PEORIA, Ariz. — Sean Green isn’t here to throw a bottom-feeding earned run average.
Oh, he’d love to look at the statistics and see an Eric O’Flaherty-like 0.00, but spring training is for building arm strength and getting a feel for his sinker.
So far, the feel isn’t quite there. And neither is the ERA — 17.18.
Green is searching for his release point with the sinker, trying to regain that off-the-table downward break instead of the right-to-left Frisbee that it’s been this month.
“Sometimes at spring training I struggle trying to find my release point, and that’s where it is right now,” he said.
No game was as difficult as Saturday’s, when the Giants popped Green with six runs on four hits and a walk in 1/3 inning. Manager John McLaren noted that most of the hits were seeing-eye grounders — just what the sinker is designed to do — that found holes in the infield.
“Not to make excuses, but the ball went where we weren’t,” McLaren said. “At times I thought he made good pitches, and there were other times I thought he didn’t make good pitches. They kept finding holes.”
The ERA makes Green cringe, but he’s been there before. Last spring it was 8.59, then he became the Mariners’ go-to reliever when they needed a ground ball. He pitched in 64 games with a 3.84 ERA.
That didn’t make Green feel any better about Saturday’s outing.
“When you’re competitive, you never want something like that to happen,” he said. “Your goal is to get out of there without letting them score. I was getting ground balls, but I was making bad pitches at times.”
He spent a few minutes Sunday morning talking with Dwight Bernard, pitching coach at Class AAA Tacoma, about his throwing mechanics.
“Even though my arm angle is low, I need to get my wrist on top of the ball,” Green said. “That’s the key for me, so I get more up-and-down movement instead of side-to-side. It’s one of those things that happens in the spring. Thank God there’s spring training.”
McLaren also plans to increase Green’s workload in his next few outings, using him for multiple innings in hopes it has a positive effect on the sinker.
“It might happen in a minor league game, but we’re going to stretch him out and maybe use him a little more frequently,” McLaren said. “When you’re a sinkerball pitcher and you’re strong, you over-throw because you feel so good. If you look at most sinkerball pitchers, the more they throw the better they are because they’re a little tired.”
Baserunning 101: A few hours after the Mariners continued their emphasis on baserunning in their morning drills, they ran themselves out of a potentially big inning against the Brewers.
They had runners on first and second with nobody out in the fifth when Yuniesky Betancourt swung at the first pitch and popped out. That happened despite a camp-long effort to get hitters to work the ball-strike count in their favor, especially with runners on base and less than two outs.
Then the inning fell apart.
Ichiro Suzuki slapped a grounder to first base and Tug Hulett broke home and was thrown out by a wide margin for the second out.
Then Suzuki was tagged out between first and second after the ball popped out of catcher Jason Kendall’s mitt and rolled a few feet away. The Mariners’ Jamie Burke appeared to be breaking toward third on the play, and Suzuki followed him toward second, before Burke stopped and went back. That left Suzuki stranded, and he was tagged out.
McLaren, who sits outside the dugout during the spring games, spent a few seconds in it after the inning ended.
“We talked about a few things,” he said, without revealing details.
Baserunning among them?
“Among them,” he added.
Earlier Sunday, McLaren spoke of the need for smarter baserunning.
“You do not have to be a fast runner to be a good baserunner,” he said. “Making your turns better, anticipating, staying focused on the situation, knowing the situation, the number of outs, the score. That’s what dictates how aggressive you can be. We talk about this every day with these guys.”
Change in the schedule: This is the time when spring training can seem like it will never end. Players have been in camp a month or more and, with two weeks remaining, there’s still a lot of time before the adrenaline of the season opener takes effect.
McLaren said the Mariners haven’t been feeling the typical dog days effect of spring training, and that may be because of the mixed bag of scheduling the past week.
The three-day trip to Tucson last week broke up the monotony of camp, as did Saturday’s 3 p.m. start against the Giants, which allowed players to begin their morning workout later than usual. Tuesday is the only true off day of camp, followed by a night game Wednesday.
“We’ve had a lot of energy in all our drills, and at this time of the year it’s sometimes very challenging,” McLaren said. “It’s a credit to the staff and the players to have that little gusto where normally it’s kind of a drag-time period. It’s a big positive.”
Of note: Chris Reitsma, Arthur Rhodes and Mark Lowe — the Mariners’ three rehab relievers — all pitched Sunday and none of them was unscathed. Reitsma gave up five hits and three runs, including a home run, in one inning. Rhodes and Lowe each allowed a hit but no runs. … Among the drills Sunday was a session featuring the left-handed pitchers, who used their pickoff moves to help school the baserunners. “We’ve had a couple of guys picked off against lefties lately,” McLaren said. … Mariners president Chuck Armstrong became part of the action in the eighth inning when he made a play on a foul popup from his field-level seat next to the Mariners dugout. Problem was, catcher Jamie Burke also was trying to get the ball, which dropped with neither of them catching it. Armstrong shrugged, Burke smiled and the Mariners dugout gave him a hard time. Not too hard, though. “He’s the president,” McLaren reminded.
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com
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