Mariners Non-Tender Santos, Thornton, Saucedo
The MLB non-tender deadline came and went on Friday, with the Mariners choosing to let go of three players from their 2025 roster, all pitchers: Gregory Santos, Trent Thornton, and Tayler Saucedo. On the other side, the team offered contracts to 31 players, 23 with receive league minimum deals and eight others due for arbitration in the event no other contract is signed. Some players who had been speculated to end up non-tendered were offered contracts in the end, such as Jackson Kowar and Luke Raley.
Of the Mariners who became free agents Friday afternoon, Santos was one whom the team once had high hopes for. Mainly relying on a sinker-slider mix, Santos averaged 98.8 miles an hour on his sinker and 91.4 miles per hour on his slider during a strong 2023 season with the Chicago White Sox. A miniscule home run rate and 2.65 FIP that year indicated that Santos was only due for improvement when the Mariners imported him from the South Side in 2024, but injury derailed his season in both 2024 and 2025. The latter season looked worse for Santos, whose velocity and effectiveness declined notably even before his injury, and the team let Santos go into free agency for 2026.
Trent Thornton had also shown greater ability in past years than in 2025, with a 3.61 ERA and 3.47 FIP in 72 ⅓ innings in 2024, but a pedestrian 2025 season spent as a low leverage mop-up guy ended with a torn Achilles at the end of July. With the long recovery periods such injuries cause, the M’s opted not to tender Thornton a 2026 contract.
Tayler Saucedo, a Tacoma-raised local who posted a combined 3.54 ERA and 3.79 FIP over 86 ⅓ innings in his first two years with Seattle, took a major step back in 2025 with a 7.43 ERA and 4.86 FIP over 13 ⅓ innings and was officially designated for assignment on Nov. 18 to make room for newly acquired Alex Hoppe, but Saucedo is now officially a free agent.