Good morning, everybody! We’re just two days away from baseball being back (kind of). Then we can spend another month wishing for baseball to really be back. Until then, there’s plenty to look at today.

In Mariners News...

• Leonys Martin finally reported to camp after being called to testify in a trial for his former agent and trainer, who have been charged with conspiracy and alien smuggling.
• Some of the players got together and did an escape room. Apparently, they won. I always thought that these were impossible to lose, until I did one and lost. There are apparently at least two activities at which this team is better than me.

• The Mariners were filming this year’s commercials, which fills me with more excitement than I anticipated.

• Felix Hernandez’s first spring training start is going to be on Tuesday, February 28th, against the White Sox.
• Jeff Todd at MLB Trade Rumors gives his takes on the Mariners camp battles going into spring training.

Around the League...

• Jeff Sullivan says goodbye to an obscure, rarely enforced rule made obsolete by the removal of the four-pitch intentional walk.
• Angels pitcher Matt Schoemaker threw off a mound for the first time since suffering a skull fracture last year. Even though he’s on the Angels, I can’t help but have a ton of respect for this guy’s willingness to stand on a mound after what happened to him (warning: that video made me do a full-body cringe).
• Kari Paul at MarketWatch wrote an interesting piece on how baseball can stay popular going forward despite having the highest average viewer age of any major American sport.
• The World Baseball Classic starts on March 6th, and recently released odds have the United States as favorites to win their first-ever title, just ahead of the Dominican Republic and Japan.

Zach’s picks...

• Sutton United has a 300-pound, 45-year-old goalkeeper who ate a pie on live television because a betting market placed odds on him doing so.
• The 90-year-old Sir David Attenborough is set to narrate BBC’s Blue Planet II.
• NASA has announced the discovery of a solar system with seven Earth-sized planets, three of which are in the habitable zone. This page is rife with cool graphics, and I highly recommend checking it out. For example: