Just a few weeks ago, I declared the Seattle Mariners near death just weeks into the season. Their offense had picked right up where it left off in 2024 and was dragging the team to the bottom of the American League West like a giant anchor.
On April 11, I ended an update on the team’s struggles over the first two weeks of the season by writing: “If their bats don’t get going soon, they may not even get a chance to free fall to the bottom of the division – they will already be there.”
Clearly, they must have read what I wrote.
Since that date, the team has not lost a series, has gone 17-6, and now sits in first place in the American League West. More important than their record in that span is how they have done it. Currently, the team is missing two of its top three starting pitchers, its starting first baseman, its starting right fielder, and its starting second baseman.
To make things work, the team more or less abandoned many of its lineup concepts to start the season and started triaging. Third baseman Ben Williamson, promoted to the big leagues after barely a year in the minors, has been a revelation. He provides an improved glove at the hot corner while holding his own at the plate. Williamson came up when Jorge Polanco and Dylan Moore both went down, and when Polanco returned, Williamson’s performance enabled the team to move Polanco to designated hitter with occasional appearances at second base. If the team pinned its hopes on several players bouncing back from down campaigns in 2024, Polanco has rewarded them in spades. He’s hitting .348 with a .396 OBP and nine home runs while hitting the ball harder than ever before in his career and striking out at one-third the rate he did last season. Catcher Cal Raleigh, already the recipient of a contract extension in the offseason, also seems to have taken yet another step forward. He’s getting on base more than ever before while sharing the league lead for home runs with 12.
Shortstop JP Crawford is also bouncing back to his 2023 form with a career-high .408 on-base percentage while performing his usual wizardry at shortstop. Centerfielder Julio Rodriguez is finally heating back up after a brutal start to the season. While his batting average is still low, he has run up a streak of six straight games without striking out, a vast improvement for a player whose free-swinging ways got him in trouble to start the season.
First base is still the weakest spot on the roster, but even their Rowdy Tellez has given the team some life when he is in the lineup. With a grand slam against Toronto in April and a three-run shot to get the team back in the game against the Athletics this week.
Tellez’s three home runs against the A’s on Wednesday continued a refreshing trend for the Mariners’ offense over the past 23 games – even when they are down, they are not. Against Oakland, on Wednesday, the team fell behind 5-0 in the fourth inning, only to outscore the A’s 6-0 the rest of the way to win 6-5. The day before, the team rallied from down 3-2 with three runs in the ninth for a 5-3 win. Helping the team nail down its comeback wins has been closer Andres Munoz, who has arguably been the best reliever in baseball over the season’s first month with 13 saves, no earned runs allowed, and is striking out nearly 40% of the hitters he faces.
With a patchwork rotation and an offense reshaped on the fly, it’s fair to say that no one saw the Mariners turning into a juggernaut. Then again, it’s also only May in a season that is a marathon, not a sprint. Last year’s Mariners started hot, only to wilt as the season went along. This year’s started cold and is now playing hot. Will it last? There is no way to know. There are still holes to fill in both the lineup and the pitching staff, but those can be filled through players returning from injury or by trading some of the team’s prospects if they continue to contend.
No matter if the team’s current hot streak is real or a mirage, it’s been a fun change of pace for Mariners fans. After several years of watching the team flail wildly at the plate en route to losses by scores of 1-0 or 2-1, seeing the team come charging back from multiple runs down, or steamroll the Texas Rangers 13-1 is enjoyable to watch.
I may not be sure where this Mariners team came from, but I hope they stick around.
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