There always seems to be that one team that gets slammed with injuries in spring training, and this year that team is the Seattle Mariners.

Wednesday night, Ichiro Suzuki and Jean Segura exited the team's Cactus League game against the San Francisco Giants with leg injuries.

A few hours prior to the game, the Mariners announced Nelson Cruz will be sidelined for a bit with a Grade 1 quad strain. They hope he can resume hitting in a few days and be ready in time for Opening Day, but quads are tricky. It's a big muscle and they're easy to reaggravate if not given enough time to heal.

Ichiro, Segura, and Cruz are the latest additions to Seattle's walking wounded. The team is without five other regulars as well:

  • Robinson Cano: Suffered a hamstring strain over the weekend. The Mariners hope he'll be back next week.
  • Ben Gamel: Strained an oblique earlier this month and is out indefinitely.
  • Ryon Healy: Needed hand surgery early in spring training. Might be ready for game action next week.
  • Felix Hernandez: Took a line drive to the arm a few weeks ago. He recently started throwing in the bullpen.
  • Erasmo Ramirez: Suffered a lat strain early in spring training and is currently on a throwing program.

Seattle's starting first baseman (Healy), starting second baseman (Cano), starting shortstop (Segura), starting left fielder (Gamel), replacement left fielder (Ichiro), No. 1 starter (Felix), and No. 5 starter (Ramirez) are all currently out with injuries. The team has yet to announce updates on Ichiro or Segura, and they may not know more until Thursday.

Baseball Prospectus' PECOTA projection system pegs the Mariners as an 82-80 team in 2018, putting them right on the wild card bubble. The Mariners have baseball's longest postseason drought -- they haven't been to the playoffs since 2001, Ichiro's rookie season -- and they figured to be a bubble team even when fully healthy. They can ill-afford to have some of these injuries linger into the regular season.

Fortunately for the Mariners, Opening Day is still two weeks away, meaning they can still afford to be patient, and give these guys as much time off as necessary to get healthy. They'd rather they miss a few games now rather than rush it and have them miss a lot of games later. The Mariners just have to hope these injuries are truly minor and everyone gets back on the field reasonably soon. They're probably not good enough to overcome losing these players for any length of time.