M's Cactus League | Grit is in the air, but not in the stats

TUCSON, Ariz. — There is no Cactus League statistic that measures a pitcher's mound efficiency when his eyes are burning from sand.

Or how much endurance it takes to keep heaving a baseball toward the plate with one's nostrils and throat clogged with dust. No stat will talk about how the dry Arizona air prevents a pitch from breaking and enables bench players to become sluggers by adding 30 feet to each fly ball.

The numbers here can lead to silly debates among those reading the box scores thousands of miles away.

Where some Mariners fans are concerned, the debate is whether Ben Broussard, or even Tony Torcato, should replace Richie Sexson at first base. Or whether sizzling spring star Willie Bloomquist should be handed Ichiro's leadoff spot in the order. There have been calls for homer-plagued Jeff Weaver to be dumped from the rotation in favor of Ryan Feierabend.

Mariners manager Mike Hargrove has seen the good, the bad and the sand-blinding ugly when it comes to misleading spring-training stats. In his case, sorting out the real from the pumped-up numbers often means ignoring them entirely.

"I've never been a real big numbers guy," Hargrove said after his team's 7-4 win over the Colorado Rockies on Wednesday at Hi Corbett Field. "I probably should be. But I never have been. It's like the guy who drowned in the river with an average depth of six inches. The whole river is really two inches deep, but he stepped off in a 20-foot hole."

If Hargrove were to buy strictly into numbers, he would have already cut about 80 percent of last year's bullpen — including closer J.J. Putz — and started over. He would replace starting catcher Kenji Johjima with .368-hitting journeyman Jamie Burke. Weaver and his 8.31 earned-run average would be headed to Class AAA, along with the .135-hitting Sexson, while the .408-hitting Bloomquist could bounce anyone he wanted out of the first four spots in the order.

It gets even more difficult to evaluate numbers on a day like Wednesday. Winds were at 32 mph and gusting to 44 mph — creating a true Arizona desert sandstorm — when Mariners starter Miguel Batista took the mound.

"It was the type of game where you had to make dramatic adjustments," Batista said. "Because there was so much movement on your pitches and some of them won't make it to the plate. There were pitches when the catcher came up to me after and said, 'Man, I'm scared for my life because the ball's moving around like crazy.' "

Batista's stats will show he allowed 11 hits and four runs in five innings. They will show how all the runs came in the third inning, along with seven of the hits.

What they won't show is how that inning was prolonged by hit balls, which would have normally resulted in outs, being blown beyond the fielders' reach by the wind. Or accurately portray how Batista somehow adjusted to conditions that initially had his sinker bouncing a foot in front of its target, toughing out two more innings and keeping his team positioned for a comeback.

"It was pretty uncomfortable in the beginning," said Batista, who had to squint to keep the sand from blowing in his eyes.

Hargrove came away impressed by what he won't see in Batista's stats, including an ERA that jumped from 3.00 to 4.50. Plenty of pitchers would not have recovered from Batista's third inning.

"There are other things you can gauge on days like today," Hargrove said. "Like how tough a guy is mentally. There are ways that you can evaluate, even in tougher conditions. I think you have to look at the numbers in a different light."

Even an apparently clear-cut case, like the backup catching situation, is about more than numbers. The Mariners say they want more production than they got from Rene Rivera last season. Veteran minor-leaguer Burke is outhitting Rivera .368 to .222 this spring and would appear to have already won the backup job.

Not necessarily.

Hargrove said he's more interested in: "How they handle the pitching, how they receive, how they call the game."

Burke went hitless in two at-bats here, while Rivera walked and scored a key seventh-inning run.

Will any of that matter toward who gets kept? Hargrove won't say, only caution that the answer won't be found in the numbers.

"It's not necessarily the success of their at-bats but how they go about their at-bats," he said.

"Are their swings solid? Are they cool? Are they swinging wild? Do they look like they have a chance? There are a lot of things that go into the decision other than, 'Oh, this guy got two hits today!' "

Geoff Baker: 206-464-8286 or gbaker@seattletimes.com