Mariners notebook: Friday night Surprise edition

PEORIA, Ariz. – The Mariners will play their second night game in the past three days as they travel to Surprise to take on the Royals a little later tonight. The guys are catching a break with this one as the temperatures have been in the 90s this week.

Lineup!

Endy Chavez, CF
Seth Smith, RF
Kyle Seager, 3B
Nelson Cruz, DH
Mike Zunino, C
Dustin Ackley, LF
Carlos Rivero, 1B
Tyler Smith, 2B
Rayder Ascanio, SS

James Paxton, SP

Others scheduled to pitch tonight include Yoervis Medina, Carson Smith, Charlie Furbush and Dominic Leone. Medina and Furbush will be pitching back-to-back days. Manager Lloyd McClendon is still looking for improved performances from a number of his relievers.

“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t concerned,” he said. “We just haven’t pitched very well. The results at times have been okay, but they haven’t pitched to their capabilities.”

Notes

• McClendon, of course, has one less bullpen candidate with David Rollins being suspended for PED use. He echoed general manager Jack Zduriencik’s disappointment in the news.

“Obviously we are very disappointed in what has transpired,” he said. “It is what it is and we will get past it. I certainly don’t condone those things and I don’t condemn. Major League Baseball has a system in place and I trust that system and we will go through that process.”

• D.J. Peterson, Patrick Kivlehan and Alex Jackson are all up from the minor-league side for tonight’s game.

• 710 ESPN Seattle’s “Danny, Dave and Moore” has been down here with me the past few days and they have had a bunch of terrific interviews. Felix was very entertaining in his sit-down with the guys and Zduriencik actually had a little news (thank you, maqman, for pointing that out in a comment).

While McClendon has said repeatedly that Danny Hultzen is working toward 2016 this year, in part because he didn’t want to deal with the temptation of knowing he was close to helping the big-league team, Zduriencik is not shutting the door on 2015.

“He’s throwing the ball very well,” he said. “We are going to be very cautious with him but there will come a point in time, probably after June, we will just say, if he’s ready, and he’s the best guy in Triple-A, he’s going to get the call. He knows that, we are going to be cautious, we are going to limit his innings, there’s no way to get around it. We just can’t overload a guy that went through what he went through.”

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