This story was excerpted from Daniel Kramer's Mariners Beat newsletter. Josh Kirshenbaum pinch-hit on this edition. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

SEATTLE -- It¡¯s going to be at least a few years until anybody donning catchers gear in the Mariners dugout is going to have to catch Jurrangelo Cijntje (No. 7 prospect). But the thought experiment is already an intriguing one: How do you game plan with a pitcher who can switch sides mid-inning?

¡°I've never even thought about it before,¡± Cal Raleigh said. ¡°It's very unique, different.¡±

Mitch Garver had a similar response: ¡°I really don't know. It really depends on how they use him, like as a starter, long reliever, who knows? It could be interesting either way.¡±

So before looking forward to how the pitching coaches in the Mariners' organization will be able to make use of their new ambidextrous hurler -- who they selected No. 15 overall in the 2024 Draft -- take a step back to the last team Cijntje suited up for.

What¡¯s it like to begin working with a switch-pitcher? Just ask Mississippi State pitching coach Justin Parker, who took the job in Starkville last summer and immediately began working with Cijntje, who was coming off a tough freshman season.

¡°I¡¯m watching him in the fall and I¡¯m thinking to myself -- all of the things that go into this, where you just talk about it and it¡¯s kind of a cool story with switch-pitching -- no, I¡¯m watching him warm up twice,¡± Parker said. ¡°I¡¯m watching him do his routines twice, I¡¯m watching him do two different bullpens, I¡¯m watching him train with our athletic trainer twice. It¡¯s double everything.¡±

That extra work was something Cijntje said partially came from advice from Pat Venditte, the only full-time ambidextrous pitcher in Major League history. With an extra arm to care for, everything¡¯s going to take more time.

But it was up to Parker and the staff at MSU to figure out the best way to use their one-of-a-kind weapon. Cijntje¡¯s uniqueness turned heads in 2023 when he was a freshman. But it didn¡¯t stop opponents from tagging him for an 8.10 ERA.

The first thing Parker did was move him back in the Bulldogs¡¯ rotation. By making him throw either the second or third game in SEC series, the MSU coaching staff -- and Cijntje -- got a live look at opposing lineups to formulate game plans.

Then, the Bulldogs changed things up by utilizing Cijntje¡¯s ambidextrousness less.

Extending common knowledge to an uncommon pitcher, it would make sense to have Cijntje pitch righty to right-handed batters and lefty to left-handed batters. But the Bulldogs found that he struggled to stay in a rhythm going back and forth so much. Instead, they had Cijntje go for longer stretches right-handed, giving up a few side matchups for more consistency.

¡°That was part of, strategically, what we wanted to do early, and just finding two lefties in the lineup that were maybe susceptible left-on-left and were good matchups for him,¡± Parker said. ¡°And then I gave him the freedom in the game to say, ¡®If I¡¯m feeling it, I¡¯m going to stay right or I¡¯m feeling it here, I¡¯m going to go more left.¡¯ That was part of his maturation, [a] part of his growth just to give him a little more ownership of it.¡±

When Venditte first started in the Yankees' organization in 2008, he threw nearly entirely right-handed, including against lefties. But by the time he earned his first callup with Oakland in 2015, he had gone more matchup-heavy. From ¡®15 on, Venditte faced 1,132 batters with the side advantage, compared to 236 against it.

Parker said that he considers Cijntje as dangerous going right-on-left as he is left-on-left. Right-handed, Cijntje has better velocity, a deeper arsenal and slightly better command. But as a southpaw, he gets sink to get more grounders.

After coming to Seattle to officially sign with the Mariners, Cijntje set off for Arizona, where a team of analysts, coaches and coordinators were waiting to get their crack at molding a once-in-a-generation weapon.

¡°They're going to have to find a way to use his best pitches and find out [how] they match up against different hitters,¡± Garver said. ¡°That's something we do really well here. We use our best pitches all the time. 'How do they match that up with multiple lineups, multiple switch-hitters?' All of that stuff comes into play, so it'll be interesting to see how they do that.¡±