This Spring Training has been, for the most part, pretty neat. Daniel Vogelbach has done neat things, Marco Gonzales has done neat things, and Dee Gordon has done neat things. Heck, even Robinson Cano has been pleasantly good! There have been signs of the upside that the Mariners will have to show to have a chance at competing this year, and despite some scares, the team has avoided any major injuries suffered only one major injury.
All of that being said, whew. It has been real hard to keep caring about these games over the last week or two. Like, I love you Dan Vogelbach. I want you to make the roster and do well this year. I just don’t care about your Spring Training at bats any longer, and I’m sorry. It’s not you, it’s me and my attention span, which might be the first known entity smaller than the Planck length.
Like I said, though, there’s been neat stuff. The past two days in particular have given us some good reason to watch these exhibition games. Last night saw Mike Zunino hit three dingers, and tonight saw Mike Ford walk it off and remind us that he’s not quite an afterthought at first base.
It was a welcome sight at the tail end of this slog of a game. The Mariners were rendered almost completely ineffectual against Bartolo Colon. To Colon’s credit, he looked pretty good for a player older than Ichiro (yes, really).
Oof. Sorry, Andrew Romine.
Colon was locked into a bit of a pitching duel with Marco Gonzales, who was looking to put the cherry on top what has been an eminently delicious spring sundae. For his part, Marco was great. He did give up two runs, but it’s safe to say they were the result of some unlucky BABIP. He finished with just those runs given up over 5.0 innings, and it doesn’t look like he has much of anything left to prove before the year begins.
Fast forward through a whole lot of meh (specifically Chasen Bradford flavored meh), and the Mariners arrived at the seventh inning against an ill-fated Jesse Chavez. When this is the third pitch of your appearance, and it’s Taylor Motter that takes you opposite field (encouraging for Taylor Motter!), maybe it’s time to go home.
But Chavez did not go home. He pitched a clean eighth, and then went out for the ninth. Mike Marjama grounded out. Kirk Nieuwenhuis hit a dinger to tie the game, which was exciting. A tie!
And then someone named Beau Amaral came to the plate. Who is that? I literally just had to look him up. Apparently he got released from the Reds last year and spent the second half in the Atlantic League. Why is he on the Mariners? What’s the plan for him going forward? How did he feel, spending this game with the likes of Robinson Cano and Nelson Cruz? Does he have hopes and dreams, just like the rest of us? What’s his favorite kind of music? When did he have his first kiss?
Anyway, Beau Amaral hit a single, setting the stage for Mike Ford to do this.
And so ended this game, which had to end eventually. It ended on a Mike Ford hit, which I suppose was as good a way as any to end the game.
Hooray for Mike Ford! I do hope the team finds a way to keep him that doesn’t involve hamstringing themselves by brute forcing him onto the 25-man roster for the whole season.
In even better news, there are only four more of these games to go! There is less than a week until Opening Night against Cleveland! You guys! Baseball!