SEATTLE -- If these were normal times, Marco Gonzales would have been making his second start of the season on Tuesday night for the Mariners, lined up against the Twins at T-Mobile Park after pitching Opening Day five days earlier against the Rangers.

But these obviously aren’t normal times, with the COVID-19 epidemic keeping the nation shut down and Major League Baseball on the shelf for the time being. So Gonzales worked out in the basement gym in his home in West Seattle, spent time with his wife, Monica, and their dog, Louie, and wondered with the rest of us what comes next.

Gonzales says he’s throwing and playing catch as if it were December now, keeping his arm in shape with the idea that he’ll need 3-4 weeks to ramp up for regular-season games whenever some form of Spring Training resumes.

With a full gym in his home, staying in physical shape isn’t difficult for Gonzales. But the mental part? The waiting and wondering and working to find things to occupy himself at a time when he should be starting the 162-game grind of an MLB season, just how is he dealing with that?

“When I figure that out, I’ll let you know,” Gonzales said Tuesday in a conference call with Mariners reporters. “My wife would say that I need a healthy outlet to compete, so I'm trying to find that. It’s been tough. I would say that we're still trying to figure out what this year is going to look like in a lot of ways. I think once we kind of have a date on the books, things will become clearer for us. But right now, it’s just trying to find some outlets, trying to find some things to take up the time.

“It is an interesting thing for an athlete to go through to have a start of the season on the books, and then to have that scratched. And now we don't know when we're going to start or if we're going to start, so it is kind of a confusing time right now."

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Gonzales stayed in Arizona working out at the Mariners’ facility in Peoria until the team shut that down and sent everyone home two weeks ago. Then he and Monica packed all their belongings into a rental car and made the 1,500-mile drive to Seattle, along with their pup.

“That stretch of 500-600 miles after Vegas, oh my gosh,” he said. “It’s like torture. We listened a lot of podcasts, tried to engage and have thoughtful discussions in the car with our dog. We stopped in some interesting places. We had our fair share of Red Bulls and cold drinks stashed up to stay caffeinated. And I crushed about three bags of sunflower seeds. It took us a while, but we grinded through it and survived, so it was all good.”

Not so good was how he felt last Thursday, knowing he should have been taking the mound that afternoon as the Mariners’ Opening Day pitcher for the second year in a row.

“It’s definitely weird, knowing we should be playing baseball right now,” Gonzales said. “Trying to think of myself on that schedule and trying to envision going to the park, it is a tough time. So I’m staying in touch with teammates and I got a good workout and sweat in [that day] to relieve some stress. But it starts to bum me out when I think about it, so I’m trying to take my mind off that and trying to look forward.”

As for keeping his arm in shape, Gonzales says he’s been playing catch with teammate Patrick Wisdom, who also lives year-round in Seattle. He’s not throwing off a mound, but strictly playing long toss to maintain some of the strength built up during camp.

Gonzales was the last Mariner to start a Cactus League game, throwing 60 pitches in 3 1/3 innings in a rainy 4-2 victory over the Padres at Peoria Stadium on March 11. At the time, the Mariners already knew their Opening Day wasn’t going to be in Seattle, which had already been hit by the coronavirus outbreak.

But they had no idea that the entire season would soon be put on hold. And now, instead of preparing for the Twins and poring over scouting reports, Gonzales is left trying to put together the pieces, literally.

“My wife and I have tried to figure out different games to play, a lot of puzzles,” he said. “Fortunately, we have our dog, so we have been going on a lot of walks taking him to the park, just trying to stay as active as we can. We try to find a chunk of the day where we can get outside and avoid some rain and go and exercise, go on a run, those type of things. We’re trying to build some healthy habits.”