Team Dive - Seattle Mariners
A look at the Seattle Mariners and their 2026 performances so far
I’m making it easier on myself! I was trying to cover five teams at once, but I couldn’t do it. It would take too long, and by the time I finished team five, team one’s data would be several days old. So let’s do one team at a time and methodically go through these teams.
MARINERS LINEUPS - LAST TWO WEEKS
So it looks like Cole Young is their guy, at least for now. It’s been him and JP Crawford in the middle of the lineup daily.
It’s platoon city with Canzone/Raley/Refsnyder. Neither Raley nor Canzone has a starter against a righty in the last 15 days.
HITTERS
The big boys are starting to get right, or at least Raleigh was before his injury.
Julio:
Raleigh:
Naylor:
Raleigh’s barrel rate is down for the year, but 18% since April 15th. Seems like he should be fine soon.
COLE YOUNG
He’s nothing special, we don’t think. Everything in the profile is more or less “fine”, except for his line drive hitting abilities, which have been great. A 26% LD% with a nice 38% Sweet Spot%. His fly balls haven’t been hit very hard (103 EV90), but for a second baseman he can be added in fantasy leagues because of his ability to get quality angles into play. Just don’t go expecting a ton.
COLT EMERSON
They locked up Emerson long term, so it stands to reason that he will get in the mix this year, and possibly very soon. There’s no contractual reason to hold him down. But he has a 29% K% and only four homers in AAA. His OPS was .842 last year and it’s .769 this year. The power was middling last year with 16 bombs in 130 games. So this isn’t a budding fantasy star, but he’s touted enough to get in the lineup and be a regular pretty soon.
LUKE RALEY
He’s one of these guys with big power and some speed, but he’s only in there against righties, as we said, and his K% is through the freaking roof this year at 37.5%.
He’s boom-or-bust. A 52.5% Contact!! That’s the worst in the league, barely clearing Murakami.
DOM CANZONE
Not even exactly crushing righties this year like usual. A .525 SLG; that’s very good but not the .600+ you might want from a part-timer. But he can hit for power, no doubt. He’s got a 16% Brl% with a 22.5% K% and a 109 EV90. He can hit for power, but how useful is that from a guy playing 4-5 times a week at most?
Pitchers
EMERSON HANCOCK
By many measures, he’s been their best guy this year. Just like we all saw coming, right?
The four-seamer is so deceptive, but he weridly went away from it for a start or two there. When the usage popped back up, he struck out 14.
The pitch has a silly 20% SwStr%.
That’s pretty much unheard of for a four-seamer (especially from a starter who is throwing 95mph). It can’t continue, but obviously it’s a really good pitch. It’s one of the biggest Stuff+ risers.
The right theory might be that hitters will figure out how to time up the release and see it better. If/when that happens, he has very little to fall back on, as you can see with the lack of whiffs on other pitches.
So he’s probably a sell high if you can pull it off. His job would certainly be in question if he weren’t pitching so well. They have Bryce Miller working his way back, and they have Kade Anderson who is too good for the minors, it would seem. I’m not sure they’ll want to bring Anderson up this year, but it does look like he could certainly hang.
BRYAN WOO
This was another guy who benefited a ton early on from the funky release point. But that hasn’t been enough to get him by this year.
The 17.5% K% is a problem, and the 11.8% SwStr% doesn’t make you feel all that much better about it.
His four-seamer is still good (12.9% SwStr%, .314 xwOBA), but not near the elite level he had going on it last year.
I think he’ll be fine… I think.
But Woo was a dude really benefiting from soft contact manufacturing. And that doesn’t always last. It’s not the best skill to rely on. The good news for him was that he had enough strikeouts and an elite walk rate to keep him more than afloat. But the strikeouts and hard contact have gone the wrong way this year.
What are you going to do with Woo right now? If you have him, you start him and hope he figures it out soon. You can’t bench him, you can’t trade him for fair value.
If anything, I’d be seeing if I could get a cheap trade price on him and hope it all comes back to last year.
LUIS CASTILLO
He might just be cooked, I don’t know. The K-BB% declines have continued.
He’s gone from 20.3% to 17.8% to 15.6% to 11.3%. He can still get strikes with the four-seamer:
The 14.3% SwStr% on it is a great number, and the slider hasn’t been terrible, but there’s really nothing you’re liking here behind the fastball.
Righties and lefties are both hitting him hard, and the career progression is pretty clear at this point.
I think he’ll be better than he’s been this year, but I wouldn’t want the guy in a fantasy league.
LOGAN GILBERT
I feel fine about Gilbert despite his lack of performance so far.
His 14.2% SwStr% is down from last year, but it’s still at a good mark of 14.2%. He just doesn’t always hit the strike zone in the way he needs to, I guess.
His fastball velo is the same. He’s still really tall, I think. and the .349 BABIP is way up from last year’s .273 mark (.349 this year).
GEORGE KIRBY
His 26% K% last year has fallen to 19% this year. So there’s a lot of downward movement for the Mariners’ pitching staff. And the whiffs are really down on Kirby.
A 10.9% SwStr% is a mark I’d be worried about. No pitch above a 15.3% mark, but at least he’s throwing a bunch of different types and trying different things.
But with a fastball that isn’t dominating, there’s only so far you can go.
I’m starting to wonder if the advantages of that home park haven’t faded away?
Mariners Home SP Stats by Year
2023: 26.3% K%, 7.4% BB%, 1.13 HR/9
2024: 27.2% K%, 5.8% BB%, 0.95 HR/9
2025: 25.3% K%, 7.1% BB%, 1.08 HR/9
2026: 24.7% K%, 7.2% BB%, 0.94 HR/9
Maybe it’s just that their pitchers aren’t pitching as well. Park factors are always really hard to nail down. But I do believe they changed some things in the batter’s eye before last year, and we’ve seen a lot worse pitching since then.
But we’re six weeks in, I’d be betting on all of Gilbert/Kirby/Woo just because they’ve been so good in their careers, and I’d be trying to get away from Hancock if possible.
BULLPEN
You might be frustrated with Andres Munoz and his 5.54 ERA after you took him as your closer. He has six of the nine saves and a 36.8% K% and a 10.5% BB%, though, so I’d be feeling great about a quick bounce-back from him.
He gave up two homers all of last year, the same number he’s given up this year. That two-homer all-season performance wasn’t going to be repeated, but the 26.3% K-BB% is really all you need to know.
Nobody else in the pen is over 20%, so there aren’t many threats to Munoz’s job, and I’m sure the Mariners aren’t worried about it.
xwOBA OE
This mesures xwOBA against what would be expected for an average player factoring in pitch quality.
Three names really stick out: Canzone (+0.056), Raley (+.034), and Young (+0.016). JRod is fine is at +0.014 and Raleigh’s number is below water mostly because of that ice cold start.
HITTER LUCK
Some bad luck from Canzone, Crawford, and Raley. And some good luck on Brendan Donovan (currently on IL).
PITCHER LUCK
Nothing out of control here. Logan Gilbert and Luis Castillo have high BABIPs that should come down. But the wOBAs and xwOBAs allowed are all pretty close.
That will do it, I’ll try to get a couple more of these AL West teams in this week!