Alumni Updates

Carlos Triunfel ('07) got the treatment in the Seattle Times M's Farm Report the other day.

"With him, you could always see it coming," said Jim Horner, Triunfel's manager at High Desert since he was promoted to the team midway through last season. "He's a hitter."

He hit that first home run July 10, but even as recently as July 18, Triunfel's average was at .246. Going into Monday night's game, he had raised it to .285 while hitting in 20 of 22 games. In that span, he hit .400 with 11 multi-hit games, scored 31 runs, and collected seven doubles, a triple and five home runs. He also stole 13 bases.

"He's been pretty locked in," Horner said.

Ryan Rowland-Smith ('03) had this from The Bellingham Herald August 11.

The big Aussie left-hander has been given the biggest opportunity of his career – a regular-season audition to earn a spot in the 2009 Mariners rotation.

“That’s my goal, to show them what I can do and give myself an opportunity for next season,” Rowland-Smith said.

Switching Rowland-Smith from reliever to starter wasn’t some random decision. In a few longer relief outings and two spot starts, he showed the Mariners he might be starter material. Seattle decided to commit to the idea of switching Rowland-Smith to a starter more than a month ago, sending him – one of their most versatile and well-used relievers – to Triple-A Tacoma.

Admittedly, being told to leave the luxury-filled life with the Mariners for the minor leagues wasn’t too enticing for Rowland-Smith. But he also understood it was a logical step to his bigger goal of being a starter rather than a reliever.

“All I can do is pitch, go to Triple-A and work (hard) and give them no reason to keep me out of Seattle,” Rowland-Smith wrote on his blog on prolebrity.com.

EDIT:

Adding in this Tacoma Weekly story about Oswaldo Navarro ('04, '05)

Navarro played his first year of professional baseball in the United States in 2003 with the Everett AquaSox. This was about as far from home in baseball miles and culture as he could possibly have gone. Once there, Navarro set about learning the language of this new country – he was already fluent in the language of baseball.

“Everett is a long way from home,” he said. “I had no English. I could only say ‘combo’ at Jack in the Box – that was easy.”

That first year was very hard. His total life was different. The food was different, along with the climate and environment. It was totally foreign except for the other Latino players and of course they did not all speak the same variety of Spanish. A friend told him he should stay with Americans and not be afraid to speak English.