When do the Cactus League playoff tickets go on sale?
OK, it’s only three games and it’s merely spring training, but Your Seattle Mariners are in a place some thought unimaginable — they’re undefeated.
Franklin Gutierrez went 3-for-4 and drove in two runs, the Mariners got homers from Chris Woodward and Chris Shelton, and they put the Texas Rangers in their place, 13-6.
It gave the Mariners a 3-0-1 record in exhibition games that count (Wednesday’s charity game against the Padres was a non-counting exhibition, like that makes sense). It’s the Mariners’ best spring training start since they went 4-0 in 1994
They’ve scored 41 runs and batted .344 with seven homers in four Cactus League. And we thought this team wasn’t going to hit.
Don’t get too jazzed folks. You can’t take anything that happens this early in spring training and get too gleeful or depressed with the results.
Take Brandon Morrow, for example.
He battled his control so badly that he couldn’t get an out in the second inning before being pulled. Morrow said it wasn’t that he was too amped for his first spring start, but that he probably was too relaxed.
“I might have been trying to be a little too easy. My arm wasn’t catching up a lot of the time. I was a little too relaxed at times. I have to work on lowering me effort level during the games so I will be able to go seven or eight innings. I am trying to find that rhythm.”
Despite his struggles, Morrow was the winning pitcher thanks to a four-run first inning off Rangers starter Vicente Padilla.
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