Does the headline need any further commentary? Greg Johns provides some and some additional details about how the Mariners will handle their early winter training in preparation for the season opening trip to Japan. Greg also writes about Mike Carp spearheading a tribute to Greg Halman. The Mariners will unfortunately spend a second straight season with a death in the family at its forefront and based on how 2011 went (tribute-wise, not player performance-wise), I believe the organization will handle it with suitable grace.

But I don't want to get too bogged down in that just this moment. Pitchers and catchers reported. Baseball is almost back and regardless of how sucky the team was and might be, baseball is always better than no baseball. By the way, among the players checking in today was Jesus Montero.

Not long ago, the Los Angeles Angels signed Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson on the same Thursday morning. You remember, it was awful. We knew the Angels had money to throw around, but we didn't know the Angels had that kind of money to throw around, and it came out shortly thereafter that the Angels were supported by a new 20-year TV deal they'd negotiated worth $3 billion. The Angels had an existing TV deal, Arte Moreno opted out of it, and then he secured a way more awesome TV deal.

When that news came out, I reviewed the landscape of TV deals in the AL West. As you'll recall, I wrote that the Mariners were tied to a ten-year deal with FSN Northwest worth $450 million through 2020. That's not a bad contract, but the money pales in comparison to the money in the Angels' new contract, and in the Rangers' new contract.

Well, now I have good news. The Mariners won't have to wait until 2021 to begin a new, more lucrative deal. As Fanshotted earlier and as originally written at Forbes, it turns out the Mariners' contract with FSN Northwest or ROOT Sports or whatever contains an opt-out clause after the 2015 season. That's the halfway point. The Mariners can and probably will opt out and negotiate a substantially bigger deal.

What kind of deal? That's hard to say now, but the quoted Forbes source goes with "at least $70 million a year," which would be a step up. That would be comparable to the Rangers' contract, and while the Angels' contract would still leave the Mariners in the dust, they'd be choking down less dust, and, of course, the Angels should have the bigger contract, given the market size. The source says that the Mariners could probably squeeze a healthy sum out of Fox because Fox wouldn't want to lose the Mariners' broadcast rights to Comcast.

The subject of broadcast rights is not a very interesting one. It is surely interesting to some, but to few. What most sports fans care about is their teams getting good players and winning. A bigger TV contract would provide the Mariners with more money. If the Mariners have more money, they will be more able to get and keep good players, which would help them win. Even though the subject matter here is unexciting, hey, all right, more money. What's good for the Mariners is good for us, and having this opt-out clause is good for the Mariners.

The Seattle Mariners will have had 18 (since no playoffs in 1994) opportunities to win a four-team AL West when the 2012 season concludes. As of now, they've accomplished that feat three times in 17, one below their theoretical expected number. Good job, Mariners, you're even bad compared against abstract mathematical reality. The division will inflate to five teams starting in 2013 and with that so goes the built-in advantage of fewer competitors that the Mariners have enjoyed, but not really seized, for almost two decades.

However, that's coming to an end with the move of the Houston Astros into the division and the expansion of the playoffs to two wild cards. All that really matters of course is how this affects the Mariners. Who cares about anything else?

As I just recently (very recently) explained here on FanGraphs (go there to read though each team's current probability), in 2012, the Mariners will begin the season with a 31.8%* chance at the playoffs. It's been that way since the switch to six divisions which means they should have been expected to see six trips, all things being equal. Instead we saw four. Great job, Mariners, you look even worse now!

*Each AL West team has a 25% chance at an automatic berth and then a 75% (since they can't win both) chance at a wild card shot, which carries a 9% (1/11) probability. 0.25*1 + 0.75*1/11 = 31.8%. The formula comes from Bayes' theorem.

The odds of winning the division crown fall to 20% (1 in 5) starting in 2013, but baseball is adding a second wild card to the mix. For the Mariners (and for all 29 other teams), that means their level-playing-field probability will then be 33%*. Adding the Astros and a second wild card team actually increases the Mariners' (and Rangers' and Athletics' and Angels') odds of meaningful October play by a very slight margin.

*1 in 5 x 1 + 4 in 5 x 2/12

For those disgruntled Astro fans, they might want to heed this post as well. Their club, stuck in the six-team NL Central and 16-team National League currently face the worst level odds in baseball at just 23.1% each season. Their move to the AL helps grant them an increase of almost 10%.

The unofficial report was already fanshotted, but now we have confirmation:

Mariners Exec. VP & GM of Baseball Operations Jack Zduriencik has agreed on a multi-year extension of his existing contract with the club.

Zduriencik was brought in on a three-year contract back in the fall of 2008. That contract is about to expire, and from the sounds of things, the Mariners are pleased enough with him and his bevy of assistants that they'll bring him back for 2012 and beyond. Which isn't to say that Zduriencik couldn't still be let go at any time, since GMs don't get tenure, but one gets the sense that Zduriencik would have to really screw up for next season to be his last. The organization looks to be making a commitment.

This news didn't grab me by the eyeballs when I saw it on Twitter, mostly because I never believed the Mariners would change course. I hadn't written about Zduriencik's job security over the summer because I was never concerned about it. That said, the Mariners are in last place for the second year in a row, and a lot of fans have talked about whether a new administration was needed, so this answers that. Or actually, this doesn't answer that. This doesn't answer the question of whether or not a new administration is needed. It does answer the question of whether or not a new administration is going to be brought in. It will not, for now.

Obviously, we see the Zduriencik front office as being a little less shiny now than we did early on. There have been mistakes. There's Chone Figgins. There was the whole Josh Lueke thing. There was the questionable Brandon League trade. There's less blind faith on our part that the front office won't get anything wrong.

But the real matter isn't whether the Jack Zduriencik front office is perfect. No front office is perfect. The real matter is whether the Jack Zduriencik front office is good, and good enough, and I think that it is. The Mariner higher-ups clearly agree.

I don't think that I need to spell out for you just how much more young talent there is in the system now than there was when Z first came on. When Z first came on, the Mariners were kind of a wasteland. Nowadays, I wouldn't say they have more young talent than any other organization in baseball, but they're near the top of the list. They've traded well, they've drafted well, and they've developed well.

That isn't all Zduriencik, but it's Zduriencik and his assistants, and if you remove the former, you lose most, if not all, of the latter. Not only is Zduriencik a smart guy, but he works with a lot of smart guys, many of whom he himself brought in.

Young talent isn't all that a team needs to succeed, of course, but young talent makes for the foundation, and the Cliff Lee trade shows that Zduriencik isn't afraid of making a huge splash for a veteran star when the opportunity presents itself. The Mariners are presently obsessed with hoarding youth, but that's because they need youth, and if and when they return to greater relevance, there's no reason to believe that the front office won't be able to make a corresponding adjustment.

The Jack Zduriencik front office has its flaws. More flaws, probably, than some. But it has fewer flaws than most, and the bottom line is: do you trust these guys to guide the Mariners to better days ahead? I do. The Mariners do. Our minds might be changed down the road, but there was no good reason to make a switch now, and I look forward to seeing how this plan comes together. As much as my sad little heart can believe, I believe.

Dustin Ackley's batting line on May 7 was .218/.354/.353 and I wrote this piece about how his low ball in play average was probably not a concern going forward.

Ackley is missing seven hits if you assume his true talent BABIP is at that .300 range. Add those seven hits back and his batting average jumps from .218 to .277, his triple slash line becomes .277/.413/.412

Dustin Ackley since May 7th has a BABIP over .400 and has brought his triple-slash line up to .263/.383/.417. He is doing well against both lefties and righties and I have still not heard any legitimate concerns over his defense. We already knew he could work counts. Ackley is starting to show that he can hit for modest power as well as handle second base.

The question then becomes about his time table to Seattle and Jack Zduriencik appeared to address that today when on the radio he surmised that Ackley would get the call "sooner rather than later." Naturally, that doesn't actually mean anything and so we're still left with our initial estimation of early June being the best guess unless something dramatic happens in the meantime.

Ackley's promotion would seem to spell the end of Jack Wilson on the team as Luis Rodriguez is needed to fill in on the left side of the infield and Adam Kennedy can sort of fill in at first base as well. However, that would stack up the left-handed hitters so who knows. I have no special attachment to Jack Wilson, but neither do I to Adam Kennedy.

As a post-note, Jack also commented in his radio interview that Franklin Gutierrez was a week away from joining the team which means one of Michael Saunders, Mike Wilson or Carlos Peguero will head back to Tacoma. It probably will not be Saunders simply because the team needs a backup at center field, but it's not like Saunders has earned a stay.

Dustin Ackley is off to a slow start this season. His OPS currently stands at .707 thanks mostly to a really low batting average. His .136 isolated discipline (OBP-AVG) and his .135 isolated power (SLG-AVG) are fine. Ackley profiles as a high average kind of hitter and I think we'd all be perfectly happy with a .280/.415/.415 batting line from him. Sure, more power would be nice at his peak, but I'm willing to settle for anything involving a .400+ on base percentage. 

Ackley started slowly last season as well, so this may be a thing. Or it may not be. It's his second professional season. Anyways, I wanted to focus on that low batting average for the moment because as stated above, that's about his only offensive worry*. He is batting .218 and that's no good. He's basically some Chone Figgins/Jack Cust hybrid right now and we don't want that. But is that .218 a cause for actual concern?

*Defensively, you'd have to ask someone who's been watching him play. Any T-Towners want to chime in?

I think it is not. Ackley's batting average on his balls in play (BABIP) is abysmally low at .229. It's a small sample but he carried a more usual .300 rate last season between West Tenn (now Jackson) and Tacoma. There has been no real change in his batted ball profile this season compared to last. He's getting roughly the same percentage of grounders, flies, line drives and pop ups so we would expect a similar BABIP.

Ackley is missing seven hits if you assume his true talent BABIP is at that .300 range. Add those seven hits back and his batting average jumps from .218 to .277, his triple slash line becomes .277/.413/.412 if you assume those seven are all singles. With that line we'd turn to obsessing over him just needing to add a little more power (hey, it's freaking cold out if you hadn't noticed), but truthfully we'd be pretty pleased. I know many of us are impatient to see him dazzle, but take heart. He has shown some real improvement this season in his plate approach which was already fantastic and the hits will come. Dustin Ackley will be here soon.

Major League Baseball gives out a ton of awards. Some of them we care about. Some of them we don't care about. Some of them we only care about when we're given a reason to care about them. This is one of those last ones.

Michael Pineda named AL Rookie of Month for April, beating out Zach Britton, Aaron Crow, Mark Trumbo, Jordan Walden

Pineda's only the third Mariner to win a Rookie of the Month award, along with Rafael Soriano and Ichiro. And while a Rookie of the Month award isn't the same as a Rookie of the Year award, winning the former presumably improves one's odds of winning the latter, so that's neat. Oakland's Andrew Bailey won the AL ROY in 2009 and Texas' Neftali Feliz won the AL ROY in 2010, so it'd be nice to see Seattle's Pineda get it in 2011, and then for no Angel to even come close to getting it in 2012 because the whole team spent the entire season battling influenza.

For the curious, the April vote-getters:

Pineda: 5 starts, 31.1 innings, 2.01 ERA, 12 BB, 30 K

Britton: 5 starts, 31.2 innings, 2.84 ERA, 12 BB, 19 K

Crow: 11 appearances, 13.2 innings, 0.00 ERA, 5 BB, 14 K

Trumbo: 91 PA, .239/.264/.432, 2 BB, 23 K

Walden: 13 appearances, 12.1 innings, 0.73 ERA, 6 BB, 12 K

Starter Pineda beat out a less effective starter, an effective middle reliever, an effective closer, and a powerful first baseman with little concept of the strike zone. Other interesting rookies that apparently didn't get any support include Kyle Drabek, Jeremy Hellickson and J.P. Arencibia. Pineda isn't going to coast to the AL ROY, but he looks to be off to the strongest start.

As noticed by perfectstrat in the Fanshots, and as is currently on Twitter, the word is spreading that James Paxton has reached an agreement with the Mariners on a contract. There isn't any confirmation from any official sources just yet, so I can't say this is true with 100% certainty, but it appears to be legitimate, so in the event that it is, that's good news.

Paxton was the 37th overall pick in 2009, but you'll know him for being the Mariners' fourth-round pick in 2010. The 22-year-old southpaw was once considered the ace at the University of Kentucky, but the NCAA ruled him ineligible for his senior season so he went to the indy leagues, causing his draft stock to drop. Still, while some of the shine's off, he's young, he's talented, and he immediately becomes one of the organization's better pitching prospects.

Paxton works off a fastball in the low- to mid-90s, and reports say his breaking ball is effective but inconsistent. He also has a changeup, as he must, but his change doesn't get a lot of attention, implying that it isn't anything special. It's a potential-laden repertoire in need of further development if Paxton wants to stick in a starting rotation. I don't know what people think of his mechanics, but I'm also not very interested in what people think of his mechanics.

Here's what this really comes down to: I don't know a lot about James Paxton. You don't know a lot about James Paxton. The picture's kind of weird now that he's spent so much time away from college ball, and there are no guarantees that he even has success in the minors, let alone the Majors. But the Mariners saw fit to make Paxton their fourth-round pick last summer, and now - if the rumors are true - they get to add that talent to their system. The system's in better shape with Paxton than without him, and that's reason enough to be happy about this.

James Paxton fun fact: James Paxton was the 132nd overall pick in last year's draft. Other 132nd picks: current Mariner Chone Figgins, current Mariner NRI Sean Kazmar, and current Mariner minor leaguer Steven Hensley. Ron Gardenhire was the 132nd overall pick back in 1979.