Cactus League Game 18, Mariners at White Sox

Jay Yencich · March 17, 2012 at 11:45 am · Filed Under Mariners 

Going into yesterday’s split-squad doubleheader, the Athletics and the Mariners were 1-2 in the Cactus League standings, though I doubt that anyone came away pleased with last night’s clash of the titans, our great preview of the season opener. I mean, the Mariners didn’t even send in a good lineup and pretty much rolled over. Sure, the Athletics won, but would they have had we bothered to play at full strength? It’s almost as if no one takes these games seriously.

Today, the Mariners made seven cuts, optioning OF Trayvon Robinson and re-assigning LHPs Sean Henn and Oliver Perez and RHPs Matt Fox, Aaron Heilman, Josh Kinney, and Jeff Marquez. At the beginning of spring training, someone made a Sporcle quiz of all the players invited to the Mariners spring training camp this year. If I had taken that quiz this morning, without any knowledge of the cuts, I would have gotten Heilman, Robinson, and maybe Perez off that group, since Oliver Perez has been the butt of a few jokes over the years (while still making more money than you ever will see in your lifetime, some clever person would be apt to remind you). Meanwhile, Peguero gets closer and closer to making the team…

Here’s a lineup for today’s game, which you can use to cheat on that quiz if you need to. Freebies!

2B Ackley
CF Saunders
C Olivo
1B Smoak
3B Liddi
LF Peguero
DH Catricala
RF Wilson
SS Brad Miller

P Beavan

That’s what’s going up against Jake Peavy. Yup. This game will be on the radio as the ongoing Manning saga is enough to consume all of our attention on weekdays, but not on weekends.

Today’s news includes a Mike Wilson feature in the Tacoma News Tribune, more talk from the Times about John Jaso playing first base if you didn’t get enough of that yesterday, and Larry Stone informs us over Twitter that the Red Sox have cut Carlos Silva.

Have at you, when the time is right.

Comments

17 Responses to “Cactus League Game 18, Mariners at White Sox”

  1. greentunic on March 17th, 2012 12:45 pm

    Aside from this lineup being Montero-less, I’m excited to see how these young guys perform against the quality (former elite) arm of Jake Peavy. Should be a good challenge for Cat and Brad especially.

  2. Paul B on March 17th, 2012 1:07 pm

    Has anyone noticed anything that would indicate Peguero has improved from last year?

  3. Jay Yencich on March 17th, 2012 1:18 pm

    Has anyone noticed anything that would indicate Peguero has improved from last year?

    Erratically. Sometimes he’s seemed more patient, has gone the other way, used a shorter stroke. Other times he has been the same Peguero.

  4. cjjpeterson on March 17th, 2012 1:20 pm

    There’s a free webcast of this game available through the Whitesox’s site if anyone is interested

  5. Westside guy on March 17th, 2012 1:35 pm

    In the televised games, I thought Peguero looked not bad in the first one and gosh-awful in the second one.

  6. Westside guy on March 17th, 2012 2:02 pm

    Oh, man, just tried that webcast – made me motion sick.

  7. IwearMsHats on March 17th, 2012 2:03 pm

    Anyone catch the White Sox announcer calling Shin Soo-Choo Japanese on the webcast?

  8. Jay Yencich on March 17th, 2012 2:11 pm

    Yeah, they’ve been saying some questionable things throughout to my PC-attuned ears.

  9. IwearMsHats on March 17th, 2012 2:18 pm

    Oh no, Kuo

  10. Jay Yencich on March 17th, 2012 2:19 pm

    Hong-chih Kuo is terrible.

  11. groundzero55 on March 17th, 2012 2:24 pm

    Something tells me the Kuo experiment is an utter failure.

  12. Breadbaker on March 17th, 2012 2:37 pm

    I can’t come up with a joke involving Mariner fans wanting to cut Carlos Silva that’s in good taste.

  13. Westside guy on March 17th, 2012 2:48 pm

    A local Mohel and Carlos Silva walk into a bar…

  14. Westside guy on March 17th, 2012 4:54 pm

    Somebody please tell me Carlos Peguero isn’t going to be on the 25-man roster…

  15. MrZDevotee on March 17th, 2012 6:05 pm

    Westy-
    I’m thinking if he makes the roster it’s only as a Gutierrez depth thingy, and temporary (since Wells will get time in Center, and Carp will theoretically be playing DH/1B on occasion)… But at the same time it seems like if Carp pulls things together before Japan, and Saunders keeps raking, then there’s no need for keeping Peggy on the roster (fingers crossed).

    Then again, he IS Wedge’s left field version of Miguel Olivo. No explanation for it, but he likes running him out there.

    The outfield is still sort of broken, so I wonder what the chance is that we pick somebody up as LF depth as final cuts start happening? (And again, so Peggy can go back home to AAA).

  16. bloody_yankees on March 17th, 2012 6:48 pm

    I don’t post often, but I just wanted to say that the Mariners will lose a paying customer and a fan if Peguero sees a single AB all year. Call me irrational, but I think anyone with an ounce of intelligence who has witnessed Peguero attempt to hit a baseball knows he belongs nowhere near a Major League roster.

    I admire the job Z has done and I hope he’ll remain our GM for the foreseeable future. However, if he lets Wedge run Peguero out there, I think both he and Wedge deserve to be fired. Maybe that’s harsh, but I can’t think of one tangible benefit the M’s receive from letting Peguero play the field, much less giving him valuable ABs we could be using to assess our actual prospects.

  17. stevemotivateir on March 17th, 2012 9:44 pm

    @bloody_yankees

    It was Z who has said that Peguero has the most upside of any prospect (or something of that nature), so it~s more likely Jack who~s pushing Wedge to give him playing time. If he truly believes that, then giving him at-bats would make sense. Having said that, I~m not sold on Peguero being major-league ready, or close. I~d love to see Catricala or Liddi get those potential at-bats.

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