Mariners Moose Tracks, 9/15/17: Jamie Moyer, Rhys Hoskins, and Driveline Baseball

Yes, I decided to keep the Indians out of today’s headline. I do hope you can forgive me for that. The SEO gods are probably wishing I had wiggled them in there too. But it’s Friday! There are no rules on Friday. So let’s have some fun!

In Mariners news...

• This should hardly come as a shock at this point, but Hisashi Iwakuma is probably out for the year. I’d be surprised if he ever throws another game in an M’s uniform.
• Hey! I know that guy! Also: holy shit that stat.

Around the league...

• Because I know you’re wondering, let’s just get this out of the way.

• The latest on Shohei Ohtani suggests that the Mariners are interested in the Japanese star in both a pitching and hitting role. Right now there are around five teams who are clearly in the mix for the youngster.
• Rob Manfred has a plan to help diversify front offices all around baseball.
• Alex Rodriguez gave Gary Sanchez some useful words of advice when the two of them got lunch a while back.
• The New York Times did a cool feature on the Pacific Northwest-based program Driveline Baseball and how it helps to increase pitchers’ velocities.
• We now have a full year’s worth of data on Statcast’s defensive metrics for 2017. Jarrod Dyson and Guillermo Heredia both came out pretty favorably.
• The context of the 2017 season is completely changed thanks to the Indians’ late surge.
• Rhys Hoskins just became the fastest player to reach 17 career home runs in MLB history.