In a move that wasn't overly surprising, but extremely logical, Bonneville Seattle, the parent company of the new 710 ESPN radio station, announced it has hired Shannon Drayer to be its Mariners beat reporter for the upcoming season and she will begin work for the fledgling sports-talk radio station on Feb. 2.

“Shannon Drayer is one the premier sports reporters in the Pacific Northwest,” said Bonneville Seattle Program Director, Rod Arquette in a press release. “Her connections with the Mariners will provide 710 ESPN Seattle listeners with exclusive, insider information unavailable anywhere else on the radio.”

Indeed, Shannon has been a fixture on Mariners broadcasts, covering the M's for the past five seasons for KOMO. Once KOMO lost the broadcast rights to the Mariners in the middle of last season, KOMO let Drayer go in mid-season to save costs.

As someone who's worked side-by-side with Shannon, she was the best and most qualified candidate to handle the reporting duties. She's got vast knowledge of the organization as well as the necessary familiarity with players and executives.

In the past few months, new-general manager Jack Zdurirencik has been busy, and the Seattle Mariners roster has been turning over, but to look at just how much this team has changed, flip the calendar back to last April.

What’s happened since opening day, 2008?

Plenty.

Last April, the Mariners had Willie Bloomquist, Miguel Cairo, Raul Ibanez, Charlton Jimerson, Greg Norton, Richie Sexson, Jose Vidro and Brad Wilkerson on their 25-man roster.

And the pitching staff? It had Cha-Seung Baek, R.A. Dickey, Sean Green, Eric O’Flaherty, J.J. Putz and Arthur Rhodes.

That’s 14 players gone since the first month of last season, an extraordinary turnaround, and doesn’t even include players like Jeremy Reed and Jake Woods, who came up later in the year and are now gone.

A team that suffers the ultimate meltdown of expecting to contend, then losing 102 games, can expect major alterations. The Mariners have a new GM, a rebuilt front office staff, a new manager and all-new coaching staff.

And on the field, you’re going to need to check your program through much of spring training.

The lineup will be different. The bench will be new. The rotation and bullpen have changed.

It’s been an extraordinary reworking of a franchise, and it’s likely not done, yet.

How well it works – and how patient the fans are in watching it move forward – should be intriguing to watch. For Seattle Mariners fans disgusted with 2008, this isn’t the team you booed four months ago.

It's a new team, and it had to be.