No matter what baseball piece you write in the first two weeks, you are obliged to say “it’s early” at the very beginning, before proceeding to disregard the fact that it’s early and make some analytical hay. What else are you going to do? It’s not like we’re just going to not talk about baseball. So let’s talk about the bullpen, and look at this year’s (currently projected/in use) bullpen compared to some past Mariner bullpens and see what shakes out.
Lately I’ve been interested in the varying philosophies teams use to construct bullpens. There’s the obvious angle for the Mariners, who carry situational guys like Marc Rzepcynski, but there’s two other types of relievers teams generally seek out.