Mariners Moose Tracks, 1/24/20: Mitch Haniger, Mariners Media Luncheon, Eric Filia, and heavy icebreaking

Hello! As noted last week in the links, Becca is currently studying abroad, so we’ll be using a rotating cast of the LL staff to cover the weekend links posts for now. Yesterday was the Mariners Media Luncheon, so we actually have some Mariners-relevant news to cover in what feels like forever.

In Mariners News...

• Unfortunately, the first bit of news we have is of the bad variety, as it was announced yesterday that Mitch Haniger has suffered a setback in his recovery and will need core surgery, delaying his timeline by 6-8 weeks and keeping him out of Spring Training.

• Now for some good news: in case you missed Grant’s story about it, yesterday the Mariners formally announced the $5 Value Games that will run on select weekday games through May. There are limited numbers of the five-buck tickets available, so make sure to hop on that now if you’re interested.
• There are some upgrades coming to the park this year, most notably in an expanded left field entrance that should cut down on some of the bottlenecks at that part of the park. There’s also going to be a new sound system and ADA improvements that the Mariners didn’t have to get sued over to implement [frowns in the general direction of Wrigley Field]. You can see more about the upgrades to the park itself here.
• The broadcast schedule for Spring Training came out and unfortunately it features less televised games than last year (ten). Oh well, I guess we’ll all just have to go to Spring Training in person.

In Mariners Minors news...

• More prospect accolades for Julio and Jarred in MLB Pipeline’s list of Top 10 outfielders: Kelenic ranks third, and Julio sixth.
• In the Dominican Republic, Eric Filia continues to produce for the Tigres del Licey in the Championship Series of LIDOM. The Tigres took Filia with the second choice in the re-draft (in LIDOM, certain players from eliminated teams are able to be drafted onto new teams after their teams are eliminated from Round Robin play; the Tigres are Filia’s third team this season) after he was passed over by the Toros del Este in favor of a pitcher, a decision that has been the subject of much debate among fans (and many Licey fans mockingly saying “thanks for Filia”). On Wednesday the Toros won after Filia was ejected from the game (although if you watch video of the incident, it’s pretty clear he was trying to de-escalate the situation) and the pitcher drafted over him making a strong start, validating Toros fans; yesterday Filia returned to form and drove in two runs in a victory for Licey. The series is now tied 2-2 and it’s pretty entertaining to follow; check the Tigres’ Twitter feed for updates and broadcast information.

• Braden Bishop’s 4MOM foundation is coordinating its first-ever conference aimed at educating people on all aspects of the Alzheimer’s experience and providing resources for families coping with this terrible disease.

Around the league...

• Craig Edwards at FanGraphs says despite some off-season retooling, the Texas Rangers still aren’t very good. That’s similar to what we determined in our AL West Threat Assessment on the team, although slightly more dour for the immediate future.
• Not only do other teams get to have Fan Fests, but Salvador Perez will become a US citizen during the Royals one, which seems appropriately heart-warming.
• Scott Boras continues to open his mouth and release words ($). This time he’s arguing that the Astros players don’t need to apologize for the cheating scandal, as Houston owner Jim Crane has indicated they will, because the players were merely following dictates from management and were ill-informed about what the boundaries between cheating and not cheating were. I’m going to use that excuse next game night and will report back on how it goes over.
• Well, color us surprised.

Kate’s Pick:

This is technically Tim’s pick, because he very excitedly shared the link in our Slack and tried to start a conversation about it and it just kind of got buried. So if any of you want to geek out with Tim about heavy icebreaking, please make him happy and do so in the comments.