Mariners Moose Tracks, 1/11/17: Pitching and Hitting Summits, Bargain Bats, and a George Lucas Museum

Good morning folks!

What to talk about today? Hmm...well the pitching and hitting summits are currently underway. Unless I’m missing something, nobody ever announced the full list of players who are participating. That’s kind of unfortunate. However, a recent article from Greg Johns gave us a few names — even if they’re pretty much the ones we expected.

For the hitters: Mike Zunino, Dan Vogelbach, Ben Gamel, D.J. Peterson, Kyle Lewis (!), Mitch Haniger, and Guillermo Heredia are among those participating. The pitching list includes Andrew Moore, Thyago Vieira, and Ariel Miranda.

This list should give you a general idea of the players they’re looking for growth from. If you look at last year’s results, some players who struggled even after the hitting summit — such as Chris Taylor and Alex Jackson — were shipped elsewhere. That doesn’t mean the list above are all players on the cusp. Some of them may be, while others are just prospects that the team is keeping a hyper-focus on.

But according to the article from Johns, some of these players who are selected will kind of serve as player-coaches.

McKay says players from each level of the organization will be represented so they can take the ideas back to their teams and help continue the process along with the coaches.

[...]

"It's not a top-25 prospect camp. That's not how it's meant to be," McKay said. "It's representative of guys at every level from the big leagues on down."

So the summits will include guys like Mike Zunino, who are established big league players. It might also feature a utility infielder from Everett or Arkansas’ fourth outfielder.

It’s certainly an interesting process. I highly encourage you give the article a full read.

Now lets’ see what’s going on in the rest of the baseball world.

News from the SEA...

• Bob Dutton at The News Tribune breaks down the Mariners fifth starter battle, which includes as many as six candidates.
• Kyle Glaser and JJ Cooper with Baseball America talked to Kyle Lewis on their latest podcast to discuss his rehab process.

Stories around baseball...

• The Tigers signed a metric crapton of players to minor league deals, including Brendan Ryan!
• The A’s have agreed to a one-year contract with utilityman Trevor Plouffe.
• Grant Brisbee ranks all 30 MLB teams by how “tortured” their fanbases are. The Mariners are not first!
• Former Rangers starter Alexi Ogando has signed with a KBO team.
• Eno Sarris at Fangraphs finds a reason for Royals fans to be optimistic about Nate Karns.
• It looks like the Orioles are planning to move on from Mark Trumbo. So now where the heck is he going to sign?
• Dave Cameron at Fangraphs thinks teams are overcompensating for their previous lust for power bats. Should the M’s consider pouncing on one of these sluggers at a low price?

Anders’ picks...

• DeMarcus Cousins is tired of being asked whether he wants to keep playing in Sacramento.

• There’s going to be a George Lucas museum in Los Angeles. That’s pretty cool.