- According to Geoff Baker's entry from this afternoon, John McLaren's got work, doing domestic scouting stuff for the Rays and also serving abroad as an official at a few international baseball academies. Now, as it turns out this was news back in February, but this is the first I've heard of it, so I'll take this belated opportunity to say that I'm happy for him and thrilled that he's caught (back) on with a successful organization. In previous years I spit a lot of venom at this team and McLaren was the target of much of it, but I was angry and emotional and he was in over his head as a Major League manager, which can be an explosive combination. Now that time has changed pretty much everything, I've always gotten the impression that he's a really great guy, so it makes me smile that he's not just moping around in the house, and that he's serving as an asset to an organization that probably knows how to use him to his strengths. John: I'm sorry if I ever made things personal. I hope you never manage a Major League team again, and I hope you love it.
- The Arizona Fall League has PITCHfx. I'm not gonna lie, the proliferation of PITCHfx and the ubiquity of PITCHfx analysts has kind of made me numb to the whole thing, since so many people just give us the same ordinary information, but this is a rare opportunity to gain insight into some of our prospects instead of just current Mariners, so I encourage those of you who're curious to check it out. Of the pitchers we sent to Peoria, none of Phillippe Aumont, Nick Hill, Anthony Varvaro, or Josh Fields threw today, but they will soon and they will often, so that should be neat. For now: Joe Dunigan went 0-4, getting retired twice by Ian Kennedy and having a 1-0 strike called against him in the fourth on a slider that was well inside off the plate. The AFL needs robots too.
Here's your AFL homepage.
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