Mariners notes: For Hargrove, swing comes after spring

Manager Mike Hargrove isn’t going to panic if the Seattle Mariners’ offense starts slowly this season. He was a notoriously slow starter during his playing days and knows that the first month is a difficult time for hitters.

“It’s a mindset. Latin American players especially are slow starters because they’re used to the heat,” Hargrove said. “When it warms up, they’ll all be fine.”

OK, then we’ll give Jose Vidro a free pass for a few weeks.

“It’s hard to swing the bat when it’s cold,” Hargrove said. “Unless you hit the ball absolutely perfectly, it hurt. It feels like your fingers are going to fall off your hands.”

Hargrove remembers the year former Cleveland Indians manager Dave Garcia had what seemed like a great idea during spring training.

“Ht told me he was going to give me a lot of at-bats one spring to get me off to a fast start,” Hargrove said. “I think I got about 115 at-bats that spring.”

And how ready was he when the season began?

“I still hit just .250 until the middle of May,” Hargrove said. “I don’t subscribe to that theory.”

A way with words

New starting pitcher Miguel Batista may turn out to be one of the more interesting players in Mariners history. He writes poetry, has a published murder mystery and, even when answering baseball-related questions, he’s a man of many metaphors.

He had Mariners executives choking on their smiles at his introductory news conference in December when he spoke of free agency.

“I feel like a 15-year-old girl,” Batista said. “I can choose who I want to marry.”

Then he added: “You guys will find out that I might be a very strange guy.”

At spring training, he offered more.

The day after he was hit in the chest by a line drive, Batista was asked how he felt.

“Like I just lost my sweetheart,” he said.

Huh?

“You know, like I have a broken heart,” Batista added. “It feels like my heart is broken in there.”

Most players would have just said: “It’s a little sore.”

Fruit of his labor

Play-by-play announcer Dave Niehaus, who worked his 31st spring training with Seattle, said little has changed since he began calling baseball in the 1960s.

“At spring training, the routine is always the same and you look for something different, some kind of innovation,” he said.

In 1973, he found it when former Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley experimented with the three-ball walk and the orange baseball, which was used in two spring training games.

“Now that was something to talk about,” Niehaus said. “I picked one of those balls out of the ball bag and kept it as a souvenir. Somewhere around my house, I’ve got an orange baseball.”

Good prediction

Pat Rice, the M’s minor league pitching coordinator, predicted in early March that right-hander Brandon Morrow had an excellent chance of making the team, even though he’d pitched only 16 professional innings last year.

“We don’t know exactly where we’re going to go with him because who knows what can happen?” Rice said.

With a 97 mph fastball and a big-time splitter, the Mariners couldn’t keep Morrow on the farm.