Hello, and a very happy Hump Day to you. It was a fairly wild Tuesday for a variety of reasons, so let’s recap the ones that the general rules of this website will allow me to recap. It was the second day of Winter Meetings last night, and not as much happened as we’d perhaps like. Still, there was enough to talk about.

In Mariners News...

• Kyle Lewis is (supposedly) completely over his chronic knee issues. Sure hope that holds true as we progress through the beginning of this year!

• Speaking of Mariners prospects, Mike Marjama returned to his Dominican team, the Tigres del Licey, yesterday, and went 3-for-4 with three singles and a walk. Marjama had missed the past few games with a bruised thumb.
• Hisashi Iwakuma hopes to be back by mid-May as he recovers from shoulder surgery. You’d have to be a fool to count on him, but if he can get back to anything resembling his pre-injury self...
• Scott Servais gave an interview on Day 2 of the Winter Meetings. It’s an interesting enough read, but doesn’t really tell us anything that we didn’t already know.
• Again, it doesn’t look like the M’s will make a move for another position player... but who the hell really knows?

• Mariners prospect Braden Bishop is like the bus in Speed, except it’s if he stops doing charity work for a few hours. He has teamed up with Progressive Motion Physical Therapy to run a holiday toy drive for the kids at the Ronald McDonald house in Stanford, which serves 123 families with children undergoing extensive treatment at the Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. They’re currently about halfway to their goal and it would be great if we could help get them over the top and make the holidays a little warmer for the kids who have to be away from home this Christmas. Even if you can’t swing a donation now, sharing the link on Facebook or Twitter is also helpful!

Around the League...

• Umm... well...

• Speaking of Ohtani, this is actually kind of cool to read.

• Congratulations to Haley Alvarez, who at the age of 24 became the first ever female scout for the Oakland Athletics!
• The Rangers are apparently talking to the Diamondbacks about Zack Greinke, which I think would be a weird trade for both teams to make.

• The Cubs agreed to a two-year deal with Drew Smyly. Kinda sad, but they paid him more money than he probably should have gotten.

Zach’s picks...

• Researchers in France are finally starting a clinical trial in which CRISPR-Cas9 is used to treat genetic disease! This is the future of medicine, at least genetic medicine, and it’s super cool. If you don’t know what CRISPR-Cas9 is, the short version is that it’s a gene altering technique that allows scientists to cut a specific portion of DNA and replace it with another sequence. This could have a near-infinite number of applications, ranging from treating genetic disease, and maybe cancer, to potentially changing a fetus’s hair color.
• I know this is a sensitive topic. But if you haven’t read Cat Person from the New Yorker yet, I recommend it. It is a 15-minute short story that takes a look at some of the less obvious but no less damaging consequences of our patriarchal society. It may be upsetting to some, so take care before clicking.

Go M’s.