Spring training cuts are sometimes where fans go hunting for hidden meaning, trying to decide whether every transaction is a clue, a snub, or some dramatic signal from the baseball gods. Most of the time, though, the early ones are a lot less cinematic than that. The Mariners’ latest round of camp cuts felt more like a reminder of where the organization is right now: deep, patient, and pretty comfortable letting certain players keep building without forcing a fake roster race that was never really there.
Seattle reassigned Austin Kitchen, Victor Labrada, and Teddy McGraw to minor league camp on Saturday, trimming the spring roster to 71 players. Earlier cuts had already sent catchers Luke Stevenson, Josh Caron, and Connor Charping out of big league camp.
That is not a bad thing. In fact, it is probably the healthiest way to read this batch of moves. None of these three departures should be treated like a crushing setback. It was Seattle acting like an organization that has enough real camp decisions elsewhere to avoid pretending every interesting name is genuinely in the Opening Day mix. With more than a dozen Mariners involved in the World Baseball Classic, camp has had a slightly weird rhythm anyway, and the roster has stayed larger for longer because of it. More cuts were always coming once the spring crowd started thinning out.
Kitchen is maybe the clearest example of this being about timing more than anything else. He is entering his second full year in the organization and quietly gave Tacoma useful innings all last season, posting a 3.36 ERA with 53 strikeouts over 69.2 innings in 48 appearances. He also did not make a Cactus League appearance this spring, which kind of tells the story on its own.
Leave a Reply