Where Victor Robles’ Injury Leaves Mariners
Victor Robles exited Sunday’s 5-4 loss to the Giants on a medical cart not due to a lower-body injury, but because the pain the shoulder dislocation he had just suffered diving into the right field netting at Oracle Park for a flyball was so immense he could barely take a few steps before falling to his knees. Despite that worrisome scene, however, the Mariners were hoping the dislocation would be the extent of the damage done and their everyday right fielder would be able to recover in about three or so weeks’ time.
Instead, following more testing and imaging on Robles’ left shoulder, Seattle was met with bittersweet news on Tuesday. While Robles does indeed have a chance to return in 2025, he did wind up suffering a small fracture in the humeral head of the shoulder, which the Mariners claim will require six weeks of healing and another six weeks of rehabilitation if no surgery is deemed necessary. For now, it’s been determined Robles will not have to undergo an operation and that the fracture will heal on its own, though the club will continue to monitor the recovery process.
Robles is coming off a breakout season in which he slashed .328/.393/.467 in 77 games with the Mariners after being released by the Nationals last June. Those numbers secured him a two-year, $9.75 million extension, which also includes a $9 million club option in 2027, and a job as one of Seattle’s three primary outfielders heading into the 2025 season. He was running an eight-game hitting streak prior to the injury, going 12-for-37 with three doubles and a pair of runs driven in over that span.
The optimistic projection for Robles’ potential return would be sometime during the month of July, but recovery timelines are fluid and there’s the lingering possibility of surgery. Seattle will have to adapt to life without him, and whenever he does make his way back, there’s no telling what he’ll look like and how much he’ll be able to contribute, if at all, for the rest of the year. Therefore, the Mariners have to proceed with the belief that anything they get out of Robles for the remainder of 2025 is a bonus and not something that can be relied upon.
This early in the season, the trade market is an unlikely avenue for the Mariners to go down in hopes of supplementing their roster. Until that market further develops, Luke Raley is expected to cover most of Robles’ innings in the outfield while Dominic Canzone, recently promoted from Triple-A Tacoma in light of Robles’ injury, will make an occasional appearance. Neither player is well-equipped to face left-handed pitching, so Seattle has two options when facing southpaws: start one of Raley or Canzone anyway, which is the route the club is taking against Astros lefty Framber Valdez on Tuesday night, or move Dylan Moore to one of the corner outfield spots and patch the infield together with some combination of Donovan Solano, J.P. Crawford, Ryan Bliss, Rowdy Tellez, Miles Mastrobuoni, and Jorge Polanco, who hasn’t played in the field since Friday.
Both choices are unideal, to say the least, and serve as a further indictment on an offseason in which the Mariners did very little to raise both the floor and ceiling of their roster. Their inactivity this past winter irrefutably left minimal room for error, whether it be due to injury or regression, and they’re already facing the ramifications of that.
If Seattle wants right-handed outfield help, or at least an outfielder that can hit left-handed pitching better than Raley or Canzone, it likely won’t come from within. Samad Taylor is the only right-handed bat the Mariners have with a decent amount of outfield experience down in Triple-A, but he’s currently not on the 40-man roster and is coming off a season in which he posted an 88 wRC+ in the Pacific Coast League. Jared Sundstrom, a 10th-round pick in the 2023 draft who impressed this spring, could eventually become an option but is currently hitting .182 as a 23-year old in Double-A.
The one in-house name to keep an eye on here is Harry Ford, who saw a handful of games in left field with Double-A Arkansas in 2024. Ford has only served as a catcher in his first taste of Triple-A and has curiously played on a part-time basis, appearing in just five of Tacoma’s nine games thus far. He’s gone 4-for-18 with a double and four walks in that time. Perhaps now with a better idea of when Robles could return, the Mariners might give Ford some more looks in the outfield.
By the time Ford or Sundstrom could theoretically be ready to help at the major-league level, though, the trade market may open up a bit more than it is right now. In other words: help likely isn’t on the way any time soon and the Mariners will have to make do with what they have for the time being. This is the bed they made, and now they have to lay in it.
