the Mariners in the 19th round, frustration set in his third season while he was pitching at Seattle's low single-A affiliate in Wisconsin. A coach told Kaye the organization wanted to convert him from a reliever to a starting pitcher which turned out to be a mistake.
Kaye went 8-12 that year with a 7.30 ERA walking 104 batters in 127 innings.
"There were times in the past I wanted to quit," Kaye said. "Didn't know what I wanted to do.
"In 1997 when they decided they wanted to convert me into a starter, that was bad. I mean, most starting pitchers pitch with four pitches, I have two. I'm a swing-and-miss pitcher. I couldn't pitch past the third inning.
"It was driving me up a wall and all I wanted to do was quit."
Counseled by his family, friends and Chambers, Kaye decided not to give up and by the end of the season the Mariners moved him back to the bullpen where he belonged.
The following season Kaye started the year in Wisconsin before being promoted to the team's high single-A affiliate, then at Lancaster, Pa. He spent all of 1999 in Lancaster and all of last year at double-A New Haven, Conn.
At New Haven, Kaye went 2-5 with a 2.67 ERA while posting a career-best 109 strikeouts in 64.1 innings.
The Mariners rewarded him by adding him to their 40-man roster last winter.
"He's off to a good start," said Benny Looper, the Mariners' director of minor league player development. "We think he has a chance to be a major league pitcher one day.
"He seems to have a good makeup to work out of the pen. He's got a resilient arm where he doesn't need a lot of rest and is a good competitor."
When Kaye will finally make it to the show is a question he tries not to think about.
Were Kaye pitching for another organization such as Texas, Tampa Bay or Kansas City, chances are he would already be there.
"I see it as, I'll get my turn sometime," Kaye said. "There's no reason to be bitter about it.
"At times, I'll realize I'm that close so it kind of puts a smile on your face."
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