[caption id="attachment_4206" align="alignnone" width="475" caption="Eric Byrnes and Don Wakamatsu at Fanfest -- Peter Haley/The News Tribune"] [/caption]

• Here's a link to some slideshow from Fanfest .

One thing that has been discussed is the possibility of the 11-man pitching staff. With the addition of both Eric Byrnes and Ryan Garko, it seems like a real possibility. More importantly manager Don Wakamatsu hasn't totally dismissed it as a possibility. I believe the Mariners went with an 11-man staff for about a three week stretch midseason last year. He did say it's a little tougher to do at the beginning of the season, but isn't opposed to it.

Here's his comment from the luncheon ...

I think from the manager’s standpoint, you’d love to do that, but it’s not always feasible. A lot of it has to with the starting rotation and the amount of innings you get. It does you give you some flexibility and depth on the bench and some weapons. We did it last year and were able to sustain it for a while. Coming out of spring training, it’s a little tougher early. It is and it isn’t. You might not need that fifth starter, but do you want to push guys to pitch count you aren’t comfortable with early in the season. You really have to wait and see.

expect

Vs. RHP

1. RF Ichiro
2. 3B Chone Figgins
3. LF Milton Bradley
4. DH Ken Griffey Jr.
5. 2B Jose Lopez
6. 1B Casey Kotchman
7. CF Franklin Gutierrez
8. C Rob Johnson (Josh Bard on some days)
9. SS Jack Wilson

Vs. LHP

1. RF Ichiro Suzuki
2. 3B Chone Figgins
3. DH Milton Bradley
4. 1B Ryan Garko
5. 2B Jose Lopez
6. CF Franklin Gutierrez
7. LF Eric Byrnes
8. C Rob Johnson
9. SS Jack Wilson

Let's get to some links ..

On Sunday, I spent two and half hours talking Mariners baseball with Ian Furness and Jason Puckett of KJR at Jimmy's On First.  I had a blast, and I'm still bugging their producer Curtis Crabtree to get me a link to the whole show so I can post in on here.

Anyway,  Wak was gracious enough to do about a 15 minute interview with us and there were a few interesting tidbits, most notably that he expects and hopes Ian Snell will be a part of the rotation. He even mentioned the idea of having Snell at the No. 3 and Ryan Rowland-Smith at No. 4 to split up the lefties.

Here's some reaction to the Garko signing ...

USS Mariner has this post ...

Given this, I think the M’s have to carry another outfielder. Bradley and Byrnes just aren’t reliable enough to count on them being able to cover all the innings in the outfield between them, especially if Byrnes is also the only backup to Gutierrez and Ichiro. And if you’re going to carry another outfielder, that means a five man bench, which means an 11 man pitching staff.

Lookout Landing look at the possibility platooning

Does that make this a bad deal? No, not at all. Garko's cheap. He's going to cost this team half a million dollars, and as long as he's around, he's going to provide a decent platoon bat and a little power off the bench. Assuming this means the team goes with a six-man bullpen - and, honestly, I still think that's the most likely scenario here - he gives Wak some more offensive flexibility, which is never a bad thing. Garko makes this team better by a handful of runs. But that's all we're talking about, here. A handful of runs. It's just hard to squeeze that much out of the right-handed half of a platoon, and while Garko will help, he won't help a whole lot. While it's always nice to upgrade, particularly for a team in our current situation, this is probably one of those moves that's going to have a bigger impact on fan peception than it will on the actual team.

ProBallNW post

So, Garko will play some first base, DH, maybe some left field in emergencies and will let his catcher’s mitt collect some dust.  But an emergency catcher is something that is required even if it’s not high on the checklist, so it’s nice to be able to cross off that minor role, I suppose.

ESPN's Rob Neyer the playing time

I don't know ... Maybe this is a good problem to have. I just keeping thinking that a better problem would be explaining to the fans why the club just couldn't justify bringing Junior back for one more season, what with all the younger, potentially better players available. And I'll keep thinking that until Milton Bradley doesn't lose significant playing time because Griffey's still hanging around.

Elsewhere around baseballl ...

Former reliever JJ Putz said he had a bone spur in his elbow when he was traded from the M's to the Mets, but that the Mets didn't do a proper physical to pick it up. Putz then says he was asked to lie about being hurt.

“When the trade went down last year, I never really had a physical with the Mets,” said Putz. “I had the bone spur (in the right elbow). It was discovered the previous year in Seattle, and it never got checked out by any other doctors until I got to spring training, and the spring training physical is kind of a formality. It was bugging me all through April, and in May I got an injection. It just got to the point where I couldn’t pitch. I couldn’t throw strikes, my velocity was way down.”

ESPN's Tim Kurkjian interesting story

In Japan, he revived his career. In two seasons with the Carp, Lewis went 26-17 with a 2.82 ERA. He led the league in strikeouts in each of his two seasons. More important, in 54 starts, he walked 46 and struck out 369, a sensational walk-to-strikeout ratio. It was that number, and his velocity, that got the attention of major league teams, including the Rangers.