Mike Carp Joins Mariners, Mike Wilson Unjoins Mariners

With the Mariners' offense struggling so bad, it grew impossible for us to ignore Mike Carp's performance in Tacoma. Turns out it grew impossible for the Mariners' front office to ignore as well, and so tonight Carp has been promoted, with Mike Wilson going back down.

For Wilson, it's a bummer, if only because he earned his opportunity by hitting the crap (ed. note: or carp! lol) out of the ball and is now going right back where he was after collecting all of 28 Major League plate appearances. They weren't 28 good plate appearances, mind you, but Wilson barely got to play, that being the consequence of the M's running into a bunch of righties. Hopefully he can take something away from the experience aside from the higher paycheck and resumes doing what he was doing with the Rainiers.

But obviously, the story here is Carp, who came into action on Tuesday with a 1.074 OPS. Amazingly, that's only the 12th-best OPS in the PCL, but five of the guys ahead of him hit at elevation, and lately Carp has been hotter than the ash spewing out from the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcanic complex. The M's couldn't keep him down any longer - not with the big league offense hitting like it's hitting - and now we'll get to see how much of Carp's success can carry over.

That is, at least, assuming he gets to play. The situation is a little murky, with Carp, Greg Halman and Carlos Peguero all sort of sharing left field. But I can't imagine that Carp would be behind Peguero on the depth chart, and Peguero could very well be the guy who goes away whenever Dustin Ackley is promoted. Carp could also sneak his way into the occasional start at DH.

So it looks like Carp will get a real shot to show what he can do. It's important to be reasonable about your expectations, but it's also important to realize that Carp has taken a step forward, and that he's probably going to be an improvement. If he hits well, awesome. If he hits okay, fine. If he doesn't hit well, that sucks, but at least the M's will have given him an opportunity. Promoting Carp was the right move to make, and I'm looking forward to seeing some dingers in left that aren't packaged with the most aggressive batting approach in the entire Major Leagues.