Most of the starters and veterans had today off for the Mariners, but the team from Cleveland started most of their regulars. Pretty rude, if you ask me. This game was a bit boring even by Spring Training standards, but at least it was a bit quicker than most of the games so far at just under 3 hours.

Highlights

• Taylor Motter smacked an RBI triple in top of the second inning on a pitch that looks to be on the outside of the plate, which is where every pitcher in baseball completely owned Motter all of last season. If Motter continues to be able to cover the outside of the plate, the utility player job is pretty much his, I would wager. But, you know, small sample size and Spring Training pitching and all those lovely caveats. Still, this is encouraging!

• Ariel Miranda had a pretty decent three innings of action with three strikeouts, one earned run, and one walk.
• Juan Nicasio had another quality appearance with a ground out, a fly out, a walk, a single to Rajai Davis, and then a strikeout to end the inning.
• Daniel Vogelbach got the his first start of Spring Training at first base and didn’t make any errors that I’m aware of, but this was a radio only game so I have no idea how he looked. He also hit a single.
• The game was nearly over—one out away, in fact—when the much maligned yet exquisitely named backup catcher Tuffy Gosewisch hit a solo home run to make the final score 4-2 Cleveland. Our pal Tuffy, who struggled valiantly through 31 plate appearances during the plague year of 2017 and emerged on the other side with a jaw-dropping batting line of .071/.103/.071 with 14 strikeouts and one walk, went ahead and treated himself to a garbage time home run in Spring Training off of another team’s farmhand and you know what? I hope he batflipped like a KBO All-Star. He deserved to do it. Thank you, Tuffy, for giving this writer a little something extra to write about for this otherwise deathly boring game. I only wish Tuffy were good enough to be the actual backup catcher in Seattle just so we at LL could pester Cody Morris at Mollusk Brewing into brewing a “Gose Named Tuffy” or some other awful Gose pun beer.

Lowlights

• Ariel Miranda took a comebacker in the leg, but seems fine. He even recovered quickly to get the out at first base. But, still....

• Melvin Upton, Jr., née BJ Upton, hit a home run off Edwin Diaz. Fuck everything about that sentence.

Today in “It’s Spring Training for everyone!”

• I honestly didn’t catch anything overtly bad today besides Rick Rizzs retelling his story about Fred Goldsmith being credited with throwing the first curveball in history, which I had missed the first time around so I actually learned something. Thanks, Rick!

I wish I had more to report, but today’s game was a bit of a snoozer. But, hey, tomorrow we get TV coverage again on ROOT NW as the Mariners host the Royals at 12:10 PM PST.