How Much Did Managerial Decisions Matter in Mariners’ Losses to Padres?
Top of the sixth, Mariners down by three, bases loaded, one out. A white-hot Luke Raley was set to come to the plate, having had eight hits in his last 14 at-bats, but the Padres replaced struggling reliever Bradgley Rodriguez with powerhouse lefty Adrián Morejón. Mariners manager Dan Wilson played the match-ups and brought in the right-handed Connor Joe.
Joe struck out on three pitches. The Mariners weren’t able to score again in the game and lost 5-2 in the end, falling to the business end of the Padres’ heavy-hitting bullpen and losing their eighth straight road game.
Should Raley have stayed in the game? Well, perhaps a less extremely platoony lefty should have stayed in as a proverbial “hot hand”, but Raley is one of the most platoony hitters in the game. His career .247/.335/.463 slash line against right-handers is offset by his .182/.249/.284 slash line against left-handers. Hot or not, he simply does not hit against left-handers, which is why the team signed Rob Refsnyder - but Refsnyder was out on paternity leave, leaving the M’s with four right-handed options: Leo Rivas, Mitch Garver, Connor Joe, and Patrick Wisdom.
Mariners Trajectory Rapidly Approaches Inflection Point with Fifth Straight Loss
Despite an impressively bad two-decade playoff drought to begin the millennium, the Mariners haven’t been in the habit of fully burying themselves three weeks into the year, usually waiting until May to let everything fall apart in their down years, missing the mark in September during their good years, and crashing into the last wall like George Russell in Singapore in their great years.
But inexplicably yet unsurprisingly, the proverbial team bus looks like it’s being steered by a tumbleweed through a baker’s dozen games in 2026. The team’s stellar pitching has carried them to four wins, but a combination of atrocious defense and somehow worse hitting dropped their ninth game of the year (and fifth in a row) on Wednesday afternoon.
Seattle suffered their third (kind of fourth) shutout of the season, barely avoiding getting no-hit by MacKenzie Gore and co.
The Mariners offense, team-wide, has been having the kind of performance where 105 mile an hour groundouts to short are hopeful signs because the team is usually hitting 75 mile an hour groundouts to first.
‘I Love Winning More Than I Hate Losing’: Colt Emerson Looks to Take Situational ‘Winning Player’ Approach to Mariners
TACOMA, Wash. - Colt Emerson may not have yet seen a major league pitch in his 20 years on this earth, but he already has an almost nine-figure contract extension with the Seattle Mariners. And, it seems, he already has a two-word motto: “winning player”.
When Emerson comes to the bat, that’s the first thing that goes through his mind. In a minor league world where the process of prospect development and the results on the field for the team at hand must coexist, Emerson’s process is to try for the best result.
“Read the situation and what’s going to help the team win. What’s going to help score a run here or make a play here,” Emerson said about his approach. “Really just catered towards what’s going to help the team at the end of the day.”
Baseball’s Back: Five Notes from Mariners’ First Spring Training Action of 2026
With blue skies above and many excited fans all around in that picturesque Cactus League ballpark, the Seattle Mariners played their first game of 2026 Spring Training on Friday, Feb. 20. The first day of spring is perhaps the most hopeful time for all 30 teams in any given year, with a nearly clean slate injury-wise and the first harsh reality checks of the regular season still a month and change away.
A quite packed house of 9,956 spectators dotted the Peoria Sports Complex to see the Mariners and Padres both take to their home Spring ball yard. They saw prospects go up against powerhouses in exciting duels and yet also witnessed players trip over each other, lose cans of corn in the sun, and make Little League errors in base coverage. No one got hurt and the game doesn’t count, so both sides came away with a smile in a 7-4 win for Seattle. But what does the first preseason action of 2026 tell us about how things might go when real chips are down for the Mariners?
Michael Arroyo put on a good display at the dish, with a homer and double to power early Seattle production.
Seattle’s system has a fair amount of top-end hitting prospects, and although Colt Emerson and Lazaro Montes headline the system, the crown in Peoria bore witness to another of Seattle’s guys in the farm system. Michael Arroyo, who struggled a bit with his power after his promotion to Double-A in 2025 with a .255/.376/.341 slash line (though this was still a 121 OPS+ where 100 is league average) - and yet decreased his strikeout rate against better pitchers - went into Spring with the chance to show what exactly the Mariners have with him.
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