Our month-long regional nightmare is finally over

Friends, we made it. The tyrannical tease of Spring Training is over. Six plus months of real baseball is dead ahead. I am ready. But first, a quick review of the last practice game, in which the Mariners defeated the Rockies, 5-3.

Highlights

• Marco Gonzales finished his spring with another very solid outing. He went 4.2 innings with three strikeouts, two walks, and two earned runs. Here is Gonzales owning left handers Gerardo Parra and Charlie Blackmon.

• Daniel Vogelbach. I mean, what else can we say about his Spring Training performance? It was a onslaught of barrelled baseballs and crushed line-drive dingers. I recommend watching the actual video of this three-run blast to center because it sounds similar to a few of Nelson Cruz’s particularly crushed homers. I mean, damn.

• Good Boy Mitch Haniger hit two doubles. Bad Kid Melch Hamburglar was thrown out by a car length trying to steal third base in the third inning for some reason.
• Nice lil’ web gem here by Andrew Romine. More like Roam-ine, am I right?

• Low A farmhand Michael Koval continued his surprisingly good spring. He had one strikeout, induced two ground outs, and one fly out. Lots of movement and seemingly good velocity. Perhaps he’ll be in Modesto soon.
• And here is another Low A farmhand Billy Cooke aka COOKIE making a fine sliding catch in right center:

Lowlights

• A kick save and a beauty!

• This is the kind of strike zone I want as a recapper for a final game of Spring Training, but probably not one the hitters actually want anything to do with.

• And that’s about it, really. Ichiro looked fairly healthy and drew a walk, but also struck out and flied out. So he’s still a bit of a question mark, but at least it appears for now he’ll avoid the disabled list.

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The Mariners end their 2018 Cactus League campaign with a record of 16-14-2. The regular season starts here in Seattle in just over 48 hours. Take it away, Mariners.