Mariners starting to come together down the stretch

The Mission Valley Mariners may be inexperienced but the younger players are slowly starting to make the adaption from Class B to Class A baseball as the M’s prepare to head towards the end stretch of the regular season.

The Mariners split in this past weekend in Libby Tournament, finishing with a 2-2 record that improved their regular season mark to 12-24, according to M’s manager Kaileb Gillingham.

“We’ve got two or more kids to come out and now have 21 kids,” Gillingham said. “That is one on our A team and B team, and we just added an extra arm for our pitching. We are now able to go deeper with our pitchers. Their attitudes so far have been pretty good and they haven’t really been complaining. They are coachable and easy to work with. It’s really a joy to have them.”

Gillingham said he felt the extra help he has received from the B team call-ups have already paid dividends.

“Having the one kid on the A team has really helped (our team) tremendously for pitching,” Gillingham said. “It helps with that one extra arm. Our team is able to see the difference between using one pitcher and having to use two or three pitchers in a game.”

Gillingham said he felt finishing with a .500 record at the Libby Tournament was a “huge confidence booster” for his team.

“There were three teams (from our conference) but we got to play the teams from out of state mostly,” Gillingham said. “We played two teams from Idaho and one team from Canada. Playing against both of those out-of-state teams was a good experience to see where we are at against opponents from out-of-state that are both from higher high school classes.”

Gillingham said he sees that his young team is “gradually” building in its confidence.

“I would say ‘yeah, we are building confidence,’ and the B team, most of them played last year,” Gillingham said. “That was my first year on a good team and the B team is already above that. It’s a huge confidence booster. Them learning to play together (will help) when they get to the A team because they will be more successful.”

As the M’s get ready for Districts in Whitefish, they will host two more home games against the Bitterroot Bucs and the Firecracker Tournament.

“It will be huge to try to establish the momentum,” Gillingham said. “We’ve been hitting the ball all season. We’ve just been hitting it right to people and it’s been kind of a downer. When our team finally hits and finally gets the bats going, we will have to continue through and continue playing well in our districts. We should have more confidence headed into the postseason.”