Mike Zunino sent down, John Hicks called up

It's a bad day for Z's:

Mariners have send Zunino down and called up Hicks.

— Shannon Drayer (@shannondrayer) August 28, 2015

To be frank I don't understand the timing of this move at all. The time to send Mike Zunino to Triple A was May, not late August. The Rainiers' season ends on September 7th and Zunino will most likely be back before then, with rosters expanding on September 1st.

I'm trying very, very hard to not read too much into stuff today but this coming within hours of Zduriencik's demotion comes across like a thinly veneered attempt to dump dirt on Jack's freshly buried body. No doubt the failure of Mike Zunino's development lies primarily with Zduriencik's front office but from the second he was let go everything became about how to improve for tomorrow. With John Hicks running a wRC+ of 68 in Tacoma and the aforementioned scheduling quirk I don't see how this does much other than provide some PR cover for ownership at the expense of further embarrassing poor Mike Zunino, who's been left to drown for a season and a half now.

There is always more to this kind of stuff than we see from our perspective so I can't and won't completely can the move. But, like so many of Jack Zduriencik's decisions this one appears to dove tail out of an illogical and reactive mindset. I hope I'm wrong.

When big, sweeping changes are made the moments afterwards are important for tone moving forward. I'd be lying if I said I found this one to be particularly reassuring. We'll see.