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Or should I say excessive, on-paper profit safeguards, considering the team is still increasing in value every year regardless of spending.  The Mariners have always tied payroll to attendance.  It's kind of them to be honest about it.  Their payroll budget is Expected Income Minus 7 Million, give or take (if Jack begs, they might take a $5 million "hit" last year, for instance, and then cut payroll by an extra 5 the following year to make it up).
So on the one hand, Jack is doing what he's asked to do: maintain that on-paper-reported profitability.
OTOH, I have no idea if he's now trusted enough to spend big bucks.  We'll find out after the season when Ichiro's $20 mil evaporates and we have a ridiculous differential between our claimed $90 mil payroll and our actual player budget.
In the micro sense, I don't mind passing on specific players, or having The Plan give us a cheaper Montero instead of a more expensive option like Justin Upton.  It was Jack's job to add a MOTO bat, not an expensive bat, and he did his job.
On the macro level, I absolutely agree with you that having more evidence that LOOKS like our cheap-minded ownership is continuing their aribtrary salary constraints is frustrating.
I'm just hoping that the reasons for a potentially-lower payroll this year are different than years past, and it's only because it's occuring on the heels of previous budget slashes that the correlation is made. ;)
Of course, that might just be because I don't want to be mad right before Spring Training and our extremely talented youth movement takes the field, like you said.
~G