Mariners notebook: Montero will see time vs. lefties

By Shannon Drayer

The Jesus Montero move is official and he is now on the Mariners’ 25-man roster. He is not in the lineup tonight but manager Lloyd McClendon said that he did plan to use him against lefties and that he most likely would be limited to the designated-hitter role.

I caught up with Montero in the dugout earlier this afternoon and he said that he was thankful for the opportunity to be back in the big leagues.

“I never thought that this fast they would call me back but every day in Tacoma I just thought, work hard, work hard and they would call me soon,” he said. “I have got to keep working here in the big leagues to get more opportunities to play and show people I can play here.”

He’s lucky to have the opportunity. I covered the whys and what this means in my previous post. He’s up, and now it is about performance, not past mistakes. Interestingly enough, when I asked him about why things went wrong at the plate last year he interpreted that as why things went wrong in general. He answered a question I did not ask but acknowledged that he made mistakes.

“It’s hard when you don’t know something and you make mistakes,” he said. “It happens. When you are young you have got to be careful because it’s hard. There’s a lot of temptation on the streets, there is a lot of temptations in the world. Everybody knows that. We just want to get better but sometimes we make mistakes that cost a lot. I have been learning from that. I learned from that in Tacoma. It was hard but I am happy to be back in the big leagues to help this team win.”

And there is one thing he can do in that regard. Hit.

Lineup!

Endy Chavez, 9
James Jones, 8
Robinson Cano, 4
Kyle Seager, 5
Stefen Romero, DH
Dustin Ackley, 7
Logan Morrison, 3
Mike Zunino, 2
Brad Miller, 6

Roeni Elias

Notes

• OF Michael Saunders is disappointed but not alarmed that his shoulder acted up again. He believes that the time on the DL will force him to take the necessary time to allow the shoulder to heal correctly once and for all. The hope is he will be able to resume swinging the bat in five to six days.

• LHP James Paxton is now playing catch from 60 feet every other day and reporting no problems with that. He has yet to have a mound session scheduled but he is progressing.

• The Mariners have signed 28 of their draftees, including 13 of their 14 top picks.