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The Seattle Mariners Have Finalized Their Opening Day Starting Lineup

Not much in here that's surprising, but courtesy of Greg Johns and several other sources, we know what Eric Wedge is going to be rolling out there in tomorrow night's opener.

Ichiro, RF
Figgins, 3B
Bradley, LF
Cust, DH
Smoak, 1B
Olivo, C
Langerhans, CF
Ryan, SS
Wilson, 2B

(Felix, SP)

Against the righty Trevor Cahill, the Mariners will start three lefties, three switch-hitters, and three righties, with Cahill starting off by facing five consecutive guys batting from the left side. Cahill's actually been quite good against lefties so I don't know how much this matters, but hey, look at that, baseball analysis!

Aside from batting order, which doesn't matter, the only personnel issue of interest is that Ryan Langerhans will start over Michael Saunders in center field. You could make an argument for either one, and right now they're players of similar value, but Langerhans had the stronger spring while Saunders is still working on new tweaks, so it's hard to be too emotional about this. People will say that Saunders "needs to be playing every day" while he's up here, but I don't think a few games will make a difference with regard to his development either way.

And also Brandon League has officially been named as the interim closer. The good thing about handing our narrow ninth inning leads to an inconsistent Brandon League is that we'll no longer be handing our narrow eighth inning leads to an inconsistent Brandon League. Gotta look at the bright side.