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?
If Mitch Garver is added to the big-league roster at any point in the season, he will end up netting $2.25 million, so the M’s will be watching his Spring Training (he received a non-roster invite) to see if bringing him back up is a worthwhile bet.
The Mariners, for their part, have reconstituted his roles from two sources. Backup catching has gone to Andrew Knizner at the major league level, with Jhonny Pereda also on the 40-man as some extra depth. Right-handed DHing - already mostly gone from Garver’s range by the midpoint of the 2025 season - is now the purview of Rob Refsnyder, one of the best lefty-mashers in the game over three of the past four years. But Garver, for all his faults and slightly negative WAR [1], still brought some upside to the Mariners.
While his hitting against right-handers fell off a cliff, Garver managed to hold his own when he sparred with the southpaws. Not nearly well enough to be in the DH spot, mind you, but a .763 OPS with the platoon advantage in 2024 pushed him just above league average and his .718 OPS in 2025 against lefties hovered around league average. He did poorly as a DH, but once the Mariners began using him only as the backup catcher with the spot DH start against lefties, he took an underappreciated role on the team despite limited hitting ability and notable defensive issues.
This all culminated, of course, in a second inning sacrifice fly against Tarik Skubal in Game 5 of the ALDS, a run without which the Mariners would have fallen in nine innings to Detroit. He knew that he just had to get the ball in the air in that spot, and unceremoniously doing his job netted the city of Seattle seven more ballgames in 2025.
Still, given that Garver will be entering his age-35 season, it’s almost certain that his best days are behind him. Knizner may not have much of a bat at all, but he is a few years younger, and Seattle is hedging bets with him, Garver, and Pereda.
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1465"]
Mitch Garver’s last two years have seen a significant drop-off in production, though he still beats the mean against LHP. Still, 2024-25 was the first time he had two down years in a row. [/caption]
Even with all that in mind, it’s not totally out of the question for him to have an unexpected resurgent year in 2026, and given that the M’s are at most expecting serviceable backup catching performance instead of relying on him to DH at times, signing him to a minor league contract is a darn good deal from an expected value standpoint [2]. He could very well slot in for Knizner if that deal doesn’t work out, or the two backups could split their time.
Garver’s extensive experience behind the dish gives Seattle another reason to bring him back, one that they’ll be banking on if he doesn’t punch a ticket back to the majors. Seattle’s pitching prospects - not just Ryan Sloan and Kade Anderson (who might end up skipping Triple-A entirely) but some of their less-lauded and relief prospects - can get time working with a catcher that has years of high-stakes big league play under his belt and who has worked in the Mariners organization for two years. Much of the big league staff in Seattle reportedly has good rapport with Garver, meaning there’s a good shot he plays the role of organizational WD-40 in 2026 even if his bat continues to sink.
[1] Garver had a combined -0.2 Baseball-Reference WAR (bWAR) over the past two years and -0.4 FanGraphs WAR (fWAR) in the same time span.
[2] Garver only needs to have around an 8% or greater chance of being worth $500 thousand or more for the expected value on a Triple-A contract to turn positive. The calculation does change if he makes it back to the majors, but it’s still good: given that one WAR is often viewed as being worth around $10 million on the free agent market, the M’s only need him to have about a 23% chance of a one-WAR or better season for positive expected value.
