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# Mariners Should Learn Two Lessons from Monday Loss to Athletics - But Will They?
- URL: https://www.emeraldcityspectrum.com/seattle-mariners-two-lessons-monday-loss-athletics/
- Published: 2026-04-21T09:22:28.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-08T06:11:57.000Z
- Author: Callaghan Bluechel
- Tags: News, Analysis, Mariners, Emerson Hancock, Jose A. Ferrer, Matt Brash, Casey Legumina, Cooper Criswell, Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodriguez, Josh Naylor, Randy Arozarena, Dominic Canzone, Luke Raley, Rob Refsnyder, Connor Joe, Cole Young, Leo Rivas

\[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="2048"\]

![  Seattle Mariners center fielder Julio Rodríguez (44) steals a base against Athletics shortstop Jacob Wilson (5) during the first inning at T-Mobile Park. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images  ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/julio-rodriguez-42026-format-original.jpg)

Seattle Mariners center fielder Julio Rodríguez (44) steals a base against Athletics shortstop Jacob Wilson (5) during the first inning at T-Mobile Park. Mandatory Credit: Joe Nicholson-Imagn Images \[/caption\]

The old adage goes as follows: you win a third of your games, you lose a third of your games, and it’s the third in the middle that counts. So it goes for baseball teams and aspiring politicians alike.

Monday’s game was squarely one of those middle games, but the reasons the Mariners lost 6-4 can be sorted into two camps: roster construction and roster usage. The M’s went 1-12 with runners in scoring position, but this is something the team basically just has to weather for the rest of the year when it shows up.

But as for the use case of Casey Legumina and when to take out the left-handed member of a platoon? The M’s and manager Dan Wilson got a couple pieces of useful information on Monday night. 

That information, however, only goes so far as the Mariners will take it. But first, a little on the initial five and a half frames.

### Emerson Hancock went into the sixth inning, but a few too many hung fastballs became game-tying homers.

The first couple innings of the game looked about as solid as could be from Seattle’s perspective. Emerson Hancock efficiently worked through the A’s roster the first time around, while a Cal Raleigh homer, Julio Rodríguez single, and Josh Naylor stolen base came together to produce two runs in the first. Dominic Canzone scraped the wall in right to put Seattle up 3-0 in the second.

On the mound, Hancock sought to incorporate the sinker more in his repertoire on Monday. While 36.7% of his pitches before Monday night had been four-seamers and 21.6% had been sinkers, a full 43.5% of his deliveries were sinkers on Monday, with the four-seamer coming in second place at 29.4% usage.

This greater reliance on sinkers was one element in the Athletics’ propensity for contact. Despite Hancock facing 20 batters, he only struck out three and walked one, with contact made in every other appearance. A lot of this contact was nice and soft, a welcome change from the contact against his sinker both earlier in the season and in years past. Much of Hancock’s improvement, in fact, had come because he had trusted his four-seamer to get swings and misses.

But a pitching identity can be hard to shake. Hancock went through most of his professional career looking to be a sinker-focused contact pitcher, and he clearly tried to make that style work on Monday. In fact, it wasn’t his sinker that had issues, but his four-seamer.

Granted, it had less to do with the pitch type and more to do with location, but all three A’s runs against him came from solo homers against his four-seam fastball. The first was something of a one-off from Carlos Cortes in the fourth inning - and tellingly, it was on a pitch that wasn’t even a strike - but Hancock left a four-seamer way too far down in the zone for Nick Kurtz to lead off the fifth and the Colonel walloped it over the deepest fence in the ballpark. 

In a vacuum, Hancock’s 3-2 four-seamer Shea Langeliers wasn’t in a bad spot, but the M’s hurler had already thrown five pitches around that eye level, with an earlier sweeper intended for the bottom of the zone backing up on Hancock and he didn’t appear to have much confidence in his secondaries - of course, this probably weighted Langeliers’ decision to hunt the heater up. It flew 432 feet to dead center field, and the game was tied.

### Lesson 1: Casey Legumina is still a low leverage guy, and if they need a middle-leverage innings eater, they should prioritize Cooper Criswell.

The Mariners’ decision to have Casey Legumina go out to the mound for the top of the eighth was more sensible than it might appear. After all, for a guy to be usable in higher leverage situations, he has to actually be put in those situations. The M’s liked what they saw from Legumina (who entered the game with a 2.53 ERA, 2.85 FIP, and 1.313 WHIP) from his lower leverage and deficit spots, and so there was always going to be a time when he would show up with the game tied.

And with the way the M’s offense had been swinging the bat since the third, there was a pretty good chance they wouldn’t put anything else on the board and would need to have someone like Andrés Muñoz lock down the 10th. Given that the M’s are running out of early losses to be able to eat up, Legumina should have been on a shorter leash, but putting him out there was defensible.

But it was clear quickly that it wasn’t Legumina’s night. He had difficulty placing his fastball at the top edge of the zone, either airmailing it or pumping it down the middle, and Tyler Soderstrom shot the ball into left center on a 1-2 plated heater. Randy Arozarena showed defensive improvement by managing to cut the ball off on a slide, but his throw to second base was offline and Soderstrom got his double. Legumina tossed Jacob Wilson a sinker right down the pipe and it wound up in right for a single, though right to Canzone and Soderstrom held up at third.

Legumina tried to nibble around Jeff McNeil with changeups and sweepers, but too many of them missed the plate and the A’s had the bases loaded with nobody out. 

By this point, Eduard Bazardo could have at least been up and warming in the bullpen, but the M’s didn’t want to use him after he pitched on both Friday and Saturday. Jose A. Ferrer had finished out the sixth with no runs despite letting a heap of traffic on and Matt Brash had thrown a clean seventh, so those two were unavailable. Cole Wilcox was beginning to warm, but he wouldn’t be of any immediate use. Legumina had to get out of it himself.

The reliever wouldn’t get much help from his batterymate on defense. Max Muncy (the other one) lofted a fly ball to right, in that medium depth range where taking off for the plate is a judgment call. Soderstrom bolted and Canzone sent a roaring throw to the plate, pretty much on the money - but Raleigh’s tag was stilted and late. The other runners moved up a station.

Lawrence Butler faced a somewhat more effective pitch mix, but was still able to intuit that Legumina would go for a top-zone fastball on the 2-2 count and drilled it into right. The ball ate up Canzone (his arm strength is about the only viable part of his defense), and both runners scored easily.

Cooper Criswell tossed a solid ninth. He has generally looked a fair bit more solid and confident than Legumina on the mound, although he is liable (though a bit less so than Legumina) to hang one over the heart of the plate.

But as for Legumina, they tested him out in medium leverage and it didn’t work. What they can’t do is go back to the guy they now know isn’t built for being a big time Mariners reliever.

Legumina might be nearing a DFA and the end of his Mariners career. The underlying stuff is still solid enough that he might blossom with a change of scenery, but the Mariners will be hungry for roster flexibility as prospects ripen in the farm system and Legumina is out of minor league options.

### Lesson 2: Platoon replacements in the sixth inning or earlier should be treated with discernment.

Hitting platoons can be a finicky thing. The general idea is to build a good player in the aggregate from two players who do well against each side of pitching, but they have to be deployed (pun intended) correctly. 

A common pitfall is to take the left-handed member of a platoon out too early in a game and then be left without that hitter when the spot in the order meets its next go-around. This sometimes happens the other way around, but since right-handers are more common on the rubber than southpaws, the lesson is stronger in that direction.

As an aside, another common pitfall (present at points in 2025) is to platoon a good batter with a much worse one who doesn’t provide extra value as opposed to just letting the better hitter go up against his weaker side. The 2026 M’s as constructed don’t have this issue as much as they did last year, though if Connor Joe becomes more of a regular and doesn’t have an unlikely breakout, that issue could rear its head again.

The M’s did fall into that first pitfall on Monday, though. The team’s Thursday loss in San Diego had seen them take Luke Raley out in the sixth inning against a lefty, but that was a bases loaded situation. The decision was offset by the fact it was Joe replacing him, but that was almost certainly going to be the highest leverage opportunity that spot would face in the game when Wilson made that decision.

With one out and nobody on in the bottom of the sixth of a tie game, however, there wasn’t as much harm in keeping Raley in against the lefty to ensure that the full option remained open for a later better chance. Wilson still went to Refsnyder, who struck out, but that move took the option away in case a better opportunity came along. 

And a better opportunity came along. Rodríguez and Naylor knocked a pair of one out singles, and after Naylor stole second, the M’s had men on second and third. Randy Arozarena struck out (perhaps allowing Athletics reliever Mark Leiter Jr. to settle in with an early fastball take) and this brought up Refsnyder against the right-handed Leiter.

Had it been Raley, then the A’s would have brought in Brady Basso and the M’s would have made the move to Refsnyder then - but they would have had their right handed platoon guy up with the advantage they signed him for! And he would have had a much better chance of slimming Sacramento’s lead.

### These decisions wouldn’t have mattered had the team gotten it done with runners in scoring position.

The only hit Seattle had with runners in scoring position was Naylor’s first inning double, cracked after Rodríguez stole second. But despite 11 more opportunities, there wasn’t a single hit to be had with a man on second or third.

Neither Arozarena or Raley brought Naylor home for the rest of the first. Canzone led off the first with a double, but none of the following three hitters left the infield and the man was stranded at third. The aforementioned eighth inning went by without anything coming home.

Seattle scratched another run across in the ninth, as Cole Young got a one-out single and Leo Rivas drilled a run-scoring double down the right field line. But J.P. Crawford mustered only a weak groundout and Raleigh shanked a weak fly ball to right to end the game. Now, Joel Kuhnel made a big adjustment after Rivas’ double, switching from the sinker to the cutter, but the Mariners had a chance to bail themselves out of it even at the last batter.

Do the Mariners’ persistent struggles with runners in scoring position mean that those struggles will continue? It’s hard to say. Doing a simple comparison of team RISP hitting (whatever stat you choose, whether it be batting average, OPS, xwOBAcon, etc.) minus team hitting (same particulars as before) - this way each team’s performance with RISP is compared to itself rather than other teams, taking out the differences between good overall hitting teams and bad overall hitting teams - in March and April and comparing it to the same in the rest of the year brings in so much extra noise that basically nothing informative can be extracted.

\[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="1556"\]

![  Whether a team over- or under-performs with RISP in April has basically no bearing on whether they will the rest of the year - but this might be missing the trees for the forest. Data sourced from Baseball Savant and compiled using RStudio.  ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/1d/f2/1df2f77b-83dd-4bc0-a6d2-6d1bb5df89a3/content/images/2026/10/risp-hitting-differences-format-original.png)

Whether a team over- or under-performs with RISP in April has basically no bearing on whether they will the rest of the year - but this might be missing the trees for the forest. Data sourced from Baseball Savant and compiled using RStudio. \[/caption\]

The overlapping chaos of 30 trendlines shows that some *teams* have tended towards either early RISP over- or under-performances being indicative of full season over- or under-performance (red) and some being inversely indicative (blue), but those are over a 10 year dataset (2020 wasn’t included as it didn’t have any games in March or April). That is to say, a dataset with 10 points. Even including *just* the Mariners, Rays, Nationals, Royals, and Reds, the r-squared value was well below 0.2\. With all 30 teams involved, it’s basically the picture perfect image of zero correlation. It looks the same for batting average, OPS, on-base percentage, and so on and so forth, basically any hitting statistic you can think of.

The 2026 Mariners, for the record, exited the game slashing slightly better with RISP (.215/.330/.351) than in general (.218/.319/.356), but this is still below much of the rest of the league, who tend to hit better with RISP than in all situations.

But as to the predictability of clutch hitting, it’s a lot more nuanced than just shoving overall team data into R. It has to do with individual hitters, approaches, clubhouse cultures, and so on, and trying to parse the data comprehensively would involve game-to-game clustering, measuring the variance of clustering and whether that is predictable, that sort of thing. 

For the Mariners and their goal to take the last two games of the set against Sacramento, they’ll have to remember to put the pressure on all throughout the game with their bats, both with runners in scoring position and when the opposing pitcher is starting to find a groove with nobody on.