The Mariners have dipped into the taxi squad after just three games:
Mariners roster move pic.twitter.com/jOYEbvi0EN
— Ryan Divish (@RyanDivish) July 27, 2020
After an up-and-down, injury plagued 2019, Brandon Brennan made just one appearance on Saturday, and his command issues continued, walking two in just 1.1 innings of work. When healthy, the former Rule 5 pick has been adept at worming ground balls off of opponents’ bats - his 55.2% GB% was the best on the team out of every reliever who tossed at least 20 innings - and features a mind-bending changeup that generates plenty of whiffs. Obliques are notoriously tricky to predict, taking as little as two or three weeks to as much as two months to recover from, and there’s a non-zero chance we’ve seen the last of Brennan for 2020.
Taylor Guilbeau also made his big league debut last year, tossing 12.1 innings of 5.16 FIP ball. Although the lefty didn’t miss many bats with just a 13.7% K-rate, he also kept the ball on the ground, posting a ground ball rate north of 60%, making his HR/FB of 33.3% seem like very small sample noise. Like Brennan, we could see him in middle relief situations, though his reverse platoon splits from last season may not make him an effective LTOGY (Lefty Three-Out Guy).