Sun Morning

Is it really Sunday? You lose complete track of time down here. Good chance you could ask ten people what day it is and seven would not know.

Great sight in the clubhouse today, Edgar Martinez, holding a bat, appeared he was showing Jeff Pentland something. Will have to ask him about that later. Edgar seems very comfortable in his new role. At about 9:00 he was sitting at a table with Adrian speaking Spanish. Adrian has been sticking close to Edgar and also spending a huge amount of time in the cages after workouts.

When we entered the clubhouse this morning, new blue tee shirts were in all the pitchers lockers with the words “Pitch to win” on the front, and on the back “Relentless. Work fast, Work ahead, Execute”. Pitchers were also given laminated 5x8 cards with the Seattle Mariners 10 Absolutes of Pitching.

Mike Hargrove asked Rafael Chavez to come up with some beliefs on pitching in the off season and the two sat down recently and came up with the 10 Absolutes which include everything from the now familiar relentless and down in the zone, to I will hold myself accountable for each pitch I throw. Can’t hurt.

Last note, and I have been debating whether I should say anything or not, but I am going to because enough is enough. Could Scott Spiezio please just shut up? He has gone out of his way to bad mouth the Mariners at every turn since he left.

The latest, he unloaded on Larry Stone in the Seattle Times saying that he told Jeff Weaver that he should not sign with Seattle because he would hate it. He then went so far as to throw the organization, his teammates and the fans under the bus.

The most unbelievable thing I read was when he criticized teammates for not playing hard. Spiezio did not exactly set the example when he was here. Yeah, he liked to get dirty when he was out on the field, but I'm not sure any Mariner in his tenure spent more time away from the field than he did. It was pretty much guaranteed that he would be the lone player on the bus to the stadium each day. What does this mean? Well, there is a stigma against riding the bus because it gets to the stadium right before players are required to be there. Most guys get there hours before to get their work in. Scott didn’t seem too interested in that. He claimed that he liked to do his work after the game, but he seemed to escape pretty quickly after the last out. The least he could do is thank the M’s for the millions of dollars they gave him.