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I think Johjima was ALWAYS making the pitchers worse, not the fielders worse. It's not a coincidence to me that his OPS allowed has CONSISTENTLY been 100-150 points higher than his back-ups since he arrived in Seattle, even though it's gotten there in different ways each year. I think Johjima's problem is that he calls pitch sequences in which the Mariners are not confident...which results in harder hit balls in play, more home runs, more missed locations, etc.
Fair or not...Johjima is the single most important thing that was ever wrong with the Mariner defense.
Now...what do I make of the Mariner defense being middle of the pack? We started off playing great fundamental ball...but have since started making a gazillion errors (unearned runs do NOT influence ERA+ or hit rates!) which started dragging on our metrical showing. The primary culprits have been Betancourt, Balentien, and Lopez, none of whom we were counting on for great defense.
Here's how the Ms look by UZR:
Gutierrez: 8.2
Beltre: 7.2
Ichiro: 4.4
Chavez: 4.0
Griffey: 0.6
Branyan: -0.3
Cedeno: -1.0
Balentien: -1.0
Sweeney: -1.1
Lopez: -3.6
Betancourt: -10.0 (!)
Oh mon dio! Not only is Betancourt terrible this year...he's so terrible that he almost single-handedly erases the entire positive strength of the Mariner outfield defense! He and Lopez together a force of nature in infield sucktacularism.
Meanwhile, Cedeno's not good either...so don't get your hopes up about him stepping in for Betancourt and saving the Mariner defense. They need to acquire a glove-strong middle infielder...there's just no other way around it. And let's not underestimate how painful it will be to lose Beltre at third and how hard he will be to replace defensively.