Bullpen Rises to Occasion as Mariners Snap Five-Game Skid, Take Series Finale From Rays
Finally putting an end to their losing ways, the Seattle Mariners’ offense showed up early and the bullpen delivered a brilliant performance in a resounding 8-2 rout of the Tampa Bay Rays, salvaging the series finale to avoid the sweep going into the All-Star break.
The Mariners needed to use seven pitchers to secure the win due to a scary first inning injury to starter Emerson Hancock that resulted in him exiting the contest an inning later. The offense picked the ‘pen up, however, plating seven runs by the fourth inning, and eight runs overall.
It was a rare complete team performance by Seattle, and manager Dan Wilson hopes to get some key players back from injury coming out of the break while building off his team’s lights-out execution as the season marches towards the playoffs.
“Talk about a team effort from top to bottom today,” Wilson said afterward.
Mariners Drop Fourth Straight as Randy Arozarena Mishap Causes Tension
The Mariners are back under .500, with a 47-48 record nearly 60% of the way through the year, reeling from their fourth straight loss in Florida on Friday, this time by a score of 7-2. With the result, the Rays have won 12 of their last 16, while the M’s have lost 10 of their last 16.
The first inning was something of a microcosm of the way these two teams entered the game, one with tons of fight and firepower and the other limping along. The final line from that frame of zero runs for either team was reached two starkly different ways: from the Mariners, it was three ground ball outs, but for the Rays, it was a double, a walk, and an infield single to create a pickle for Mariners starter Luis Castillo.
Its greatest and most obvious microcosm was the defense. J.P. Crawford, on the first pitch of the game, dribbled a ball up the middle that Rays second baseman Richie Palacios snared on a falling run. Meanwhile, in the bottom half, the selfsame Crawford was unable to make a play on a ground ball hit directly his way and created the aforementioned infield single.
The obvious example of completely preventable defensive damage was when Randy Arozarena slowed to a trot on a fifth inning foul ball that was extremely catchable, after which Rays hitter Cedric Mullins cracked a home run to put the Rays up 3-1. That moment had infinitely more impact on the course of the game than what I’m about to describe - and caused plenty of tension between Arozarena and starter Luis Castillo - but there was another moment that summed up the energy (or lack thereof) among the Mariners.
Mariners Squander Comeback Effort in Extras, Fall in 6-5 Walk-Off Heartbreaker to Marlins
The Seattle Mariners flew into south Florida as victors of five of their last six games, riding a wave of momentum back to the top of the AL West standings. Ready to build on their back-to-back series wins, Seattle was primed to go on a winning streak heading into the All-Star break this upcoming weekend.
The upstart Marlins had other plans, however, walking off their American League opponent in the bottom of the 10th inning to steal the series opener.
Hurler Bryan Woo continued to struggle on the road, allowing 10 baserunners and three runs across just five innings.The Marlins raced ahead to a 4-0 lead as the Mariners failed to score until the fifth. Seattle had the bases loaded in the fourth inning and came away with no runs, continuing a trend where the team seemingly forgets how to hit until the fifth inning or later.
Seattle rallied to a 5-4 lead in the eighth, but it proved insufficient as they were walked off two innings later, sealing another frustrating loss for a team intent on playing below their potential.
Analysis: Why Seiya Suzuki Could Be Missing Piece for Mariners
After coming up a few innings short of making the fall classic last October, the Seattle Mariners came into the season as one of the favorites to represent the American League in the World Series. Yet, even after winning five of its past six games, Seattle sits hovering just above the .500 mark.
Injuries and inconsistency have been the main culprits for not being able to pull away just yet in a pedestrian AL West division, but the inability to hit lefties has proven to be the M’s Achilles’ heel. During the offseason, the team added outfielder Rob Refsynder with the hopes he would help in that department, but he has been abysmal all season and recently landed on the disabled list with a knee injury, creating even more questions against southpaws.
Some improvement needs to come from current star players such as Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodriguez on this front, but outside additions are needed for a second half surge and a shot to get to the World Series for the first time. Of all the realistic options potentially out there, one stands out as a win/win for both teams with the pitcher-needy Cubs and outfielder Seiya Suzuki, who would be the ideal deadline addition for the M’s for a variety of reasons.
Mariners Blast Blue Jays on Independence Day, Still Need Consistency
About the only similarity between the Mariners’ game on July 3 and their game on July 4 was the general state of the Toronto Blue Jays offense. Even there, the degree of futility varied from day to day; the Jays had a generally mediocre offensive day on Friday and a horrific one on Saturday. The latter performance was largely due to the Mariner starter Logan Gilbert’s excellence.
Other than that, the games could not have been any more different. In one, the Mariners fell 2-0 as their offense failed to show up. In the other, Seattle torched the Blue Jays so badly that Myles Straw was pitching in the bottom of the eighth despite not being a pitcher. The 11-0 victory that the M’s put together was tremendously cathartic for a team that had been tied for fifth-lowest in run production during the month. The most catharsis of all was reserved for one Randy Arozarena, as despite his largely consistent career-year production, he had been the biggest standout in his team’s ugly batting performance the day prior: he lost both his team’s ABS challenges with nobody on in the first inning, neither in a conducive count for challenging.
Arozarena, as it turned out, was actually on the bad side of a 2-0 strike call in the bottom of the first with nobody on. This time, he didn’t challenge. The issues with his challenges in the first had been related to inning, yes, but challenging in the first inning isn’t bad if it’s a full count or there are men on base; but both of Arozarena’s challenges on Friday came with nobody on and without three balls. In any event, the Mariners left fielder whacked a double off the right field wall. Neither Dominic Canzone nor Cal Raleigh knocked him in, but perhaps it set a more favorable tone than the day prior, when the M’s were a few hairs away from being no-hit.
Randy Arozarena capped off a monster second inning with a grand slam.
Two men fell quickly to Jays starter Shane Bieber to begin the second, but the third out is no guarantee against any MLB offense. Cole Young lined a double into the right center gap and Victor Robles shot a liner of his own into left to log Seattle’s first run, but the real damage came a few minutes later as a single and a walk loaded the bases for the aforementioned Arozarena.
Bryce Miller Gem Gives M’s Sweep of Halos Despite Absent Offense
The last time the M’s and Angels faced each other, it was one of many disappointing series for the Mariners during the first half of the season. Seattle won the first game of the set, but as they would do several times in the following weeks and months, they dropped the final two and lost the series as their offense died and the pitching got ambushed.
Seattle’s bats may have fallen incredibly silent on Thursday evening as the two squads finished their three-game series the day after both took a rest due to a 2026 World Cup game a block away, but Bryce Miller beared down once again as he utterly stymied the Angels’ hitters inning after inning on his way to seven frames of brilliance. That, more than anything, was the bedrock of the team’s 1-0 win.
Bryce Miller didn’t give up a hit in the first six innings as his excellent year continued.
Even with his innings being limited with the piggybacks, Miller had been one of the Mariners’ most fearsome pitchers since returning from the injured list. His expert mixture of a four-seamer, slider, splitter throughout his starts produced tough scenes for opposing hitters.
Miller had a bit of a tougher time in his previous outing against the Pirates, however. His three earned runs in 5 ⅔ innings were perhaps downstream of the fact that the slider was conspicuously absent from his workhorse usage, with the hurler reliant on just his four-seamer and splitter for 59% of his offerings.
And yet Miller did much the same against the Angels on Thursday to clearly better results. Halo hitters went down one after another as they couldn’t effectively differentiate between his two go-to offerings. The visitors had 10 whiffs and five strikeouts during the first three innings, with Miller at 35 pitches through those frames. A big part of this was the fact that he could control his splitter effectively once his (already minimal) opening jitters were over.
Cole Young, George Kirby Blast Angels 6-2, Give Mariners Much-Needed Boost
The Mariners haven’t clawed their way out of the hole they dug over half a month in June. They are still a half game back in the AL West as the Rangers have forced them into a raise-or-fold situation.
But they began to dig a path on Monday, winning a game they needed to win and returning to a .500 record. They finally had some extra base hits and held a good lead - with mammoth homers off of Angels pitching - while George Kirby roared to life in a super-quality, near-complete outing. When Jose A. Ferrer worked through a light jam to complete the game in the ninth, Seattle walked away with a 6-2 win and the seeds of a new outlook on the season.
George Kirby gutted out an eight-inning start, moving to fourth all-MLB in innings pitched.
Coming off three straight quality starts, Kirby had been on something of a hot streak going into Monday’s game. But due to a lack of offense on the other side in these starts, Kirby had lost two of these three outings. The Mariners’ hitters woke up on the other side on Monday, giving him a win, but Kirby put in one of his best outings all year as he found legions of grounders from free-swinging Angels bats.
Things didn’t start off super well, however, as Kirby leaked a heater over the middle of the plate to Halos leadoff guy Zach Neto for a double. Denzer Guzman quickly chopped a ball off Josh Naylor’s glove and the visitors had a run on the board.
The Halos didn’t follow up on that run as Nolan Schanuel grounded into a double play two pitches later, the second of 12 ground balls from Angels bats. What could have been a crooked first inning had Kirby let his guard down became a meager single run for the visitors. After the game, the M’s hurler talked about his attitude in those situations and the way he needs to approach things when the game begins to go against him.
Four Runs Still Out of Reach as Mariners Fall 4-3 to Guardians
The Seattle Mariners continue to eye franchise history - for the wrong reasons - as they tied the team record with 13 games in a row while scoring three or fewer runs in a 4-3 loss to the Cleveland Guardians on Saturday. Holding onto a half-game lead in the middling American League West, the Mariners need to decide if they want to build on last year's success or drift sheepishly back into mediocrity.
Even the most optimistic Seattle fans know the phrase “Same old Mariners.” It encompasses the feelings of a downtrodden fanbase that has only made the playoffs six times in their 50 years of existence. Despite having the greatest season in team history last year by reaching Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, most fans are already ready to chalk it up as a fluke given their team’s struggles this year.
The roster is not devoid of talent; quite the opposite actually. FanGraphs Playoff Odds still gives the M’s an 80.3% chance of making the postseason. The lineup still needs to wake up though, as this roster has shown that it cannot sleepwalk its way to winning the division.
The trade deadline is approaching. Changes need to be made. What can this SoDo squad do to get back on track?
Gilbert, Mariners Salvage Red Sox Matinee, Keep Heads Above Water
All wins are equal on the final sheet of standings at the end of the year, but not all these wins mean the same things when they are played. Some wins are triumphant jewels in the crowns of great streaks, others are dead cat bounces for a team plummeting into the gutter. The Mariners’ 3-1 win over the Red Sox on Sunday was neither of those, but it was the definitional salvaged game, turning what could have been a sweep to go under .500 on the summer solstice into a lost series and a 40-39 record with the halfway point nearly reached.
The offense, for the eighth straight game, didn’t impress, but the Mariners worked a win anyway thanks to an incredible start from a rebounding elite arm, a couple of timely hits, and a sharp bullpen. And yet the win may be pyrrhic, with another key player falling to the injury bug.
Logan Gilbert worked into the seventh and kept the Red Sox to a single run.
While the Mariners haven’t had everyone clicking at the same time, they have had the relative luxury of often getting a cold man hot once their hot man goes cold. While Emerson Hancock has seemingly taken a big step back over the past two outings, Logan Gilbert has finally settled into a real adjustment against the five-and-dive outings and long at-bats that had created them.
This adjustment has been quite simple and equally effective: instead of relying solely on his secondary pitches in favorable counts - a strategy that teams effectively countered by simply laying off the low sliders and buried splitters they would see time and time again - Gilbert has truly mixed things up with fastballs, curveballs, splitters, and sliders in these counts. This means, in the aggregate, that he is throwing the heater a lot more.
Pereda, Mariners Clobber Mets 8-3; Win Streak Extends to Eight
It’s not clear exactly which Mariner defined the team’s resounding 8-3 victory on Tuesday night. Perhaps it was catcher Jhonny Pereda, whose putaway homer represented a recovery from the canonical worst experience for a catcher to have. Or maybe it was Colt Emerson, who increased his OPS to .935 with a pair of hits and who finished off the game with a sweet sliding catch. A case could be made for Patrick Wisdom, who logged his first Mariners home run and got the hitting party started way back in the second.
All three of those, it might be noted, began 2026 with the Triple-A Tacoma Rainiers.
But regardless of whoever may be first among equals, the Mariners had a steadily stiffening hold on the game from start to finish. Even when the visiting Mets tied it up in the third, Seattle kept the pressure going against bulk hurler Jonah Tong and New York soon cracked. And the M’s finally logged a string of three straight series wins.
“Boy, if I had the magic touch, we’d keep it forever,” Wilson said of his team’s eight-game win streak. “Sometimes that’s just the game, and we’ve talked about how offense is contagious, and it just feels like the energy offensively has been outstanding … we’ve seen just how exciting it can be when it gets that way.”
Patrick Wisdom knocked his first Mariners homer to put Seattle up 2-0 early.
Coming into Tuesday’s game, the Mariners had hit a grand total of 18 home runs in their previous seven contests, a pace of 2.57 homers per game. That isn’t going to be sustainable over the long term; the highest figure a team has ever posted was a tie between the 2023 Atlanta Braves and 2019 Minnesota Twins at 1.90 home runs per game. But it was a marked upturn from Seattle’s 1.11 home runs per game figure, and after Tuesday, the M’s have hit 1.31 home runs per game in all of 2026.
It’s Time for Dan Wilson, Mariners to End Platoon Obsession
The Seattle Mariners began this season with a clear plan to cycle through several players. A “platoon” in baseball is defined as a “a managerial strategy where two players share a single defensive position, alternating starts based on the handedness of the opposing starting pitcher.”
For example, the Mariners signed Rob Refsnyder this offseason to mash against left-handed pitching. When Seattle faced a right-handed starter, Dominic Canzone and Luke Raley would be in the lineup with Refsnyder on the bench.
But after 55 games, now closer to the halfway point of the season than the season opener, it’s time to ditch this approach.
Mariners Show Mediocre Makeup, Roll Over Dead in 5-0 Defeat to Royals
Friday’s game, a 5-0 loss for the Mariners, was over in the first inning. It didn’t matter how many ostensibly good hitters were in the lineup, and it wouldn’t have mattered if Cal Raleigh had been healthy and swinging. George Kirby got the benefit of the baseball world’s decision in eons past to go with ERA instead of RA/9, therefore getting the quality start. In fairness to him, an error (this time J.P. Crawford quite literally dropping the ball while standing on second base when Cole Young sent him a toss for a force out, rather hilariously charged as a throwing error on Young) directly led to that first inning becoming a three-run frame instead of a one-run frame, but Kirby didn’t do well to avoid contact in those situations, with far too much tilted chucking down the pipe.
Royals starter Stephen Kolek cruised from the first inning to the last, becoming the fourth pitcher league-wide to log a complete game shutout. Simply by throwing strikes and forcing the Mariners to make contact, the hurler broke them down as a light touch breaks a rust-ridden nail. Despite striking out only two batters, the Mariners got just four hits in 32 at-bats. Outside of Luke Raley and Cole Young, they got none. The team barely even looked sharp enough to be in the defending-everything-means-defending-nothing zone of bad hitting; they simply appeared to give up right off the rip.
Perhaps that is a little inaccurate. After all, when Raley and Young knocked a pair of one-out singles in the top of the second, the M’s had the beginnings of some sort of rally. It was quickly snuffed out as Dominic Canzone swung at a changeup in the dirt and grounded into a double play.
Arozarena, Mariners Gut Out Series Win vs. White Sox
It would be quite an understatement to say a Wednesday win was badly needed after the gut-punch the Mariners had suffered on Tuesday.
Luckily for Seattle (with luck indeed on the team’s side more often than not), the M’s gutted out the afternoon rubber match, defying even a no-outs, bases loaded miss to put up five runs and win the game 5-4. It was their first one-run win since May 4 and 24th win on the whole year, though they still sit three games under despite heroics from Randy Arozarena and Jhonny Pereda.
Emerson Hancock pitched an uneasy five innings but avoided extra damage.
Wednesday’s game gave Mariners starter Emerson Hancock the chance for revenge on the only team to yet put up a crooked number on him in 2026. Results were mixed innings-wise, but the hurler kept the White Sox to far less runs than the five he had given up in Chicago.
The strangeness of the sport was on display in the second and third innings for the Mariners starter. Despite a whistle-clean first inning, Hancock lost his control in the second, unable to figure out the release point on his fastball. One heater after another flew high and away to the lefty Colson Montgomery for a leadoff five-pitch walk, followed by four straight up and in to Chase Meidroth. He tried to get his feel back with a sweeper to Jarred Kelenic, only for it to bounce out of Jhonny Pereda’s reach and advance the runners - but the wild pitch scarcely mattered since Kelenic walked anyway.
Arozarena, Canzone Crush Stros Pitching, Raleigh Breaks Slump in 10-2 Mariner Win
Monday night and Tuesday night represented two very different kinds of Mariners victories. In the bottom of the ninth on the first night, the M’s got a win by the skin of their teeth, with Andrés Muñoz getting the better of Yordan Alvarez to finish out a badly-needed win for the M’s.
When Domingo González wrapped up the bottom of the ninth on Tuesday, things were far less tense. Although the Astros had runners on first and third, the M’s were already up 10-2, and with the final out, that was the final score. It was sublimely special for González, who had just completed his very first inning, but the Mariners’ offensive explosion had long since shattered all but the slightest chance of even the mighty Astros offense clawing back into the match.
Against the whole gamut of Houston hurlers they faced on Tuesday, the Mariners put up numbers. They scored 10 runs on 11 hits, six walks, and two batters hit by a pitch; they got hard hits on 57.6% of their batted balls. With runners in scoring position, the M’s went 2-for-8, but one of those hits was Dominic Canzone’s first career grand slam, which he slammed on the first pitch Astros starter Tatsuya Imai sent his way in the fourth inning.
Seattle took Tatsuya Imai to Randyland and the Can-zone.
The Astros’ big pitching signing of the offseason, Tatsuya Imai, hasn’t turned out how Houston had hoped in the first month and a half of the season. The last time he faced Seattle, he had to be pulled with one out in the first inning due to four walks and one hit batsman, then he wound up on the IL with right arm fatigue. He did better on his return start on Tuesday on account of the fact he went four innings. That’s about the only positive Joe Espada’s club got out of the outing.
Bullpen Locks Down Four Frames, Mariners Eke Out 3-1 Win in Houston
It was power on power in the bottom of the ninth. Mariners closer Andrés Muñoz, who had reached 101.3 miles an hour two pitches earlier, had a 2-2 count against Yordan Alvarez himself. Alvarez represented the tying run, and with 13 home runs already this season, he was a real threat to knot the game.
Muñoz tossed his rarest pitch, a 93.2 mile an hour changeup that tailed away from Alvarez. Expecting either a roaring fastball up or a slider along the lower edges, he was completely flummoxed; the Mariners won 3-1 as Alvarez struck out.
For a team desperately in need of a hot streak, getting any win on the board against Houston was a plus. George Kirby didn’t go as deep into the game as the M’s would have hoped and the bats fell silent for nearly the entire game, but they got just enough production while Kirby and every other arm stepped up enough run-prevention wise to notch Seattle’s 20th victory.
Mariners hitters put three early runs on the board but fell familiarly silent as the game wore on.
The second inning was fruitful for Seattle. Randy Arozarena knocked a one-out single into right and Luke Raley walked to set a two-runner table, and with two outs, both Dominic Canzone and Cole Young found the outfield for an RBI each. Julio Rodríguez rocked a towering homer to begin the third.
And then 20 of the next 23 batters made outs.
Jacks Full of Threes: Raley Clubs Seven RBIs, M’s Bash White Sox 12-8
Things go a lot more easily for a baseball team when they hit three home runs to score three or more men each. Good offense over nine innings can more than smooth out a bad inning on the other side, though the Mariners’ 12-8 win on Friday night against the White Sox took a while to get to the coasting stage.
In a sense, it wasn’t nearly as close as the score said; most of the high-end relievers were able to rest as Chicago scored three runs in the final two innings to turn a giant lead into a respectable one.
But in another sense (it was a one-run game until the seventh), the game was closer than its final score. M’s starter Emerson Hancock slipped quite a bit in the third inning and gave up five runs on the night, but recovered enough to go six innings and preserve the bullpen. Seattle’s first chance with the bases loaded didn’t produce anything else, but they broke the gates later on.
The big hero of the night was the still-mashing Luke Raley, who upped his season line to .258/.314/.567 with eight homers and 23 RBIs.
Luke Raley began the barrage with the first grand slam of his career.
The Mariners gave White Sox starter Sean Burke a couple of easy innings on Friday, falling in seven pitches in the first and 11 in the fourth. But crucially, they also put tons of traffic on the bags in the second and third, and though the second was underwhelming, things came together in the following frame.
Mariners Bats Give Kirby Vintage King Félix Treatment, M’s Drop Winnable Contest to Braves
The names and faces change but the general concept remains the same. Gone are the days when a pitcher like Steve Carlton could win 27 games for a team that only won 59 games total; in modern baseball, such pitchers get saddled with no-decisions, a concept pioneered by a 13-12 Félix Hernández in 2010 who won the Cy Young Award on the back of his league-leading 2.27 ERA.
That was still 21.3% of that awful Mariners team’s wins. They weren’t quite as bad as Carlton’s old side. They may have given 702 plate appearances to Chone Figgins and 278 more to Milton Bradley, but there are few teams who were ever as bad as the ‘72 Not-Really-Phightin’ Phils.
Arisen during the career of that selfsame Hernández was the term “Félix Quality Start”, based on the definition of quality start (six innings or more, three earned runs or less) but narrowed in scope to seven innings or more and two earned runs or less. Hernández got plenty of those in his career.
Another Mariner got such a start on Tuesday night, and like a lot of those “King Félix” outings of old, his team lost 3-2. Whether it is an aberration or a harbinger, it is still too soon to tell. But the hour of judgment is drawing nearer than those in T-Mobile Park might like to admit.
George Kirby put together a “Félix Quality Start” against one of the best teams in baseball.
With a direly stretched bullpen, the Mariners needed their starter to go deep into the game. And with an offense once again struggling to put anything together, he needed to keep the Braves to a low score.
Two Electric Homers Give Mariners Comeback Win against White-Hot Braves
Home runs are thrown, not hit. That is an adage that holds up among the best and most consistent hitters in the game, who take what is given to them and do the most they can with it, whether that means lining one the other way or launching it in the air. When a hitter tries to force a home run on a pitch that won’t allow it, there are a whole lot of outcomes like strikeouts and rolled-over grounders that end up much worse for the hitter.
Paradoxically, this also means that home runs are determined by the hitter. Pitchers who allow fly balls will allow home runs, but it’s up to the hitter to put that swing on it when it comes.
A lot of hitters tried to hit homers on Monday night in Seattle as the Braves took on the Mariners, the visitors white-hot and the home crew struggling. While nobody could get it done with the bases loaded, six hits left the yard: four for Atlanta and two for Seattle, but the M’s got theirs with men on base and won 5-4.
Logan Gilbert got through six innings by the skin of his teeth, with three solo shots coming in the last frame.
Gilbert’s efficiency issues over the past two seasons are well documented. After throwing a combined 3.8 pitches per plate appearance from 2022 through 2024, Gilbert threw 5.2 per plate appearance from May 2025 through the end of 2025. Batters’ adjusted to his style of pitching, laying off the splitter thanks to the predictability of its usage, but they still had issues squaring up the pitches, jacking up his pitch counts thanks to tons of foul balls and good takes.
M’s Beat Cards 11-9 in Bizarre Back-and-Forth Battle Despite Woo Blowup
Whatever happened between the Mariners and Cardinals on Saturday afternoon in Busch Stadium, it was one of the most beautiful examples of the chaos and unpredictability inherent in baseball. Perhaps it was fitting that all nine innings were played in the sun, what with the pastoral pastime unfolding in such a way as it did.
This was a game where Connor Joe knocked a game-tying single and Will Wilson drove in two of the Mariners’ runs, while Bryan Woo got smacked around for four homers and seven runs in just three innings pitched. Cole Young was a triple away from the cycle, while Mitch Garver had a multi-hit game even while getting a would-be homer robbed by the glove of Redbirds left fielder Nathan Church - who in turn mashed two big flies of his own but made the final two outs of the Mariners’ 11-9 victory.
And it was Leo Rivas, the same man who came into the game hitting .141, who delivered the go-ahead hit in the top of the ninth. Unlike many of the previous games, Rivas started on the bench on Saturday, logging two appearances. But in a game full of inflection points and twists, Rivas’ two appearances were some of the biggest moments of the game.
Julio Rodríguez set the tone with a second deck shot in the top of the first and Will Wilson launched his first career homer in the second.
Coming into Saturday, Julio Rodríguez had logged a hit in 16 of his past 48 at-bats, but 12 of those had been singles. Still, his process had been very sound after the slump of his first couple weeks, with Rodríguez driving stuff up the middle, drawing walks, and limiting strikeouts.
Living on the Sweet Spot, Two Mariners Dialed in to Open 2026 Season
You hear it the second you start playing baseball as a kid. “Find the sweet spot” on the bat. If you rope one to center field, you might hear a parent or coach yell “way to find the sweet spot!” They call it the sweet spot of the bat for a few reasons. In my personal experience, that was the spot on the bat where it didn’t even feel like you made contact. The contact between ball and bat was so optimal, that it didn’t reverberate into my hands at all.
Of course, for big leaguers, the sweet spot really means, the highest quality of contact. In fact, MLB’s glossary has an official definition for “the sweet spot.” It states, “colloquially, a player who hits the ball solidly is said to have gotten the "sweet spot" of the bat on the ball. The sweet spot classification quantifies that as a batted-ball event with a launch angle ranging from 8 to 32 degrees.”
So, it’s not necessarily a geographic location on the bat itself. Rather, it’s the quality of the contact, mostly considering the launch angle.
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