A daily look at the Mariners during spring training.
N While his teammates threw and hit during live batting practice, Aaron Taylor was relegated to feeding balls into a pitching machine for bunting practice.
The big relief pitcher hasn’t been able to do much else with a baseball the last five days after his surgically repaired right shoulder became sore while he was throwing. Taylor said Sunday that the shoulder felt good and he expects to play catch this morning.
“This is the first time I’ve had a setback,” said Taylor, who had rotator cuff surgery in September. “It’s been so easy to this point that I didn’t know what to expect.”
Taylor said he has talked a lot lately with Mariners pitcher Gil Meche, who had similar shoulder surgery in 2000 and experienced numerous aches, pains and setbacks before he got better.
“He said it’s not going to feel good every day,” Taylor said. “It’s something that comes and goes. It’s a matter of knowing what pain you can work through.”
n More of the same, with everyone working on defensive drills before pitchers throw live batting practice.
X Almost a year to the day after catcher Dan Wilson strained the oblique muscle in his left side, he felt a twinge during practice Sunday and was held out of batting practice. This time it’s not considered serious.
X Jeff Heaverlo threw 25 pitches (20 fastballs, five changeups) in the bullpen with no problems in his comeback from a strained teres major muscle near his right armpit. He is expected to pitch batting practice on Tuesday.
n Will the weather ever change down here? Sunday was sunny again but temperatures were in the mid-40s when the Mariners hit the field for their morning workout. The high reached the low 60s, but the only players who enjoyed that were those on the golf courses in the afternoon.
N “I didn’t even know I had a teres major. What’s that? Something you get after six years of college?”
Pitcher Jeff Heaverlo on the muscle near his right armpit, which he strained on the first day of spring training.
n The two sat together at a table in the clubhouse, the snakebit young ballplayer wondering why he can’t stay healthy and the retired veteran who remembers the feeling.
Chris Snelling and Jay Buhner have had a few of these talks in the days since the dejected Snelling learned he will miss six weeks after surgery Friday to repair a broken hamate bone in his right hand.
“We tried to reiterate that he’s got a lot of things going for him,” Buhner said. “We want to make sure that his body language is right and he keeps his chin up and doesn’t let somebody take his dream away from him. He came here thinking he had a chance to make this team out of spring training and I think he had a chance to make this team. That’s what he’s frustrated about.”
Kirby Arnold, Herald Writer
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