Josh Naylor is a family man, and now his family includes the Pacific Northwest. Mariners fans immediately adored the Canadian-born player, whose intense passion and heady approach to the game resonated with a fanbase just as informed, passionate, and hungry to win as he is. Naylor endeared himself to the city and the team at warp speed after coming over from Arizona at the trade deadline. Holding down what had been a revolving door at first base, Naylor made an immediate impact with his bat, and—surprise
and delight—on the basepaths as well, where his intense study of the game paid off as he punished batteries for failing to pay him heed when he was standing on first base. The Mariners made Naylor their number-one priority this off-season, prioritizing retaining both the player and the person, offering him a five-year contract valued at $92.5M—slightly over what the market predicted, but well worth it to the Mariners to keep Naylor in the fold.
“We just knew we wanted him back,” said Jerry Dipoto, Mariners President of Baseball Operations. “So we were willing to do something uncomfortable very quickly.”
Dipoto said the fanbase’s embrace of Naylor also played a part in the team’s early aggressiveness; he knew the Mariners had hit on a unique chemistry between team, city, and player, and that it would be important to take advantage of that early window in free agency.
“The fanbase’s adoration affected us too,” said Dipoto. “The vibe at the end of the season was the best it’s ever been with our club, and you want to lean into that….to me it would have been negligence if we went into the offseason and the first thing we did was let Josh walk away because of some business decision instead of just stepping up and doing the thing that kept the band together.”
Business decisions have ruled Naylor’s life in baseball up until this point. The Marlins drafted Naylor with the 12th overall pick in 2015, making him the highest-drafted Canadian positional player in history. But just a year into his tenure with the club that drafted him, Miami dealt Naylor—along with future Seattle rotation anchor Luis Castillo—to San Diego as part of a Wild Card push. Four years later, the Padres moved Naylor to Cleveland in another deadline deal.
Naylor would remain in Cleveland, enjoying his longest tenure with a team so far, until yet another business decision—albeit a predictable one—altered the trajectory of his career: he grew too expensive for the tightfisted Guardians. They dealt him to Arizona that off-season in exchange for a younger, cheaper player and a draft pick, only for him to be part of yet another deadline deal, this time landing in Seattle. His fifth organization would eventually be the one to lock him down for the next five years, finally offering Naylor stability and security, both financial and from a “business decision” standpoint.
Having been traded so often, Naylor could have entered his Seattle tenure guarded and wary, not knowing where he’d be in three months. Instead, he gave everything he had.
“Sometimes there are a lot of thoughts in your mind when you get traded, like, what if this? What if that? I gotta move this, I gotta have someone help with that. But I just kind of let that all out and let God take the wheel, and just knew that my job was to come in here, play hard, be the best teammate I could be. Give this city the best I can. Leave everything on the field for as long as I can…They needed me to help them win. So I just put all of my things aside, my life, and just invested fully into this city, into this team, my teammates, into the fans. Because I wanted to give them something that maybe they never had in their lives.“
Josh Naylor gave Seattle his whole heart, and the organization—the players, coaches, and legions of fans who carried signs begging the team to sign him, dressed up as “Naylor’s Sailors”, and cheered as loudly for a player who’d been here for three months as they did for those who’d been here three years—returned the love. That mutual adoration society impacted how Naylor approached the end of the season leading into free agency.
“Going into free agency, this year was different than all the years I’ve had so far. I just told myself, I want to play hard. I want to have fun every single day. Leave it all out on the field, be the best teammate I can. I did that every year, but I wanted to emphasize it more this year and, God willing, find a home, and this was the home I found.”
Sometimes, because he talks like a ten-year veteran of the game, it’s hard to forget that Josh Naylor is still in his late 20s. His senior prom, which he attended with his now-wife Chantel, a musical artist who specializes in the bachata genre, was in 2015. His wife has been pursuing her music career since she was 15; Josh won Baseball Ontario’s Youth Player of the Year at 13. They knew they were going to get married since they were in high school. He now has a baby boy, Nix, who he’s excited to teach about the world. Everything for Naylor is about his family, his home. It was the first thing he spoke about, in a room full of his family—both immediate and extended— who had all made the trip to Seattle, when asked about the emotions of signing his first big free-agent contract.
“It brought back a lot of memories as a kid. My dad coached us when we were younger, so it brought back those memories of playing on a field in our hometown and trying to win a ball game with your little ten-year-old friends around the corner…so signing that contract really brought me back to those days when my dad coached me, where me and my brothers would train at a facility together and then playing with some friends I had back in the day—we’re still friends now—and it just brought back a lot of wonderful memories.”
Now, after moving around as part of business decisions for most of his career, Josh Naylor is part of the Mariners family for the next half-decade at least, already with wonderful memories of his own here, and hopefully many more to come.
