If given the option to choose any player to throw the final pitch of the season for the Seattle Mariners over the past few years, Andrés Muñoz is the savvy selection. For Muñoz to be pitching, Seattle’s final game must be both close and meaningful. The 2023 and 2024 seasons ended on close victories, but they carried no playoff possibility, no cause to exert the Tommy John veteran who turns 27 years old today. 2025’s final game, by contrast, was the most meaningful in the history of the Seattle Mariners.
Muñoz pitched the final frame for Seattle, a scoreless inning to cap a scoreless playoffs in 8.1 innings yielding just two hits and a pair of walks. He did what was asked of him, and he did it brilliantly, as the back-to-back All-Star has done since arriving in Seattle over half a decade ago.
More Mr. Rogers than Nasty Boy, the Mexican fireballer known by Rick Rizzs as Señor Smoke as a possible homage to Mexican pitching legend Aurelio López has become a given for Seattle. It’s a given that Seattle will enter 2026 with reasonable expectation for top-notch high-leverage bullpen, as they can count on Muñoz. It’s a given the man known for his mild manner and doting affection for his feline companion Mathilda is equally trustworthy to take on the ninth inning as he is to ensure the litter box is tidy and all meals are accounted for.
After tinkering with a near-sidearm slot in 2023, Muñoz continued to climb back up to a three-quarters angle in 2025 as he’d moved towards in 2024. Slightly surprisingly, given his brilliance a season ago, Muñoz mixed a number of things up. The righty’s raised arm elevation was paired with a return to working in the strike zone. His breakout 2024 came with a daring degree of confidence in drawing swings, throwing strikes barely 41% of the time per Baseball Savant, 4th-least among 351 pitchers with at least 50 innings pitched that year. A rise to the upper-40s is still infrequent for Muñoz, but had him merely in the upper echelons instead of leading the pack.
And yet, it’s part of what sets Muñoz ahead of his fellow Bomberos. Eduard Bazardo, Gabe Speier, and Carlos Vargas live in the zone, as do Bryan Woo, George Kirby, Bryce Miller, Emerson Hancock, and Logan Evans. Even Luis Castillo and Logan Gilbert, who chase chases more frequently than the rest of the rotation, live in the zone far more frequently than Muñoz. But like his partner in crime Matt Brash, Muñoz has the stuff and the skill to dance in and out of the zone at maximum effort. Not only is it brilliantly effective in the moment, but Muñoz is setting himself up for some impressive all-time totals if his capacity to keep the ball in the yard, on the ground, or in the catcher’s mitt continues.
The leader for many Mariners bullpen records is Jeff Nelson, a childhood favorite of mine whose deceptive delivery and sweeping slider stymied opponents over 447.1 innings, striking out 471 and walking 232. with 8.3 bWAR and a 3.26/3.67 ERA/FIP in the heart of the Kingdome and Steroid Era. In WAR, he’s only topped in a rounding error by J.J. Putz, the famed “Big Guy” (or, in tougher times, “this Big Fucker,” miss you Dave). It is just those two, and the indomitable Arthur Rhodes, who stand ahead of Muñoz by WAR among M’s relievers, with Muñoz having roughly 50 fewer frames than Rhodes thus far, ~100 less Putz, and over 200 behind Nelson. In metrics valuable for projection (e.g. K-BB%, whiff and GB%), and those best used for simple categorization (e.g. saves), Muñoz is ascendant, with 77 saves putting him in a season or two of Kazuhiro Sasaki’s club record of 129. His 2.28 ERA is the best bar none of any M’s reliever with over 150 innings, with a FIP of 2.63 trailing only
Edwin Díaz and Rhodes.
It’s difficult to ask a player so brilliant in his role to stretch further, and indeed the M’s see Muñoz’s responsibility to cover his inning, maybe one out more in a pinch. His 324 strikeouts in 236.1 innings are a sign of how much the sport has changed in even 10, 20, 30 years. The next time Muñoz faces a player the second time through the order will be the first time in his entire career. And yet, all he can do is what is asked of him. What that means is 15-20 years from now, sloppy young – and young at heart – folks will stumble through the ‘Pen under the watchful eye of a mural to the greatest reliever in Seattle’s team history. Maybe they’ll paint Mathilda too.
