Hand Injury Sidelines Crawford as Mariners Drop Detroit Opener
The ultimate meaning of Friday’s game in the Motor City will depend quite a bit on the health of J.P. Crawford: if he is out for a significant stretch of time (or if his abilities get all out of goose should he try to play through something serious), then an errant - it may have been Framber Valdez, but it certainly seemed to have been an accident in this case - full count sinker may end up being more pivotal than an otherwise unremarkable 7-3 loss would indicate. Should the Mariners recover to put some more wins back together and Crawford recover back to the way he had been playing, then the game might truly become a footnote.
Of course, if a veritable skid begins for the Mariners, with or without Crawford, then the momentum of Friday’s action may end up important for much larger reasons.
The M’s went back to familiar ways with runners in scoring position, with runs drying up in Detroit.
Friday was Valdez’ 20th career appearance and 18th start against the Seattle Mariners, during which he had gone 7-4 with a 3.50 ERA and 1.320 WHIP. The M’s, of course, were codivisional with Valdez during his eight years with the Astros, but the team he faced on Friday was one that had spent most of the year flailing against lefties.
M’s Move Within Striking Distance of Division Lead with Win over A’s
Tuesday night was the first time the 2026 Mariners followed up a win of six or more run differential with a win of three or more run differential. Those benchmarks are largely meaningless in and of themselves, but they showed that the team finally managed to string together two largely complete victories, Tuesday’s a solid 4-1 win.
With a lead in hand for nearly the whole contest, the M’s did well to keep the powerful Athletics lineup off the board and away from any sort of comeback; not once after the first did the hosts have the tying run at the plate. But most of all, the team finally showed life against a side of the mound they have been vexed by for a grueling stretch of time.
The Mariners Jump-started their offense against a debutant Sacramento southpaw.
It’s no secret that the Mariners have been horrendous batsmen against left-handers, coming into the game with a .190/.277/.315 slash line against southpaws going into Tuesday’s game. The A’s sought to exploit this fact with quite the bold move: calling up lefty pitching prospect Gage Jump from Triple-A in order to be able to face the M’s on their weaker side.
M’s Take Close, Stable Pitcher’s Duel to Begin Road Trip in Kansas City
The Mariners have seen games take wild courses in Kauffman Stadium over the past few years, but on Friday night, it was remarkably stable. Both teams struggled quite a bit at the plate, leading to a low-scoring pitcher’s duel, but one home run for the visitors led to Seattle taking a 2-0 lead and the M’s bullpen went all according to plan.
Logan Gilbert threw nearly six shutout innings, recovering from his seven-run disaster against the Padres.
The last time Logan Gilbert had gone out to the mound, he had thrown 21 of his 27 first pitches for strikes, yet the San Diego Padres jumped on them for seven runs in total. Gilbert threw 15 of 21 first pitches for strikes on Friday, yet he kept the opposing Royals scoreless.
Talking with the media before the game, manager Dan Wilson downplayed concerns that the Mariners’ strike-throwing had allowed hitters to sit on and ambush early strikes.
“We do attack the zone, we do want to get ahead, and I think it’s a different at-bat when you do,” Wilson said before Friday’s game. “I think the good always outweighs the bad when it comes to that.”
Of course, the devil is in the details. Looking at a map of these first pitches, with those against San Diego on the left and those against Kansas City on the right, there are a couple things that are clear.
Could Cal Raleigh’s Injured List Trip Be a Good Thing for Mariners Over Long Haul?
Batting barely over .160, Cal Raleigh's struggles at the plate have played a big role in the Mariners' sluggish start to the 2026 season, and now the team will be without him for at least a few weeks.
Emerald City Spectrum writer Nick Lee examines Raleigh's tough run at the plate thus far and why a break to get back to 100% health may be exactly what the player and team needs to be able to get back on track in time to start pushing for a playoff spot once the calendar flips to June.
Mariners Win Series in Houston, Set Sail for Uncharted Waters with Raleigh Out
After their 8-3 victory against the Astros on Thursday, the Mariners are 7-1 with a +26 run differential against that team in 2026. They’re also 15-22 with a -7 run differential against every other team.
Thursday was something of a fulcrum for Seattle. It was the day the M’s officially sent Cal Raleigh to the 10-day IL, though this was an obvious development after his exit from Wednesday’s game with clear discomfort on the same oblique he had tweaked earlier. Mitch Garver caught Luis Castillo in the latter’s final full start for some time as the piggyback plan goes into effect the next time through the rotation. The cloud of these changes hung over the game’s activities, which saw the M’s take the bad Astros pitchers to task once more.
Brendan Donovan and Mitch Garver stood out on both sides of the ball on the day Cal Raleigh went to the IL.
There were two individual performances in particular that echoed Raleigh’s absence in a way. Garver, obviously, moved into the primary catching role upon his addition to the IL, while for Brendan Donovan, his performance was a lesson in the virtues of caution around early injuries.
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.
Highs, Lows, and Other Notes from Mariners’ Three Losses to Royals
If there is to be a moment when the 2026 Seattle Mariners finally put early woes behind them, it will not be for quite some time. The team got swept for the third time in the season, this go around by a Kansas City Royals team that had been 12-19 with a -22 run differential. The first two games were thin margins, winnable for the Mariners, but they weren’t at all able to salvage the third game as hitting and defense broke down once more, a Groundhog Day-like occurrence even as April has turned to May and numbers are piling up in the wins and losses column.
As befits a set of bad losses, the M’s went right up to the edge of victory multiple times, but ultimately let it slip through their fingers. Let’s go over the highs and lows of the series, from mistakes that would be bad in grade school T-ball to a pitching performance worthy of Randy Johnson.
Very High: Emerson Hancock struck out 14 in a seven-inning masterpiece on the night the M’s retired the Big Unit’s number.
Things in this sport can change on a dime, but for now, Emerson Hancock has vanquished all doubts of him being an MLB-worthy starter. He precisely used his four-seamer, sweeper, cutter, and even sinker to fold one Royals hitter after another like his opponents were cheap lawn chairs. By the time he exited the stage at the end of the seventh, 103 pitches to his name and his team nursing a one-run lead, a near-sellout crowd in T-Mobile Park gave him the a roaring ovation.
Another “Rock” Detonation Raises Rotation Questions for Mariners
In Luis Castillo’s first start of the season, he blew down the New York Yankees with basically two pitches: his four-seamer and slider.
Over the following five outings, Castillo has given up less than four runs just once and has not finished a single sixth inning. Over that time, he has given up 35 hits, 24 runs, and 20 earned runs in 22 ⅓ innings, an 8.06 ERA over that time.
Five of those innings came on Monday night in rainy Minnesota. Although in his previous four starts (also struggles of outings, though not without bad defense behind him), he had struck out 16 and issued seven walks while giving up two homers - it was all hits in the field that had sunk him - Monday’s game was bad in the so-called three true outcomes and bad in the actual result. Castillo gave up two home runs, walked two batters, and struck out three. He gave up seven hits in total and just as many runs.
The Mariners’ loss on Monday started and ended, mostly, with Castillo’s bad start. Sure, debutant Alex Hoppe’s second inning of work fell off the rails as his control waned and hitters adjusted to his slider, but the M’s had essentially decided on pushing Hoppe as far as they could to mop up the game. Sure, the Mariners offense took quite a while to wake up, but they managed to put four runs on the board.
The question has to be raised: does Castillo’s slump warrant a change in outlook for the Mariners about how to utilize him for the rest of the season?
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.
Mariners’ Plan Finally Functions, but Questions Linger from Walk-Off Win vs. A’s
For better or for worse, the Seattle Mariners haven’t wavered from their game plan after losing 15 of their first 25 games. All across the team, the players have bought into the plan that the organization built, trusting the process to get them out of their current rut.
“I really rely on the hitting coaches to help us out every day, and they do such an incredible job, but I think it’s just staying on the process and having fun while playing, knowing that failure is your friend, and learning to accept it,” first baseman Josh Naylor told Mariners TV’s Ryan Rowland-Smith after hitting a walk-off single to salvage a 5-4 win in the team’s three-game series against the Athletics.
In a team sport, this stubbornness can be beneficial.
The best laid schemes of mice and men, to translate Robert Burns [1], often go awry. “No plan survives first contact with the enemy” goes a similar phrase often misattributed to 19th century Prussian general Helmuth von Moltke the Elder.
But trying to tweak a plan that is veering a bit off course can just end up making things a whole lot worse. For a baseball team, there are always going to be good and bad spells. The most effective plans have an inherent flexibility [2] - and if Seattle’s plans go fully off the rails, it will be because they are inflexible - but in the absence of anything else, believing in the process can end up being the best a struggling team can have.
Mariners Slug Enough Sunday Homers, Take Home Series against Rangers
When the M’s dropped Friday night’s game 5-0, their ninth straight loss against non-Astros teams, they found themselves on the edge of disaster. But two games later, they aren’t in that bad of a spot for the rest of the year, with the season series against the Rangers a manageable 2-4 despite the sweep in Arlington.
Sunday’s rubber match was decided by two things: home runs and Bryan Woo. Seattle scored all its runs via the longball in their 5-2 victory while Woo did Woo things on the rubber to keep the Rangers off the board for all but one inning of the game. It’s still a ways until a true turnaround can be declared, but the M’s did what they had to do in their weekend day games.
They also mash in the stellar Steelheads threads, for what it’s worth.
Bryan Woo dealt a cold dish to Rangers hitters, going seven innings and squeezing out most of the life from Seattle’s AL West foes.
One way to describe the skill of the Mariners pitching staff is as follows: on any given day, any of the Mariners starters can look like the ace. First among equals, however, is Bryan Woo. He had not looked any worse than his two stalwart previous years to start 2026, with a 2.16 ERA, 2.24 FIP, and 0.920 WHIP over his first four starts.
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.
Mariners Release Opening Day Roster; Crawford, Miller Notably Absent with Injury
With opening day right around the corner for the Seattle Mariners - at 7:10 p.m. Pacific on Thursday against the Guardians - the team has released its first 26-man roster for the 2026 season. The top of the depth chart, of course, is very much all over the M’s roster, from returning superstars in Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez to new additions like Brendan Donovan and Jose A. Ferrer.
But of course it is not all sunshine and roses for the defending AL West champions. Longtime shortstop J.P. Crawford is out for the beginning of the year with a shoulder injury while Bryce Miller is working through an injury of his own, leaving holes in the middle infield and the back of the rotation. Leo Rivas is going to get some playing time at short in the meantime (and perhaps Cole Young might swivel
Mariners Reportedly Go with Garver for Backup Catcher; Right or Wrong Move by Dipoto?
Mitch Garver already returned to the Mariners organization thanks to some advice from Cal Raleigh, but with Spring Training nearly in the rear-view mirror, it’s being reported that he’s going to make the jump back to the bigs for another year. With this decision, it’s likely that Andrew Knizner - who signed a $1 million guaranteed contract in the offseason - will be designated for assignment, though he can be outrighted to Triple-A if he clears waivers. Jhonny Pereda, who is on the 40-man roster, will probably also return to Triple-A to start the season, though this would mark his last minor league option.
Garver was quite appreciative of Raleigh’s efforts to bring him back, according to MLB.com’s Daniel Kramer.
“It means a lot that he would want me to come back and be there for him whenever he needs to take a breather,” Garver said. “So, I'm happy to do it. Happy to just put on the gear and catch guys when they need me the most and couldn't be [happier] to be where we're at.”
Bringing Garver up was a $2.25 million dollar decision, financially, as that’s what Garver was guaranteed to make if he made the MLB roster at any point. So what went into the decision to bring him back for another year?
Mitch Garver Returns to Mariners on Minor League Contract; Will Big League Team See Him in 2026?
When the 2024 season took flight, Mitch Garver was fresh off one of the best seasons of his career. In 87 games as a catcher and DH for the Texas Rangers, he slashed .270/.370/.500 for a 138 OPS+ (where 100 is league average) with 19 homers, 11 doubles, and 50 RBIs. But the real crown jewel of that season came on Nov. 1, when his Rangers sealed their first World Series victory.
The Mariners wanted a piece of that action. Ever short a bat and needing a reliable backstop to complement burgeoning star Cal Raleigh, president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto dished out the then-largest free agent hitter contract of his tenure, a two-year, $24 million deal with a $12 million mutual option for a third year that had a $1 million team buyout.
Things didn’t quite go according to plan. Over 201 games in 2024 and 2025, Garver slashed .187/.290/.341 for an 85 OPS+. A decline in batting average on balls in play from .313 in 2023 - an unheeded warning that he was due for regression - to .236 over the next pair of summers took a lot of the wind from his sails, concurrent with a decline in line drives and an increase in grounders. The M’s took the buyout and Garver took heed of his options, but in the end, he returned to Seattle on a minor league contract. Will he find his way back to the big league club, or will any value from Garver in 2026 be more organizational?
Rob Refsnyder Adds Right-Handed Hitting Depth to Mariners Lineup
The Seattle Mariners got a platoon righty in Rob Refsnyder on Monday, but will he finally be the answer against lefties that many others couldn’t provide? Perhaps more importantly, will the Mariners continue to build their offense over the winter?
Mariners Offseason Tracker: Timeline, Salaries, and Depth Charts
With each week of the offseason bringing new updates for the Mariners, it can be easy to lose track of everything that has gone on. Our Mariners offseason tracker is a one-stop shop for easily digestible M’s winter information.
Analyzing Seattle Mariners’ Free Agent Situation as Baseball Offseason Begins in Earnest
The MLB offseason is fast approaching, and for the Mariners, that means decisions about five members of the 2025 team who are becoming free agents this winter. What should Seattle do with these five players?
Rapid Reaction: Mariners Stuff Blue Jays 10-3 in Statement Win on Canadian Thanksgiving
Despite some early uncertainty, the Mariners delivered a statement Game 2 win in Rogers Centre, tapping a variety of heroes as they return home with a big advantage for Game 3.
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