Mariners Get Back To Business Now That Baseball Is On Track, Seattle Shuffles Its Personnel

The trickledown theory in baseball became a minor-league flood Sunday as hundreds of players saw their futures changed with the end of the bigleague strike.

In the Seattle Mariners system, for instance, four players from the replacement team wound up on the roster of the Tacoma Rainiers - and three men were released to make room for them.

Altogether, 16 Seattle replacements, including four signed to minor-league contracts Sunday, had to be integrated into the farm system.

That forced the Mariners to cut about 10 players.

And it won’t be the last time this month that major changes will have to be made. The second round of maneuvers will come when the 40-man, major-league roster - which includes Mariners prospects from Alex Rodriguez to pitcher Shawn Estes - reports to a shortened spring training that starts Wednesday. Many of those players were scheduled to start their season in the minors, and two weeks into a shortened camp, they could be sent to their respective clubs.

“It’s going to be awful tough for the younger players to make a big enough impression to stay, because with so little time, our priority has to be getting the regulars ready,” manager Lou Piniella said. “I’d imagine we’d start sending some of the kids out after 15 days.”

Again, making room for them on minor-league rosters would mean cutting players now assigned to those teams.

And the third round of roster-altering moves? That would come whenever the major leagues - which will start the regular season with expanded rosters - cut back to traditional 25-man rosters.

Players who will open camp Wednesday with Seattle - including Rodriguez, Marc Newfield, Greg Pirkl, John Cummings, Jim Converse and Chris Widger - won’t all stick on the big-league roster. Some will find themselves in Tacoma.

Mariners notes

Circle your calendars: The Mariners are tentatively scheduled to open the season at home against Cleveland April 26… . Of the 40 replacement candidates brought in during spring training, six wound up with jobs - two of them, Pat Rice and Joaquin Contreras, as minor-league coaches. Those signed to minor-league contracts: pitcher Graybill (Tacoma), catcher Scot Sealy (Riverside) and pitchers Clint Gould and Chad Weisner (Wisconsin).