Former Mariner Chris Snelling has signed a minor league deal with the Padres today.

Former TNT writer Corey Brock filed this story for MLB.com

Congrats to the Doyle.

News flash, a Mariners pitcher made it through an inning without walking someone.
Ryan Rowland-Smith pitched a scoreless first inning and threw plenty of strikes.

Here's an update from the WBC game played earlier today in Miami. Venezuela prevailed 3-1.

Carlos Silva started and was the winning pitcher: going 7 innings, allowing one run on four hits, while walking one and striking out four. Of his 79 pitches; 58 were strikes.

Endy Chavez was 1-for-4 with a triple and run scored. He led off the game with a triple and scored the first run.

Jose Lopez hit a solo home run.

For the Netherlands, prospect Greg Halman was 0-for-2 with 2 Ks.

UPDATE 1:40: Prentice Redman gave the Mariners a 1-0 lead on soft single to right scoring Chris Shelton, but the best part of the inning was Ryan Rowland-Smith getting a base hit through the left side of the infield. Rowland-Smith, who was nervous about hitting in the game, tried soliciting pregame advice from people even sports writers since he hadn't taken an at-bat since he was 17 years old.

But he looked like a seasoned veteran, taking a strike and then going with the next pitch hitting a sharp ground ball between third baseman Christian Colonel and shortstop Clint Barmes.

Later in the inning Rowland-Smith showed off his base running skills scoring from second on Ronny Cedeno's infield hit. Redman scored from first and Rowland-Smith never hesitated rounding third when Rockies SS Clint Barmes tried to make a leaping throw to first on the ground ball deep in the hole. Rockies first baseman Todd Helton fired home, but RRS skipped in about a half second in front of the tag, choosing not to slide.

UPDATE 2:16: RRS is now 2-for-2, slapping a line drive single to right Tony Gwynn style. Of course, he almost just got picked off first. He later scored on Ronny Cedeno's deep homer to left.

UPDATE: 3:39 - had to finish up the story and talk to RRS a little. He was obviously very ecstatic with his day. A few things, he took BP on a back field with Don Wakamatsu pitching and he was "horrible" according to both himself and Jeff Clement, who lent RRS a bat and had to hit after him in BP.

"I don't think he even touched one," Clement said. "The ball would hit the backstop before he would start to swing. I didn't think I was going to be able to hit after watching after that."

UPDATE 4:04 -- Here's an update about yesterday's single game ticket sales from Mariners director of public info Rebecca Hale.

"Tickets for Opening Day sold out in 55 minutes today. One of the quickest Opening Day sellouts in several years."

Yes, that's what I ate for dinner last night. It's called the Triple Bypass burger, from a place called the Heart Attack Grill in Chandler, Arizona. It was Larry Stone's idea to try the place. He'd heard a lot about it. Anyway if you eat the triple bypass (close to 6,000 calories I'm told), you get a free ride in a wheel chair around the restaurant.

We both ordered them, I finished mine and Larry declared "no mas" because he ate too many of their fries cooked in pure lard.

I do recommend it for a one-time experience ...

Anyway, let's get to the notes from our pregame meeting with Don Wakamatsu ...

* Erik Bedard threw a 30 pitch bullpen this morning in Peoria.

"Everything was good, he felt no pain," Wakamatsu said.

But with a muscle its also important to see how it feels days after.

"We’ll see if it comes back the next day," Wakamatsu said. "I think he felt it as he was doing it last time, so this should be a pretty indication that it’s doing better. But tomorrow is a big day to see where it’s at."

* Brandon Morrow threw 20 pitches from a shortened distance.
"We felt he was in great spirits (Friday)," Wakamatsu said. "He’s sitting around going like this (rotating his elbow and forearm), saying “nothing.”

But that doesn't mean that Morrow will be ready by opening day.

“I still think its going to be iffy at this point,” Wakamatsu said. "If he was 20 or 30 pitches at this point full, I might have said yeah. But we’re just going to be really careful with him."

* The Mariners recent play of late isn't sitting well with Wakamatsu. I mentioned a Lou Piniella comment the other day

"I know how he feels and I feel the same way," he said. "Any time you go through a stretch in an organization whether its playing young kids that maybe wouldn't be there or not, it’s still the organization and it’s the temperament. You’ve always got to win games and keep that feeling of having a confidence level, it doesn’t matter who it is."

But Wak's biggest peeve has been the pitchers and the walks they've been issuing. Mariners pitchers have walked 70 pitches in 16 games counting the exhibitions. In the Cactus League games they have 64 walks in 123 innings pitched and they've only struck out 68 hitters. In comparison, they've only walked 31 times and have struck out 114 times.

"The thing were looking at is the pitching," he said. "We can talk about the positions players and having rookies out there, but we’ve walked way too many guys. We talk about certain organizations we respect in this game and you look a the leaderboard of the least amount of walks and they’re threre. Regardless of who we are throwing out there, those are expectations that should be met.

If we’re getting hit around and hit around but we’re not walking anybody at least we’re accomplishing one side of what we want.

Is he surprised by it since they've stressed it from day one?
"Whether it’s competition or whether its youth, I don’t buy in or subscribe that it’s all command," he said. "I think a lot of it is their approach."

Can pitchers make the change in philosophy overnight or is it a process?
"There’s a lot of guys in this room that have that ability, there’s other guys in this room that need some maturing maybe in the minor leagues," Wakamatsu said. "There’s plenty of guys in this room that have walking too many guys than they have in the past or that they should."

And it's not young guys compared to the established guys.

" It's both, I think everybody’s walked too many guys with the exception of (David) Aardsma," Wakamatsu said. "So you can change it around."

Mariners (6-7)
Franklin Gutierrez CF
Ronny Cedeno SS
Jeff Clement C
Wlad Balentien LF
Chris Shelton 1B
Matt Tuiasosopo 3B
Prentice Redman RF
Chris Woodward 2B
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Ryan Rowland-Smith P

Rockies (6-8)
Dexter Fowler CF
Clint Barmes SS
Todd Helton 1B
Matt Murton LF
Brad Hawpe RF
Christian Colonel 3B
Sal Fasano C
Jonathan Herrera 2B
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Jason Marquis P