FanPost

A Brief Soriano Winterball Timeline

After I get my heart broken, I suck at moving on.

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First four appearances: Raffy looks terrific. Throws five scoreless innings, allowing three hits and consistently reaching 93-94mph with his fastball. Says his arm feels great and that, perhaps more importantly, he isn't afraid to go out on the mound and pitch to live batters.

Fifth appearance: Soriano experiences symptoms of a developing chest cold. Lasts only two-thirds of an inning, allowing three runs before reaching his team-imposed pitch limit, but two of the baserunners come on broken-bat rollers. Nobody has a radar gun. Rick Griffin is in attendance and advises Rafael to sit out his next scheduled appearance (Saturday) due to his condition.

Sixth appearance: Rafael pitches on Saturday anyway, despite waking up barely able to breathe. Pretty much has a full-on flu bug. Two Mariner scouts are in the stands behind home plate, the first of his appearances for which team scouts are in attendance. Lasts two-thirds of an inning, with a couple unearned runs scoring because of an error. Sick and fatigued, he's only hitting 88-89 on the gun.

Seventh appearance: Hasn't happened, and probably won't happen. Not because of an injury, but because Soriano was only supposed to throw a few innings down there anyway, and with the trade and some hilarious charges of unethical conduct levied against the team he plays for, it just doesn't look likely. Up to the Braves, though.

Bill Bavasi was in attendance for exactly zero of Soriano's games, while his scouts were around for one. Those scouts saw him throwing 88-89mph and reported their observations to the front office, who concluded, based on limited and misleading information (it was one game, and he had the flu), that Soriano's arm is thrashed. So they scrambled to ship him away for "an OK offer" (their words, not mine), not even bothering to explore the size of the market to better gauge his trade value. And that's it. That's what got us to where we are today.

It would be one thing to believe, based on his history, that Soriano is a pretty high injury risk who stands a real good chance of going under the knife again sometime within the next few years. I can't argue that point, and given how much time Soriano's missed, I'm not sure it would be wise to try in the first place.

It's quite another to believe that Soriano is hurt right now. He isn't. He has said as much several times in private conversation and his velocity when he isn't sick seems to support that statement. His arm feels great, and he's happy to be back out on the mound.

I really need to move on from all this, but I'm having trouble. The Mariners just mangled so many parts of this trade that it's almost impossible to believe it actually happened. Alas, now we have Horacio Ramirez, and at least he looks like he can be okay. Soriano, meanwhile, is excited to be going to Atlanta, and he's dying to become a starter as soon as possible so he can shove it up the Mariners' patoot. He's going to miss his friends in Seattle, Rafael Chaves in particular, but he's frustrated that they didn't give him another chance in the rotation and he's eager to show that he's a better pitcher than the guy they got in return. Of course, as far as I'm concerned, he already has.

People say that, even if there is intelligent life somewhere out there in the universe, if we ever came into contact our simple human brains wouldn't be able to understand the unparalleled genius of their actions. With that in mind, Bill better have a mothership.