Five M’s pitchers chasing three starting

GLENDALE, Ariz. – Mariners pitching coach Carl Willis politely asked a reporter Saturday morning if he could get back to him in an hour or so.

First, he had an even more unpleasant task – telling six Mariner pitchers that they’d been reassigned to the minor leagues.

“These difficult decisions sometimes are gut-wrenching, but they are decisions that have to be made,” Willis said. “So yeah, it’s not a fun day.”

The reassigning of the six – left-handers Sean Henn and Oliver Perez and right-handers Matt Fox, Aaron Heilman, Josh Kinney and Jeff Marquez – to the minor leagues, as well as the optioning of outfielder Trayvon Robinson to the minors, left the Mariners with 40 players in their major league camp.

Though tough decisions, none of those cut Saturday figured to make the final roster. It only gets harder from here, though, as the Mariners have to pare their roster to 30 for the trip to Japan, which begins Thursday, and to 25 by the time they play games against Oakland on March 28-29.

“We have to make some decisions earlier than normal because we are going to Japan, but that’s all part of it,” manager Eric Wedge said following the 5-0 defeat Saturday against the White Sox.

The area of most intrigue remains the pitching staff, especially the back end of the rotation where five pitchers – Kevin Millwood, Erasmo Ramirez, Hisashi Iwakuma, Blake Beavan and Hector Noesi – remain in the running for three spots after the top two of Felix Hernandez and Jason Vargas.

Beavan stated his case for a spot in the rotation again Saturday when he held the White Sox to three hits and one run in four innings before departing, having allowed just four runs in 15 1/3 innings this spring. He might not pitch again until the team departs for Japan.

“I feel like I’ve done everything I can, everything I can control, to make the decision hard for those guys,” said Beavan, one of three players the Mariners acquired from Texas in 2010 for Cliff Lee.

Millwood, a 37-year-old signed as a nonroster free agent; Ramirez, a 21-year old who has yet to pitch in the majors; and Noesi, 25, acquired from the Yankees as part of the Michael Pineda trade, also have had good springs.

Iwakuma, meanwhile, has struggled at times. But as one of the team’s more significant offseason free-agent signees, the native of Tokyo, who was one of the top pitchers in Japan the past decade, is sure to get every opportunity to make the team.

Willis says the overall performance of the starters this spring has made the decisions even more difficult.

“If the decisions are easy, that probably speaks to a lack of depth or lack of the quality we have in camp and, obviously, we have quality people,” Willis said.

White Sox shut out M’s

Jake Peavy threw five hitless innings in his best outing of the spring and the Chicago White Sox beat the Seattle Mariners 5-0 in Glendale, Ariz., on Saturday.

Eduardo Escobar, a candidate for a reserve role, hit a three-run homer off Hong-Chih Kuo to give the White Sox a 4-0 lead in the fifth.

Kuo allowed four runs in an inning.