Mariners Moose Tracks, 8/7/19: Peter Alonso, The Babe, and Cyber Tails

The morning light shines upon a new, linky day.

In Mariners news...

• In case you missed it, Tim Beckham was suspended for 80 games due to use of the banned PED Stanozolol. To fill his spot, Tim Lopes was called up, and he hit a home run for his first big league hit! Hot and cold, baseball.
• According to Ryan Divish, for what it’s worth, Beckham was not likely long for the roster anyways.

• The Mariners sent Gerson Bautista down to AAA and activated Brandon Brennan from the IL.
• Seattle lost RHP David McKay off waivers to the Detroit Tigers.

• Ryon Healy had his hip surgery yesterday. He’s done for the season, and his future with the organization is murky.
• Some injury news is good!

• King Félix looked good in his first rehab start with the AquaSox and will progress to an outing on Thursday with the Modesto Nuts.
• He’ll be joining new Mariners prospect Jose Caballero, who has returned to Modesto after finishing the rehab assignment he started with the Diamondbacks in Arizona.
• Seattle made another move for some minor league depth.

• Corey Brock of The Athletic ($) talked to the Mariners’ top three picks this year - George Kirby, Brandon Williamson, and Isaiah Campbell - and their coaches in Everett about why the team has emphasized shorter, more purposeful outings to start their big league careers.
• MLB Pipeline updated their organizational rankings, pegging the Mariners farm system at 11th.
• The Mariners (along with the rest of the league) unveiled their Players’ Weekend jerseys. I’m partial to Daniel “THE BABE” Vogelbach and Domingo “SALOMON” (the Spanish spelling of Solomon) Santana. I am not partial to the decision to make the jerseys... all black or all white? It’s to let the extra stuff the players add stand out, but it seems ill-conceived.

MLB

Around the league...

• Thanks to torrid stretches from the Mets and Reds, there are EIGHT teams within 4.5 games or fewer of a playoff spot in the National League.

MLB

• The Giants DFA’d long-time 2B Joe Panik, who had struggled mightily this season.
• Our own Jake Mailhot wrote for FanGraphs on some takeaways from Aaron Sanchez’s brilliant start this weekend and what the Astros have done with new pitchers.
• Tom Verducci wrote of the Astros as a small-market upstart shockingly swiping great players from the noses of the Yankees, Dodgers, and Red Sox. Awful Announcing noted almost none of the assumptions made in the piece were accurate.
• Players’ Weekend may not be until August 23-25, but Pirates pitcher Joe Musgrove has some Marvel-themed style ready to go.

• The Nationals DFA’d former bullpen ace Kyle Barraclough.

• Messages from a group DM on Instagram between the significant others of current and former Chicago White Sox players were made public and reported on by the Chicago Sun-Times after Ariana Dubelko Giolito (wife of Lucas Giolito) shared screenshots of a heated argument between Elizabeth Swarzak (wife of former White Sox/Mariners reliever and current Braves bullpenner Anthony Swarzak) and Bria Anderson (wife of current ChiSox SS Tim Anderson). Please remember LL site rules if you wish to discuss this further.
• Albert Pujols turned back the clock.

• Joey Votto has had a message of support and love for Tyler Skaggs and his family on the right side of his hat this year since Skaggs’ surprise passing. He added a note of love to Dayton and the victims of the shooting there.

• It’s difficult to evaluate players from an analyst/scout/writer’s perspective when the ball is juiced, and coaches are struggling with that issue as well, writes Brendan Gawlowski of FanGraphs.
• The Nationals signed recently DFA’d Asdrubal Cabrera to a one-year deal for the rest of this season.

John’s Pick:

• Some of y’all may be furries. Good for you, and also this is dope regardless. I studied Cyborg Anthropology in college because they let you do that in Portland, and the Cyberpunk 2077-style augmentation possibilities are always fascinating to me. We use so many things - high and low tech - to enhance ourselves every day, from contact lenses to cell phones to wheelchairs to those little grabber things. It’s the perpetual logical extension of humanity’s utilization of tools and there are so many ways it can go terribly but sometimes we can have good balance tails maybe and that’s neat.