Short hops

• Bench coach Dave Roberts took the team's outfielders over to the Peoria Sports Complex on Tuesday morning to work on drills that involved the wall. Those drills, Black said, are much easier to pull off in the stadium as opposed to the practice fields, which are lined by chain link fences.

• Black confirmed the pitchers who will appear in Thursday's game against the Mariners. Veteran left-hander Eric Stults will start and throw one inning. Other pitchers include Tony Sipp, Anthony Carter, Patrick Schuster, Blaine Boyer, Donn Roach and Kevin Quackenbush.

Andrew Cashner, a candidate to start Opening Day, gets the nod on Friday against the Mariners and is scheduled to throw two innings.

• Joe Torre, Major League Baseball's executive vice president of baseball operations, was at the Padres' facility on Tuesday to meet with eight Cactus League teams about the implementation of the new replay rules and the new rule on home-plate collisions. Torre met with field staff as well as front-office personnel. He's previously been in Florida to talk to teams and spoke to seven teams in Arizona on Monday.

"At some places, there's been more questions than others," Torre said. "This is the biggest group we have had. Yesterday was one of the quicker meetings, which means either they understood, or we explained it better or a little of each.

"It's been well-received, I think. It [replay rule] took us a long time. I never realized how complicated that it would be. We spent a lot of hours, maybe 1,000 hours. There's a lot of complicated stuff. This meeting today is basically a 'what-if' meeting."

How would Joe Torre the former Yankees manager have liked the replay rules?

"I wouldn't have liked it in '96 when we had someone reached out of the right field stands and catch a home run ball," said Torre, noting the infamous Jeffrey Maier game in the ALCS.