Boring is good.
The Mariners lost to the White Sox on Saturday. It doesn’t really matter how because it’s Spring Training. That I have nothing more pressing to tell you is a good thing. Spring Training is meant to be boring. It’s practice. And practice baseball follows the same conventions for all news: if it bleeds, it leads. Nothing bled today.
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Logan Gilbert
Logan Gilbert pitched exactly as you’d expect. He loaded the bases in the second inning with a hit by pitch, a four-pitch walk, and a flare single. Then he got a strikeout on a pretty nasty splitter, followed by a pop out to escape the jam. He finished the day after four innings with two hits, two walks, two strikeouts, and his health.
Gilbert in Spring Training continues to feel like an extension of 2025: nasty and unhittable and still somehow kind of frustrating. It’s like a precocious child making a double helix with their mashed potatoes—how the hell do you know what that is, please just eat.
I’ve written (and read) about Gilbert’s efficiency a bunch over the last year and I’m not sure what’s left to say. If he can work through batters a skosh quicker, I think he’s a top three pitcher on the planet. If not, he’s merely top 20. Such is the burden of expectation.
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The Rest
The Mariners batters were bad in this game. Well, not the ones who matter. Brendan Donovan picked up a pair of hits, and Colt Emerson walked and looped a single. The rest of the lineup—mostly role players and organization depth—did nothing of note. They got their only run in the bottom of the eighth inning. Will Wilson got hit by a pitch to leadoff, and Jarred Sundstrom doubled him home.
The Mariners had no room to complain about the hit by pitch, as Randy Dobnak plunked three batters in the top half of the inning. Ryan Loutos had to come in to get out of it. Then, in the inexplicable hijinks only possible in Spring Training, Dobnak returned to pitch the ninth. Somehow he got three outs on just seven pitches, though how much of that was him versus the batters trying to get out of the box ASAP, I’m not sure.
World Baseball Classic
One reason I’m grateful for Boring Baseball is last night I watched Cal Raleigh step to the plate against an incredibly amped, increasingly exhausted (and obviously talented) 17-year-old pitcher throwing 95+ mph not always near the zone. Cal did not get hurt during the game, but I’ve since been primed to wince while Mariners are hitting, pitching, fielding or, in the case of Michael Arroyo this morning, running the bases. Thankfully, he appeared OK after this play:
Also at the World Baseball Classic today, Dom Canzone obliterated a baseball. This is the exact pitch Dom has a very real claim to being the top player on the planet at hitting, as I wrote about at the beginning of the offseason:
This wasn’t even Dom’s hardest hit ball of the day at 104 mph. He also had a single at 105 mph and a lineout at 114 mph.
The WBC continues on this evening. If you’d like to know which Mariners are playing when, an LLer made this great app with that exact information.
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