Seattle Mariner roster Moves

By Shannon Drayer

If you saw my Tweet (@shannondrayer) earlier this morning then you would know that I am back in Seattle for the weekend. I will be back in Peoria with the Mariners first thing Monday and then off to Japan on Thursday. How is that for a week?

I did want to pass on the roster moves from this morning, none of which are surprising.

Trayvon Robinson was optioned to the minor leagues while Sean Henn, Oliver Perez, Matt Fox, Aaron Heilman, Josh Kinney and Jeff Marquez were all re-assigned to minor league camp leaving the spring roster at 40 players. The team will take 30 to Japan.

Some have asked what the difference between being optioned to the minors and re-assigned is and the simplest explanation I can give is that protected players on the 40-man roster must be optioned when moved in order to keep them on the 40-man roster. The six who were re-assigned were non roster invitees.

Early in the spring I saw a lot of comments on Twitter and elsewhere about how a number of fans thought Robinson should replace Franklin Gutierrez while he was out. It is not surprising to see his name among the cuts. When he came up last year we saw the strikeouts and the defense was sometimes not up to par. Some of this may have been part of coming up for the first time or possibly vision issues that he has since corrected. While he looks like he has made strides in both departments he still appears to have a ways to go, and Michael Saunders clearly outplayed him this spring. Robinson can bring a lot to the table but he needs to play every day and that role would not be available to him at the big league level.

As for the others, every year we see a ton of bullpen candidates brought in to compete. Sometimes there are surprises, sometimes there are not. Some of this group will pitch in the minors when the season starts, others may move on. I have heard intrigue about Perez as a reliever and also interest in Marquez from a couple of scouts I have talked to. We shall see what happens there.

So 40 remain, of those 33 are on the 40-man roster. Kevin Millwood, Erasmo Ramirez, Vinnie Catricala, and Munenori Kawasaki are among those who are not and I would expect at least one to make the final 25, so I would anticipate at least one 40-man move will need to be made when the final roster is set.

We are getting closer.