We’re now about halfway through the season, and I thought this would be a good time to take a look at the Mariners’ minor league system and see how things have been working out.  Today, we’ll start off looking at the Tacoma Rainiers, and over the next week or two, will stop in with each of the M’s state-side affiliates.

First and foremost for Tacoma is their newest attraction and the system’s top pitching prospect, Michael Pineda.  Promoted to Tacoma about two weeks ago after thirteen stellar starts with West Tennessee (2.40 FIP, 8.92 K/9, 1.94 BB/9), Pineda has continued to open eyes everywhere. On Sunday night in Salt Lake City facing the Bees (Angels’ AAA affiliate), Pineda flirted with a perfect game before getting a little bit roughed up in the seventh inning, but still allowed just two runs on three hits over seven innings in what’s traditionally been an offense-friendly park.  Pineda has so far struck out 26 batters in just 19 innings in Tacoma, including 10 Sunday night.  Earlier in the year in West Tennessee, the biggest mark against Pineda was that he was leaning heavily on his fastball, and rarely using his changeup or his nasty slider, but that can largely be chalked up to a lack of a challenge.  According to the Rainiers’ radio man, Mike Curto, Pineda has been mixing up his pitches well since his callup, especially in his last two starts.

The rest of the pitching has hardly been notable.  David Pauley turned a couple decent months into a spot in the Mariners bullpen.  Luke French made the PCL All-Star team (and is starting the game, I believe), but aside from his ten wins and 2.39 ERA, his numbers have been fairly mediocre (FIP of 4.04, 4.36 K/9, GB% of just 37%).  Ryan Feierabend has worked his way back from Tommy John surgery, and while his numbers aren’t that great on the surface, a 3.96 FIP (versus his ERA at 5.65) and a staggering .396 average against on balls in play suggest that neither luck or defense have gone his way so far for the Rainiers.  Chris Seddon has turned a decent year so far, but isn’t much in terms of projectability.

With the departures of Michael Saunders (called up) and Ezequiel Carrera (traded to Cleveland with High-A SS Juan Diaz for Russell Branyan), the prospect power in Tacoma has dropped markedly.  However, both players had struggled for the most part in their stints with the Rainiers this year, and there have been some bright spots for the team offensively.

The biggest offensive prospect left on the roster is probably OF Greg Halman, an athletic wonder who has yet to quite “figure it out”. He put up numbers in High Desert in 2008 that put him on almost every prospect radar, but stunk so badly in West Tennessee in 2009 that he dropped back off most of them.  To call Halman a free-swinger is to adventure in understatement.  To put it more aptly, Halman has never seen a pitch he did not want to swing at.  He has gotten better about that this season, running a walk rate of roughly 11%, but he still swings and misses far too much.  When Halman does make contact, though…. well, his 18 home runs and .614 slugging percentage on the season are a testament to what he can do when he puts wood to baseball.  Lost in the shuffle of all the angst created by Halman at the plate is the fact that he’s actually a very good defender in the outfield.  He’s very fluid and tracks the ball well, and has a huge arm (I saw him nearly throw a ball into the stands behind third base in Cheney from the 350 foot mark in right field).

Here’s a quick video of a Halman at-bat from this past Thursday at Cheney, courtesy of Megan of Section 331:

As you can see, Halman’s got a pronounced upper-cut swing, and while his batspeed makes up for the length of it, he has a hard time handling pitches down and out of the zone.  He did wind up whiffing for strike three, but in that at-bat Halman showed his improved discipline at the plate, laying off several pitches he would have tried to golf out a year ago.  I’m still not convinced he can succeed in the majors; as Dave Cameron of USS Mariner has pointed out recently, only Alfonso Soriano has had any real success with his skillset.  That said, I am at least a little more hopeful for Halman than I was going into the 2010 season.

Outside of Halman, there have been a few other interesting notes.  Mike Carp has shown better power than expected, mashing eleven home runs so far this year.  Given that he’s generally projected as a 15-homer guy tops in the big leagues, that’s somewhat encouraging to see.  Carp’s defense also seems to be improved somewhat, though it could only be described as “abysmal” before, so take that as you will.  Matt Mangini, as Jon has previously noted, is enjoying something of a resurgence at the plate this year after being basically pushed up to Tacoma by the promotion of Alex Liddi instead of earning his way up in the system.  Mangini has posted a .309/.364/.539 line on the year so far, and has added 9 homers as well.  Hardly star-level numbers, but they’re a far cry above and beyond what he had been putting up when Mariners’ fans had basically given up on him as a prospect.  He’s showed great range at third, but uncertain hands and a wild arm have lead to 15 errors so far this season and may ultimately restrict him to first base in the future.

Two guys that have gotten a taste of the big leagues, but are in need of rehabbing their status a bit, are Matt Tuiasasopo and Adam Moore.  Tui, who flailed at the plate in Seattle and looked just as lost in the field, has raked so far since being sent back to Tacoma, putting up a .323/.461/.507, with three homers and a staggering 18 walks in just 19 AAA games so far this season.  As much as I’d like to see Tui succeed in a Mariner uniform, the reality of the situation is that he probably needs a change of scenery in order to find that success at the big league level.  With his potential to hit and his ability to play several positions (though how well is up for debate), he could wind up being quite serviceable for a national league squad.

Moore has also been raking since his rehab stint started, followed by his official return to the Tacoma roster last week.  In 17 games with the Rainiers this year, Moore has put up a 1.011 OPS, albeit in a smaller sample size than even Tui’s is.  Moore struggled to get much of anything going for Seattle this year between injuries and inconsistent playing time, so it’s nice to see his bat heating back up a bit.  Hopefully he can be back up and contributing before too long.

All in all, it’s been a nice year for Tacoma.  This isn’t the most prospect-loaded team you’ll ever see, but there are some nice pieces here that could help in the future, as well as a couple of useful “emergency” type players stashed away like 1B/OF Brad Nelson and utility man Jack Hannahan.  The team currently sits with a 4-game lead on their division in the PCL, so we might wind up seeing them in the league playoffs again this year.

Next up in the Scouting Review series is the West Tennessee DiamondJaxx, current home of former #2 overall pick Dustin Ackley.  See you then…