Erasmo Ramirez has been optioned to Tacoma and Brandon Maurer will be (temporarily) taking his place on the big club.
Ramirez optioned to Tacoma. Mauer called up for relief help
— Ryan Divish (@RyanDivish) June 25, 2014
Maurer going to the pen, Smoak remains on rehab assignment.
— Shannon Drayer (@shannondrayer) June 25, 2014
Maurer will be spending his time in the bullpen, which has been taxed a bit lately, including Erasmo only making it through 4 1/3 innings last night. While Erasmo has had better results than the last trip up, his peripherals still aren't great. In June he's been walking as many guys as he's striking out and averaging less than 5 innings per start. Let's call him The Alamo or Thermopylae, besieged by attackers and facing imminent death but bravely holding on until relief arrives. Luckily for him, relief arrived and he has survived to fight another day. Eventually. Maybe. We hope he turns it around because he can be a lot of fun when he's on.
So why Maurer? Why not a starter to replace Ramirez? What the hell is this, Maurer has been as bad as Ramirez!?! GET ANGRY!
Or, no, this is good news actually, potentially great news. The relief help was mentioned several times above. Worst case, with all the off days, they are able to skip the 5th starter and Felix Day and Iwakuma Day get moved up. Awesome, we like those days. Then we have this extra reliever guy to rest the "near best bullpen in baseball", and that can't hurt. The Mariners will get blown out in a game soon (not pessimism, it just happens) and this Maurer cat can pop in and soak up some meaningless innings.
But let us get to the not worst case scenario. Get excited. Nope, not good enough. This is when the guy teaching the class is disappointed at the tepid response he receives when he says "Good Morning". More excited, your team is 6 games above .500 and it's almost July and not all the breaks have been in their favor to make that true. Your team has scored 20 runs against the Red Sox in two games and is going for the sweep tonight with Iwakuma on the mound. Your team is "good"? And it may be getting better.
Here is Bob Dutton with the potential future exciting gift you may be receiving as a result of today's move. I'm choosing to believe this is true because we've been expecting it. When Tai Walker was healthy, fully recovered from that scary ass shit we've all been dreading, he would be on his way up. Last night, he appeared to be all the way back healthy and ready to come up. Complete game shutout, 4 hits, 8 Ks, only one walk. And maybe most importantly, 109 pitches.
The Mariners are 6 games over .500 and their projected 3rd starter hasn't even pitched a game yet. Hopefully in the next week we'll get to see that first start (of many). Soooo, GET EXCITED!