White to undergo season-ending surgery

ANAHEIM -- Evan White will undergo season-ending hip surgery in the coming days, Mariners manager Scott Servais said ahead of the club’s three-game series opener against the Angels on Friday.

Dr. Thomas Bird in Nashville will perform the procedure, and the decision by Seattle’s first baseman comes after more than two months of recovery and rehab for the left hip flexor strain that became far more severe than he or the club had anticipated.

“He was trying to work through where he was at, and could he get back and try to get back on the field for us this year? He decided what’s best for him was to go ahead and have surgery,” Servais said.

Asked about it last weekend, Mariners general manager Jerry Dipoto was confident that if White did undergo surgery that he would be prepared for Spring Training in 2022.

Ty France has played 33 of the club’s 43 games since the reigning American League Gold Glove Award winner White went down. Though his defense is not as strong as White’s -- nearly no one’s is -- first base is France’s natural position, and he figures to stay there for the rest of the season. Catcher Luis Torrens will also be used there.

Torrens to move around
Speaking of, Torrens’ bat has been strong enough to warrant regular playing time, but now that No. 6 prospect Cal Raleigh is up and will be starting more often than not at catcher, the Mariners will move Torrens around more to allocate him at-bats. This has been the thinking for a few weeks now, with Torrens increasing his infield practice reps pregame.

“You will see him playing first base at times, you will see him catch again also, but he'll be the guy who gets moved around [to get] a little bit more work,” Servais said. “Cal and Morph will be doing the majority of the catching.”

Torrens will also slot in at DH, almost certainly in every game started by a lefty; he has an .866 OPS against southpaws. But first base isn’t foreign to him -- he played there sparingly while coming up in the Yankees’ organization.

Pressing on without Santiago
The Mariners will be down a 26-man roster spot until July 27 after Héctor Santiago’s 10-game suspension was upheld on Thursday. That puts Seattle in a far more precarious spot given that Justus Sheffield’s rotation spot will come up twice while Santiago is sidelined, first on Tuesday in Denver.

It’s likely that the Mariners will turn to a bullpen day against the Rockies, and possibly the second time through on Monday, July 26, against Houston. But the question will be with who? Robert Dugger will almost certainly be in the mix, but a lot of how they navigate the next 10 games will hinge on circumstance and availability.

“We're going to have to mix and match how we do things out of our bullpen,” Servais said. “We really need to continue to lean on our starters, those guys, to get deep in ballgames, even on the nights maybe they don't have their ‘A’ game. The value of them continuing to go out there [and] give us possibly five or six innings, when they've already given up four or five runs [is] really, really valuable for us going forward in the short term. But we'll survive it. We will be fine. One thing about our team is, we're very resilient.”

Kelenic bats eighth
Jarred Kelenic’s second stint in the big leagues will begin with far less pomp, circumstance and pressure. Unlike his debut -- at home with an eager crowd, including his entire family, and batting leadoff -- Kelenic returns in a much quieter fashion to the very venue in which Servais told him on June 6 that the club was sending him back down to Triple-A Tacoma.

Kelenic batted eighth and started in center field on Friday, which just so happened to also mark his 22nd birthday -- a reminder of how young MLB Pipeline’s No. 4 overall prospect is as he attempts to navigate this rookie season.

“The last time coming in, there was a ton of hype, a ton of pressure, obviously that maybe he put a little bit on himself there and getting off to a fast start tearing it up and all those other things, and it didn't happen for him,” Servais said. “So I thought at the time, it was the best move to make, and I think he understands that.”