Mariners Moose Tracks, 11/2/17: Welcome to your first day without baseball

Good morning! Like the end of a Disney movie, the Sports Illustrated cover curse has been broken, and the Astros are indeed 2017 World Series champs. I know this wasn’t the desired outcome for every Mariner fan, but personally I find it gratifying that when the Mariners had their hides tanned this season, it was at the hands of the World Champions. Feel our pain, the rest of baseball. Also, Dodgers fans were super-rude to me on Twitter a while back and I quietly wished doom on their team, so if that pattern holds, next year it will be the Braves headed to the WS, defeated by an AL West team. (Don’t get excited, it’ll probably be the Angels.)

But on to the World Series storylines!

• No more ballpark proposals, because Carlos Correa won them all. Props, CC. It even left David Ortíz speechless:

• Evan Gattis’s baseball journey has been a complicated one one. He has battled depression, and for a while was out of baseball working a variety of odd jobs, including ski lift operator and janitor:

• When Carlos Beltrán made his MLB debut, smart phones and wifi didn’t exist, people still dropped off their film to be developed, and you didn’t have to take your shoes off to board a plane. After playing over 2500 games, he will finally get a World Series ring. Here he is embracing Evan Gattis, with Tom Petty music if you want to cry into your coffee:

In Mariners news...

• The lower-level Mariners prospects did some community service work yesterday:

• Eric Filia has been tearing up the Arizona Fall League (on base in every game he’s played), but he hadn’t hit a homer yet. That changed yesterday, with this three-run knock to tie the game:

• Not to be outdone, fellow prospect Braden Bishop showed off multiple skills yesterday with a double, a walk, and a stolen base, scoring twice, in addition to his usual strong outfield play. After a slow start in the AFL that saw him striking out at a much higher clip than usual, Bishop has heated up over the past few weeks. He, along with RP Matthew Festa, will represent the Mariners for the Fall Stars Game, televised on MLBN this Saturday.

Around the league...

• Today begins the first day of free agency. As a reminder, clubs have five days to negotiate with their own free agents before opening them up to the market at-large, so if you had dreams of waking up to a Darvish/Hosmer/Cain signing, well, we should probably talk. Unless it’s clubs re-signing their own free agents, don’t expect to see a lot of movement on this front for a few days.
• Hold on to your butts: there might be a hiccup in Shohei Ohtani coming stateside, reports Joel Sherman of the New York Post.

Kate’s pick...

• I am not particularly into movies or Disney movies or whatever but omg this cast:

Also I am looking forward to this retelling being totally Nala’s story because Queen Bey is no one’s love interest, sorrrrrrry. LION QUEEN FORMATION GO.