T-Mobile Mariners

This post is completely inspired by a similar (or maybe the better word is identical) post on Lookout Landing. Using my phone (perhaps you can take educated guesses on what I have from the title) and letting it predict what I'm trying to text, here are most of the interesting guesses my phone came up with:

Michael Pineda As A Swingman

One week in, the big story in Mariners camp is whether or not Michael Pineda will crack the starting rotation. He turned in a solid opening Cactus League performance, which was enough to cause a stir. Imagine what will happen if he goes out and pitches four or five productive innings.

An issue with Pineda is limiting his innings. He pitched in a career-high 139.1 frames last season, and pitching him every fifth day in a major-league rotation puts him on track to toss 160-180 innings, even assuming a pretty strict pitch count. Plus, Pineda is likely to make it hard to pull him at his pitch limit in some starts, because he has the kind of stuff that will flash brilliance at times.

It is time to revisit an idea I wrote about on my blog a year ago. I dubbed it the swingman position, and I laid out the rationale behind it with this post. In essence, I think it would make sense for many teams to keep four starting pitchers in a regular rotation, skipping the fifth starter as often as possible. When the fifth starter is needed, a team would use two or three swingmen to get through the first six to seven innings of a ballgame.

The Newest M's, Laffey and Paxton

Thanks to a busy work schedule, it has been forever since I posted. Plus, let's be honest, the most exciting thing about the first week of spring training is that baseball is back. The games themselves... well, are baseball in name.

Still, a weekend post on the first week of spring training is likely in order. For now though, why not talk about a pair of southpaws the Mariners have added since opening up camp?