If you can't add more offense, then sure - add more pitching. We got a miracle year out of Chris Young, but he ain't a spring chicken any more and was never healthy.  We Macgyver'ed quite the season from him with some chewing gum and bubble wrap, but that was last year.
 
Hultzen is throwing very well.  Nothing says he's ready to do it in the bigs for 180 innings.  I still remember Bobby Madritsch throwing the stuffing out of the ball until he got his big-league shot... and then dislocating his shoulder in-game and ending his career (again).  He'd had labrum surgeries - hard to keep the joint as secure as you want it to be after a couple ruptures of that.  Danny tore his labrum, the shoulder capsule itself, and his rotator cuff. He might have 2000 more innings in him.  He might have two hundred.
 
If he has 2000 primo innings left in him then great!  He'll be worth a lot to us or someone else.  It's better to have an embarrassment of riches than to be desperately searching for a Randy Wolf to save our season.
 
I would still like to see us add a minor offensive piece if no major ones are available on the trade market. We can trade a couple of non-essential pieces and add some more offense this year, and if that leaves us the cash for another legit arm, great.
 
And we can afford it, both now and later.  Paxton, Walker and Elias are still dirt cheap for 3 years and club-controlled for longer.  The entire pen sans Rodney is working for Starbucks wages, and we have more arms available to keep that economic advantage going.  Seager just got his big money, but because we seem to be keeping Kivlehan and DJ we've got in-house replacements for Ackley and Morrison when they cost too much, and we've drafted nothing but primo OF bat prospects for the last two years.  Out of Wilson, O'Neill, Morgan and A-Jaxx we're gonna get ONE crusher out there on a corner - at least one.
 
We're set up to continue a run for a long time, in ways a lot of teams cannot be.  We just need health, and enough talent to win the West or snag a consolation wild card.  I like that we seem to aiming for the former, and not trying to get lucky enough for the latter.
 
Scoff away, bear market analysts... I mean SABRs.  I'd rather proceed like bulls at the moment. Go forth and make your fortune, Mariners.  I want banners, not cost-savings, family atmosphere and platitudes.

Olney used to be the Yankees beat reporter before he went national.  In the same way you go to John Clayton for Seahawks news even though he's national now, you go to Olney for how the Yankees feel about things.  They still feel burned on the Cliff Lee thing, even though we were right and Smoak was a better player and a better offer (for what that's worth).
Jack didn't back out on Upton with the D-Backs, Upton did. Jack isn't the one who vetoed last year's Cruz deal (or some others), management did.  *shrugs* I'm sure Jack is very thorough and not off-the-cuff when it comes to dealing away his prized minor leaguers, but I'm okay with that.  And if Jack has to carry the baggage of working for a meddling ownership/board room, then so be it.  It's his job to overcome both that handicap and that rep.
But I do have to laugh at Keith Law.  Per Shannon's article: 
1) Law, on Cruz: "The problem is they gave a four-year deal to a guy that was probably worth no more than a two-year contract, and frankly one-year would probably be appropriate given his age, history of performance and projections for where his performance goes from here,"
2) Law, on Cruz, cont'd: "It's kind of a bet they are going to be so good this year that they will get to the playoffs, advance in the playoffs and nobody is going to worry too much about the fact that they gave Cruz probably two years too many."
3) Olney, on the Cruz market: "I do think on a three-year deal the Orioles were absolutely comfortable in doing that," said Olney. "The O's like Cruz. I heard great things from Buck Showalter on Nelson and how he was around the team but the tipping point was the question of three years or four years for him. On a three-year deal I bet he would have had some other teams involved. I think that is where the Mariners separated themselves was with the fourth."
So Law would have been comfortable with a 1 year deal (the QO offered by the Orioles).  He might have stretched to 2 years if he had to.  There was NO WAY Cruz was getting less than 3 years, and if we offered three and the Orioles offered 3 (which Olney says they were doing), we'd have had to overbid to get him to move.  
Guess what?  That's what we did.  We offered 3 years, 19 mil to get him to come over.  The 4th year is free, works well for paper accounting, and if he's still decent in Year 4 we can play him.  If he's not decent, then you pay a minor leaguer to man his spot and you're fine.
Law is living in a dream world with what he feels is "fair market value."  Major league clubs might agree with him about what would be ideal, but several teams were willing to sign him for three years.
We paid the 4th year (or pro-rated more cash over 4 years) to get him to sign.  If we don't do that, he's still in Baltimore - one of our pennant rivals, y'know.  I'm okay with that theft and the premium we paid to make it happen.  One successful DJ Peterson / Austin Wilson / Alex Jackson in 3 years offsets the pain of Cruz's contract. A successful, vibrant farm makes all that checkbook heartache bearable.
People worry too much about tomorrow when they should be winning today.  We have one of the best, most consistent farms in the country. Continue to lean on it for wallet relief while you pay (a premium in some cases) for the things it has not yet provided.
 

But it looks to me that lineup will be light on OBP more than anything else. Kemp is fun to dream about, but he's only really interesting if he comes at a surprising discount due to his contract/abhorrent defense.
The fangraphs guys are almost certainly overstating their care when they say he's got negative value because of that stuff (ie they should pay you to take him off their hands), but they've got a point. As good a hitter as he is, he gives a lot of that value back with bad defense.
If the Dodgers want to build something around Taylor and send us some money, then great we'll live with the glove and hope that if he's finally healthy and he settles into right he can get back to something like average. But it sounds like they want more, so more power to them, best of luck, let's move on.
LL just wrote up a thing on Melky Cabrera that makes a lot of sense. And I'd add that Dexter Fowler would make a ton of sense too get one of those guys (and don't dump Michael Saunders for a bag of balls as the M's seem strangely determined to do) and the outfield turns into a real potential strength.

We were the worst OBP team in the AL last year, in fact.
But I believe we can improve that this year simply through subtraction: of plate appearances by disasters.
Gone or not-likely to see a lot of PT:
- Jones (328 PAs, .278 OBP)
- Smoak (276 PAs, .275 OBP)
- Hart (255 PAs, .271 OBP)
- Morales (239 PAs, .285 OBP)
- Romero (190 PAs, .234 OBP)
Almonte (113 PAs, .248 OBP)
That's 1400 PAs of pitiful on-base attempts.
Add to that the expected improvements in Zunino (.254 OBP) and Jackson (.267 OBP last year, .342 previously in entire career) and we don't look that bad off.  Heck, if Miller stays his .288 should bounce back significantly too (.410 career minor-league OBP - mostly BA-driven, but still).
Cruz has a lifetime .328 on-base percentage.  That ain't huge by any means, but it's better by a significant margin than half the Ms hitters last year.  The only hitters better: Cano, Seager, Saunders and Taylor - and the last two didn't play a lot.
Fowler would be good for our on-base, but then we have to figure out what to do with Austin Jackson in center. Melky makes more sense positionally, and I'd be fine with him even though it would mean dumping Saunders (I assume) to provide the position and playing time.
But we should take a large step forward in on-base simply by keeping Hart, Smoak, Morales and some baby-Mariners away from the lineup.
~G

Most of my best ideas come from other peoples' posts - I'm a counter-puncher, not an original thinker. ;-) But making an article here is very involved, and harder to do during the day.  Replies are easier from here at the moment.
Maybe when I cross-polinate to the wordpress mainframe...
But yes, I intend to make more articles now that my time is starting to free up.  If I can make myself do that instead of writing replies, even better!  Thanks Doc. :-)

It is a way to improve, but I don't know by how much and whether it is worth it for the money. But I think we are good for pitching after getting Happ and with Hultzen getting healthy fast. Get me Melkman or BUST baby