2/26: Spring Training Open Game Thread

As the Mariners look to ultimately exchange all of these marbles for the prized Golden Saguaro, there's no such thing as a day off, no such thing as a game worth overlooking. Every day is a battle, a battle for a cause, and in the end, the Mariners might just win the war. It is a bloody war, the battlefields littered with bodies and marbles. Many of the bodies simply tripped over the marbles but these bodies are indistinguishable from the others strewn about, faces twisted in agony. One dreams of one day holding and hoisting the Golden Saguaro before his beloved compatriots. One lives in terror of missing out on the opportunity. This is the reason they play. This and all the other reasons too.

Details:

• MARINERS
• AGAINST BREWERS
• ON THE ROAD SOMEWHERE
• 12:05pm Pacific
• Gameday link
• audio streamed online and broadcast on the radio on a delay

The Mariners' starting lineup:

Franklin Gutierrez, CF
Michael Saunders, LF
Michael Morse, RF
Justin Smoak, DH
Kelly Shoppach, C
Mike Jacobs, 1B
Robert Andino, SS
Vinnie Catricala, 3B
Carlos Triunfel, 2B

Something not a lot of people have talked about is that Mike Jacobs and Robert Andino appear to have been teammates with the Florida Marlins between 2006-2008. I just confirmed this on Baseball-Reference, and here's the box score from the last time they appeared in the same regular-season game for the same side. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the eighth:

M. Jacobs R. Madson Double to RF (Line Drive to Deep RF Line); Cantu to 3B
Robert Andino pinch runs for Mike Jacobs (1B) batting 4th

Andino wouldn't go on to score. This is something not a lot of people have talked about because nobody cares, and also because it's god damned impossible to remember that Mike Jacobs and Robert Andino are presently in Mariners camp. One wonders if Jacobs and Andino will exchange stories about their Marlins experiences this afternoon. Probably not, since they probably would've done that earlier in spring training. No need to wait for game action because that wouldn't make any sense.

The Mariners' lineup starts off promising, in that it starts off with regulars. It pretty quickly drops off, as lineups do, but as yesterday demonstrated you never know who might be the February hero. It could be any of them! It could also be none of them. At present the Brewers' lineup hasn't yet been posted, so it's still a possibility that the Brewers will forfeit. It is shown that the Brewers will start Yovani Gallardo on the mound, so maybe Gallardo will throw without any position players behind him, like he's throwing Mariners batting practice. That would be thoughtful of him, and weird. Remember earlier how you were actually briefly interested in the fact that Mike Jacobs and Robert Andino were teammates? You'll read anything about baseball this time of year. You can't help yourself. You can't distinguish between what's important and what's meaningless trivial bullshit. It's spring training for the players, and it's spring training for your brain.

Starting on the mound for the Mariners will be Hisashi Iwakuma, who's looking to have a better spring than he did a year ago, when he came to America and did his best Charlie Brown impression. It was Iwakuma's allegedly woeful arm strength that led to his essentially being benched for the first couple months of the season. Now Iwakuma is looking to not suck, which is a noble goal, if also a modest one. In fairness, though, one of the Mariners' biggest problems over the past few seasons has been a lack of suck avoidance. Not all the players need to be good. All the players just need to not suck, and then we can go from there.

After Iwakuma will be Joe Saunders, I think, and then I don't know who else because I'm writing this up before I get the game notes. Joe Saunders will look to do whatever the hell it is Joe Saunders does regularly. He'll throw pitches and a lot of them won't be hit hard and maybe some of them will be hit hard and maybe there will be runs scored against him or maybe there won't. Then Saunders will be done throwing pitches until the next time he throws pitches in a competitive game. When you boil it all down baseball sure is repetitive and uninteresting. It is February 26. How many more months of this are there again? Wait, the baseball season is how long? Who agreed to that! Jesus Christ! Somebody tell the president!