For this week’s MaiLLbag, I’ve picked four questions and enlisted Max and Isabelle for an assist. If you asked a question in the site comments or on BlueSky and haven’t seen it answered yet, don’t worry, I’ll get to it soon. If you have a question, feel free to leave it in the comments, send it to me on BlueSky, or email me at jake.mailhot[at]gmail.com.
“Why are Mariners starters so mediocre when they pitch away from home? Each of their top five starters have great stuff, but it doesn’t seem to translate
when they pitch on the road. Does there need to be a change in pitching strategy away from home? Are the Mariners’ starters just good, not great?”
I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. It’s not that the pitchers’ stuff deteriorates away from home, it’s that the environment in T-Mobile Park helps their stuff play up at home. This isn’t a Coors Field effect either; at high altitude, pitches move differently than they do closer to sea level. Rather, the park effects in T-Mobile Park are (probably) related to how well the batter can see the ball and the extreme marine layer that suppresses the contact quality of any batted ball hit in Seattle.
We actually have stats that take these park factors into account — ERA- and FIP- — and across the board, the Mariners’ raw ERA and FIP outperform their adjusted ERA and FIP thanks to these park factors.
Looking at the full picture with park effects taken into account, we can see that the Mariners’ starters have been solid over the last three years, but maybe not counted among the elite of the elite. Of course, what really counts is what actually happens on the field and they’ve proven they can thrive in Seattle even if they are a little rougher on the road.
Because it’s the environment at home that’s helping our pitchers perform so well, there really isn’t an adjustment they can make on the road to help their performance. Their stuff is unchanged no matter where they’re playing, unlike the Rockies who have to account for very different movement profiles on their pitches based on where they’re playing. —Jake
“What the heck happened to Troy Taylor? His numbers this year are so different from his pre-injury numbers. Is he permanently broken or just still getting healthy? A version of Taylor that looks like his 2024 would tick so many boxes for us.”
My guess is that Taylor spent most of 2025 working to correct some mechanical issues stemming from his lat injury in the spring. His command was pretty rough in Triple-A, though the raw stuff and physical characteristics of his pitches looked intact. He was still getting swings and misses down in Tacoma but the walk rate spiked to 13.9%. Oddly enough, he pounded the zone during his month-long stint in the big leagues in April and May. He wasn’t getting anyone to chase out of the zone and his strikeout rate cratered.
I’d expect that the team will give him a shot to prove he’s figured out his command issues this spring as one of the arms in the bullpen pile. He’s one of the few relievers on the 40-man roster with minor-league options remaining and still has a high-ish ceiling if he can bounce back. That’s a valuable thing for the M’s right now, even if he won’t be guaranteed a spot on the major league roster just yet. —Jake
“What are the odds we see the entire starting infield gone before Spring Training? I’m including Polanco as the starting 2nd in this scenario. J.P. is a big stretch, but nothing would shock me.”
Okay, so I’m going to try and read this question in the most generous way possible, and not go with my initial response which was, “Hey, so this is a wild question.” What I think you’re maybe asking is: What are the odds we see the entire starting infield from the last half of the season gone before Spring Training? So, I’ll pull from September 23, 2025, which was Game 1 of the Rockies series when they had the opportunity to clinch a playoff spot and would have ostensibly been running out their strongest lineup.
1B: Josh Naylor
2B: Jorge Polanco
SS: J.P. Crawford
3B: Eugenio Suárez
We already know Naylor is back and I gave my thoughts about Polanco and Suárez’s potential to return last week in this column. (tl;dr, Polanco makes a lot of sense to re-sign, Suárez not so much). I guess this question boils down to whether or not the team would trade away Crawford. I’ll say that it would be a shock if it were to happen, but it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility. Crawford is playing out his final year of the five-year extension he signed in 2022 and the M’s have a bunch of young infielders who will be pushing for time in the big leagues very soon (see more below). If the team were extremely confident Colt Emerson could claim the everyday shortstop role during spring training, Crawford would be the one standing in the way. There’s also the growing concern about Crawford’s defense and his ability to pick it at the most important position on the infield. If the team were truly that worried about his defense, I think they’d rather shift him over to second base rather than just trade him away.
For a player who seems to set the tone in the clubhouse and is a well respected leader on the team, trading him away in his walk year would be a pretty bad look for the ballclub. Could there be a situation where the M’s are offered a package for Crawford that makes him expendable? Sure, but I don’t think they’re going to try and seek out that package either. The transition from Crawford to Emerson at short will probably end up taking place next offseason, which opens up a whole other can of worms. —Jake/Isabelle
“Which prospects (read: players in the org who have not yet debuted) do you think will play in the big leagues in 2026?”
Though I expect Cole Young, Harry Ford, and Ben Williamson to play the largest role out of all the “prospect adjacent” types, I actually think the conversation surrounding the non-debuted prospects is worthwhile in its own regard. There’s a pathway for each of Colt Emerson, Kade Anderson, Michael Arroyo, Lazaro Montes, and Jurrangelo Cijntje to contribute in at least some way during the 2026 season, but if you’re expecting all of them to debut next year, you’re probably getting a little ahead of yourself. Most of these guys would be late season call ups anyway, ultimately getting a cup of coffee in September if they were both ready for the occasion and an ample complement to the big league roster. A player can play their way into the big leagues, but as we saw with Young, Ford, and Williamson in 2025, the pennant race comes first. If there’s no room to play, you won’t.
My best guess at who contributes in 2026 is largely just Emerson and Cijntje, though I do think Arroyo has a solid shot of being in there as well. Emerson has been getting a ton of buzz about breaking camp with the team as the starting third baseman this season, and though it’d be aggressive, it wouldn’t shock me at all to see it happen.
Cijntje, on the other hand, looks like a potentially lethal bullpen weapon that could give you leverage innings prior to mid-season if that was the route they went with him this spring. That said, I doubt they’ll want to abandon him starting this early into his development, particularly after the Logan Evans debacle from a few years ago. If he’s a starter this season, I doubt he gets much of a role unless there’s a major step forward in the command department. If he’s a bullpen arm, watch out.
The rest are trickier, but Arroyo has the easiest route to playing time at this current stage. A Polanco reunion would muddy the waters a bit, but we’re just way too far out to get that far into the weeds with speculation. If I were to rank the remaining three in order of 2026 impact, I’d go with Arroyo, Anderson, and Montes, in that order. I’m skeptical they want to rush Anderson up in under a year given his limited track record of innings, and I’m a little lower on Montes than others seem to be. —Max
Quick Hitters
1. Have the Mariners signed Josh Naylor yet?
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