The Mariners' project feels perilously close
They've started well and have promising young players, but the roster is exposed.
The 18-hour period between Logan Gilbert suddenly exiting the game Friday night and his MRI results returning a slightly encouraging grade-one forearm strain was some of the tensest time Mariners fans have experienced in a while. Fans were terrified, and it provided a stark reminder of the fragility of the Mariners’ situation.
On the surface, the 2025 Mariners season has gone swimmingly so far, with the team rescuing a rough first 12 games with six consecutive series wins to bring them to 16-12, atop the AL West after the opening month. The Mariners offense somewhat shockingly bears the most responsibility for that strong start, with a team wRC+ in an elite second tier only trailing the mighty Yankees league-wide. They’ve showed tangible improvement at the plate in the first month of the Edgar Martinez-Kevin Seitzer regime, leading the league in walk rate and reverting their strikeout rate much closer to the league mean than the ghastly figures they’ve posted in recent years.
They’ve done all this despite significant injury issues in all corners of their roster. George Kirby hasn’t thrown a pitch and Gilbert hit the IL Saturday and will likely miss multiple months. Victor Robles broke a bone in his shoulder and will return sometime in July, and Ryan Bliss tore his bicep and will miss almost the entire season. Jorge Polanco, the Mariners’ best hitter so far, has only batted left-handed for the past few weeks and seemingly semi-retired from playing infield, leaving multiple holes in what was the Mariners worst position group coming into the year. Neither Matt Brash or Troy Taylor have returned to full strength, and Gregory Santos will miss who knows how long due to knee surgery.
They’ve also weathered a few genuinely terrible contributions from three core areas of the roster. Their only true offseason addition, Donovan Solano, has been arguably the worst player in all of baseball this year, and has dragged down their first base platoon with Rowdy Tellez from rough to awful. Appointed eighth-inning reliever Trent Thornton has been the worst relief pitcher in the American League, with a homer problem that nukes any sort of quality contributions he has mixed in so far. For the first three trips through the rotation, the Mariners’ fifth starters contributed an Emerson Hancock first-inning blowup and two sub-MLB level starts from some guy somehow also named Luis Castillo.
And yet, this team thoroughly deserves their 16-12 record. The pitching hasn’t been great, but the two relievers at the back-end of the bullpen, Gabe Speier and especially Andrés Muñoz, have won the Mariners close game after close game.
Their offense, on the other hand, has excelled in all facets but hitting with runners in scoring position, although that has improved somewhat recently as well. The minimum, non-Solano wRC+ on the active roster entering Sunday was Miles Mastrobuoni’s 97, and every other player was at least league average. Jorge Polanco, Cal Raleigh and Randy Arozarena have been excellent lineup anchors. J.P. Crawford shook off an awful start and has surged to a 146 wRC+ with some power mixed in. Ben Williamson joined the big league club and has belonged as an MLB player to a startling degree, posting a 136 wRC+ and 0.3 WAR in 11 games. Dylan Moore had a monstrous road trip and is rocking a 165 wRC+. They’ve gotten key contributions from Leo Rivas, Mastrobuoni and Tellez.
On the heels of sixth straight series win Sunday, it’s hard to feel significantly negative about anything that’s transpired on the field thus far.
Sink or swim?
That said, the Mariners’ roster feels strained as the calendar turns to May.
Their 6th and 7th starters, Emerson Hancock and Logan Evans, have had promising recent starts, but the Kirby and Gilbert injuries have the rotation stretched to capacity. Bryce Miller has already had issues physically bouncing back from his appearances. Weirdly, the Mariners’ healthiest, highest-volume starting arm appears to be Bryan Woo, who previously struggled with injuries and going deep into games. And in the bullpen, the struggle is real beyond Speier and Muñoz. Until Matt Brash returns from Tacoma and gets ramped up, spots three through eight in the Mariners relief core amount to total crapshoots.
The lineup, as it did Sunday, regularly has Mastrobuoni, Rivas and either Solano or Tellez in three of its nine spots. Those three (not Solano) all made key contributions so far at one point or another, but better plans need to emerge eventually.
There’s also just not a ton of sustainability to much of their offensive production. Polanco’s 233 wRC+ with a .352 batting average on balls in play (BABIP) and a league-leading .739 slugging percentage will slow considerably, although he could certainly remain a major run producer in the middle of the Mariners’ order. Moore and Rivas are both posting wRC+ numbers that are 50% higher than you’d expect them to sustain. Crawford looks a lot better than he did in his injury-riddled 2024 season, but he’s also out over his skis a bit, although he’s stabilized shortstop for another year, it appears. The rookie Williamson, running a .364 BABIP and a 135 wRC+, will likely settle much closer to 100.
Even with a ton of over-performance, Julio Rodríguez could likely cover off a significant amount of that inevitable regression to the mean. Julio has a 103 wRC+, but has amassed 0.8 fWAR, because he’s contributing by far the most defensive value on the roster. He’s unlocked something new at the plate, walking at an 11.5% clip, nearly double his career BB%. He’s running a .234 BABIP, which is a full 100 points below his career numbers. Mariners fans are used to his slow starts in April, but this has been a bit better than that, and his improved plate discipline suggests his typical summer surge could reach new heights in 2025 and carry the offense through the regression that’s to come.
Even if Julio massively heats up, the Mariners will need long-term solutions to fill the roster holes they still have, but that’s exactly where the worm may be turning.
Finishing the project
Williamson’s first two weeks in the majors suggest the dam could finally break for the Mariners’ “step back” project.
So much of the 54% era has seen the Mariners operate with 70-80 percent of a good roster and flail miserably to finish the final 20-30 percent. The 2025 season is no exception, as the veteran panacea to multiple roster holes, Solano, has had one of the worst Mariners offensive seasons of all-time thus far. Platooned with Tellez, a minor-league flier elevated to a starting role, they’ve combined for -0.6 fWAR.
But the first 11 games of Ben Williamson have shown something that the Mariners experiment hasn’t produced in quite a while: impactful offensive production from a rookie with some prospect status.
Williamson’s early offensive production, while not overly flashy, has defied expectations. With the Mariners’ Plan As at 2B and 3B completely decimated in the opening two weeks of the season, Williamson’s mandate was to play elite defense at 3B and just try to stay above water offensively. Instead, he has 13 hits, 10 runs scored and seven RBI in 11 games. He’s not just a productive rookie, he’s one of the best fixes the Mariners have recently attempted for any of their offensive holes.
Williamson is the second of the Mariners players drafted between 2021 and 2023, when the team leaned hard into drafting offensive impact, to debut with the team. The first, Tyler Locklear, appears poised to return to the majors to address the aforementioned disastrous first base situation. Locklear has posted a .333/.415/.516 slash in Tacoma with a 10% walk rate and 24% K rate this season. On the heels of Williamson injecting life into the 3B role, Locklear should see plenty of playing time at the Mariners’ other corner infield spot in May.
The Mariners have been trying to solve the same problems on their roster since 2022. At first base, they’ve cycled through Carlos Santana, a struggling Ty France, Justin Turner, Mike Ford, and now Tellez and Solano. At second base, they’ve deployed Adam Frazier, Kolten Wong, José Caballero, and the broken-down version of Polanco. At third base, they solved the post-Kyle Seager problem with Eugenio Suárez, only to ludicrously salary dump him and try to piece it together since with Josh Rojas, Luis Urias, a physically incapable Polanco, and a whiff of Moore, Mastrobuoni and Solano. They’ve allocated DH reps to A.J. Pollock, Tommy La Stella, Ford, Mitch Garver, Mitch Haniger and Tellez before Polanco finally found his home this month.
Williamson, Locklear and the rest of the next wave could finally provide real solutions to the problems this front office has repeatedly failed to solve. Cole Young, the wild card in this trio who came into the season viewed as the most potentially impactful, could plug in at 2B in a month or two, and the Mariners could fall into long-term fixes at all three of their major infield holes entering the season.
This dream scenario should NOT preclude the Mariners from getting aggressive at the trade deadline. They must acquire at least one experienced veteran bat to raise the roster’s floor heading into a potential playoff push.
But watching Williamson take over at 3B has just felt different than basically anything the Mariners have tried in the past few years. It’s the first step toward that perpetually stacked Top 30 prospect list actually helping them fix the offensive holes that have kept them short of the playoffs since 2022. And seeing it makes me hope that after all the angst and bloviating, the Mariners may finally finish their long-term project.