2026 represents the Mariners’ 50th season, and we’re starting to see some Top 50 lists in connection with the season-long celebration. The team is even holding a live vote for the 50 “greatest” Mariners that
you can go participate in right now. Ryan Blake posted his 50 greatest, as chosen by him, last week, which I anticipate will be a better list than the fan vote. There’s some chatter among the staff that others might put together their own lists of the 50 greatest Mariners. But Ryan, I see your sicko behavior, and I raise you.
The King and the Big Unit; Muñoz and Putz; Cal; Olerud and Mr. Mariner; Boone and Canó; J.P. and A-Rod; Beltre and Seager; Julio and Junior; Buhner and Ichiro; Edgar and Nellie. Basically every other part of the game has true all-timers in navy and teal. But left field? Boy, I don’t know. The northwest corner of the field has ironically been the worst for the northwest’s team. Since the franchise began, their primary left fielders have totaled—totaled—33.3 fWAR. That’s fourth-worst in baseball since 1977, and one of the teams they’re ahead of had 16 fewer seasons to do it in. Cal and Julio have put together more than that between just the two of them over the past three seasons. But I think it’s important to celebrate all parts of our history. If you don’t enjoy the good, the bad, and the ugly, go buy some pinstripes.
To be transparent about my methodology: (1) I considered a player eligible for the list if he spent what I considered to be a significant amount of his playing time in left field in at least one season, but “significant” is admittedly a little fuzzy. (2) For this exercise, I don’t think “greatest” necessarily means statistically best. You can go get that list on FanGraphs. (3) I did try to mostly focus on what they did in games in which they played left field, but there was definitely some slippage. I tried to give this real thought, but at the end of the day, this is an offseason listicle on a baseball blog, not a submission to the New England Journal of Medicine, capisce?
50. Mickey Brantley
One of the few players I learned about for the first time while researching this article, Brantley played three partial seasons and one full one for Seattle, with career marks of an 89 wRC+ and 0.9 WAR. This is the bar for inclusion on this list, and honestly, it’s a little higher than I thought it’d be.
49. Ryan Langerhans
I don’t have any take on Ryan Langerhans, although “forgetable” is its own sort of compliment for a Mariners left fielder. Nevertheless, I’m including him on the list because for some reason, the online Mariners fan community considers him an elite Remember Some Guys guy, so I know I’ll get yelled at if I leave him off the list entirely. You’re welcome Ders and Connor.
48. Quinton McCracken
47. Butch Huskey
Two guys who barely played left field for the Mariners, and weren’t particularly good when they did. But they make the list on the strength of their 80-grade names. Given the history of Seattle Mariners left fielders, that’s enough.
46. Bruce Bochte
His overall tenure with the Mariners would warrant a higher place on this list—he was even an All-Star in 1979. But 1978 was the only year he spent any time in left, and that was his worst season with the club.
45. Domingo Santana
The Domingo Santana experiment actually went better than you remember. The defense was an adventure, to the point that he eventually had to be moved to right field because he couldn’t read the angles coming toward left. And he struck out almost a third of the time. But his 21 home runs and 10% walk rate led to a 107 wRC+. Look, I’m not saying it went well.
44. Braden Bishop
43. Shane Monahan
42. Kristopher Negron
41. Jonatan Clase
40. Taylor Trammell
I’m calling this the Sentimental Clump. I acknowledge that none of these players were good, but this is my list, and I loved all five of these guys. Shane Monahan was the first time I fell for a prospect, after seeing him hit a home run in Tacoma when I was 10 years old.
39. Henry Cotto
Cotto couldn’t hit much, but he was on base enough to steal 102 bases in 121 attempts.
38. Greg Litton
More of a superutility guy than a true left fielder, but he spent more time there than anywhere else in 1993, his only year with the franchise. And it turned out that was the best offensive season of his career, riding a BABIP 58 points higher than his career average to a 118 wRC+ and 1.2 fWAR and rWAR.
37. Dustin Ackley
36. Jarred Kelenic
These guys are primarily remembered for being disappointments relative to expectations, poster children for prospect flameouts. Yet their time on the field was hardly a disaster. If they’d been pop-up guys, we’d probably remember them fondly. I’m putting Kelenic ahead of Ackley even though Ackley had the better overall career with Seattle because Kelenic’s flaming hot start to 2023 took place while he was the left fielder and the bad times were more in right, whereas Ackley’s time in left came more during his downfall.
35. Mike Carp
There were good times and bad with Carp, and he played more first base than left field. But he was at least competent, which stood out in a good way during the 2009-2012 window in which he played.
34. Greg Briley
This is really based more on volume than on skill. At a position with as much changeover as left field in Seattle, consistently standing out there is more valuable than I’d have guessed.
33. Cade Marlowe
Marlowe never quite worked out, and he was just granted free agency. But he had what was, for me, the very best moment of the 2023 season when he hit a comeback grand slam to kick off the Mickey Mop that slammed shut the Angels competitive window.
32. Eric Byrnes
Speaking of guys who earned their spot on this list primarily based on one iconic moment. Yes, it was a bad moment. But given that the 2010 Mariners were going absolutely nowhere, I think we ultimately got more joy out of this story, especially looking back on it, than we would have gotten out of a better left fielder. At bottom, isn’t bringing joy to the fans what baseball is all about?
31. Ron Roenicke
Roenicke walked 13.9% of the time (compared to a 9.3% strikeout rate) for two months at the end of the 1983 season. But this was back before Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill invented OBP, so the Mariners released him.
30. Jake Fraley
29. Al Martin
28. Jesse Winker
27. Vince Coleman
26. Glenallen Hill
This is a group of guys who were fairly good players, but who slip down the list because I find them personally distasteful for one reason or another. Obviously their sins vary dramatically in degree. Hill’s steroid use is different from Martin’s bigamy is different than Winker just being kind of a turd. But I’m not thinking too hard about the distinctions here and am choosing to lump them together. Milton Bradley and Ruben Sierra could plausibly have gone here, but while I’m willing to not think too hard about some bad behavior, there’s a line.
25. Nori Aoki
It drives me crazy when other people do it, but I found Aoki’s completely inefficient routes charming. His lone season with the Mariners was uneven, at one point even going to Tacoma, but it ultimately averaged out to a .349 OBP from the leadoff spot, which is what Jerry was hoping for with one of his bigger early moves. The 2016 team really should have won the division.
24. Adam Jones
23. Jose Cruz, Jr.
Cruz and Jones go together as highly touted prospects who were ultimately traded away and settled into lengthy careers as center fielders. Cruz was like the thing in Seattle in 1997. We were trying to make the nickname Junior Junior happen.
22. Ichiro
Ichiro is A-One with a bullet if we’re ranking right fielders. And frankly, his time in left field was mostly sad, as the joy of seeing him in a Mariners uniform again was outweighed by having to watch his demise. He makes the list anyway because of his home run robbery, making him what is believed to be the only Mariner to rob a home run from all three outfield positions. At least we got a great moment out of his return to the club. On the merits, he probably deserves a lower spot on the list, but he’s Ichiro, damn it. Show him some respect.
21. Rickey Henderson
Another legend of the game with a great moment in a short tenure at the 7 position in Seattle. Long after his MVP days were in the rearview mirror, Rickey finally made his way to the Northwest. And I always appreciated that a player of that stature went out of his way to acknowledge his time in Seattle, even though it amounted to just 92 of his more than 3,000 games. I love that we get to claim Rickey. Scoring the ALDS-winning walkoff run on the squeeze play in 2000 was the most exciting moment of that season.
20. Darren Bragg
Bragg wasn’t particularly good, but his improvements in the first half of 1996 were enough to land us Jamie Moyer at the deadline, one of the best trades in franchise history.
19. Michael Saunders
The Condor was a shining beacon of competence during the tail end of the darkest era and a key piece of how the Mariners first returned to competitive status in the mid-2010s. They came up short in the end, but this fanbase really needed the 2014 season.
18. Luke Raley
Raley is the Platonic ideal of graceless athleticism. One of the best things about baseball are the things that seem like they shouldn’t work, but they do.
17. Steve Henderson
I’ll confess I hadn’t heard of Steve Henderson before, but his good-but-not-great at everything at the plate worked out to a 114 wRC+ across two seasons as the Mariners’ primary left fielder in the mid-80s. That’s a top-10 mark in team history at the position.
16. Sam Haggerty
From stolen bases to spiderman catches against the nets to inside-the-parkers to Eutaw Street plaques to his Godfather walk-up music, Ham Swaggerty was a walking fan favorite.
15. Rich Amaral
14. Guillermo Heredia
13. Ben Gamel
12. Stan Javier
Here we have the best fourth outfielders in team history. Stars and scrubs usually just isn’t enough in baseball; winning teams have guys like Gamel who can slap the ball the other way and steal a bag. When you’re just surrendering at-bats every time a starter is out, you can’t make it through the gauntlet of an MLB season, even if you have Edgar, Randy, A-Rod, and Junior.
11. Dylan Moore
The second-best superutility player the team has ever had. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that things got ugly at the end. But for his first five seasons in Seattle, he played at a 2.9 fWAR per 600 PA pace. He also ranks highly for the speed with which he took to the outfield, while he’d been almost exclusively an infielder until he hit the bigs in 2019. And if we’re giving Marlowe, Byrnes, and Ichiro credit for singular moments, how about when DMo saved the King’s final game, letting him leave the mound for the last time with dignity? Chills.
10. Seth Smith
9. Denard Span
Both of these guys oozed the energy of the team dad who’d happily give you a ride home after the game, right after they put up a professional at-bat. Competence is sexy. So is being a good guy.
8. Ken Griffey
It was transparently a gimmick when the Mariners acquired the Senior Griffey to play alongside his superstar son. But it could not possibly have gone better. The stolen fly ball. The back-to-back home runs. And don’t ignore that Pops threw together a 144 wRC+ in Seattle. That’s top-five in team history with a minimum of 150 PAs. Better than Junior!
7. Franklin Gutierrez
Guti didn’t spend much of his career in left, but that was his primary position in 2015, and my goodness was Guti’s 2015 a feel good story. One of the better dudes of that era’s Mariners, he missed a year and a half fighting ankylosing spondylitis, a brutally painful disease, among other things. When he eventually made his way back, he was a completely different player, shedding the defense that gave him the Death To Flying Things moniker, but showing unprecedented power. His 167 wRC+ that year is the best by any Mariners left fielder in team history with a minimum of 140 PAs. When he walked it off in the 10th on July 26th, he spread his arms and took flight, and we all knew how much more it meant than winning that game. I still tear up thinking about it.
6. Tom Paciorek
His 1981 was legitimately great. He hit .326/.379/.509, good for a 154 wRC+ and 4.6 fWAR. That’s the second-most fWAR in a single season by a Mariners left fielder ever, and he did that despite having fewer games to do it in thanks to the strike shortening the season. It was also the seventh-most fWAR in all of MLB that year. That was the first time a Mariner finished in the top 10 and the only time a Mariner did it until Ken Griffey, Jr. in 1991.
5. Mark McLemore
What if Dylan Moore but great? Good enough to be the glue guy on a team that holds the record for most wins in a season? That’s what you’d get with Mark McLemore. Despite being in his late 30s, McLemore stole 92 bases over four seasons with Seattle, with an average batting line, playing everywhere he was needed, which was most often left field, home to the weakest starter on the 2001 team.
4. Raúl Ibañez
It’s ironic that the steadiest presence in left field for the Mariners had some of the unsteadiest hands. But what he did at the plate made up for his defense, whether he took pride in it or not. Across three stints with Seattle, Ibañez smacked 156 home runs and is the rare player to best 10 career fWAR in a Mariners uniform. A .279/.341/.466 line will play even with the bad defense.
3. Randy Winn
A lot of teams like to brag about having three center fielders, but I’m not sure any squad has ever lived up to it the way the Winn-Cameron-Ichiro Mariners of 2003 did. Ignore the advanced defensive metrics. One season of pre-Statcast defensive data does not tell the story of what it was like to watch this guy cover every square inch of grass.
2. Phil Bradley
Bradley was one of the rare legitimately good pre-Griffey Mariners. He was more contact than power, especially for a left fielder, but his 125 wRC+ across the mid-80s made him the best position player on three straight Mariners teams from ’85 to ’87. If you’re struggling on a Mariners quiz on Sporcle, the answer is Phil Bradley. But it takes more than just skill to be the greatest. It takes a certain panache.
1. Randy Arozarena
A core player in the new nostalgia, Randy has the power-speed combination that’s the most watchable skillset and adds to it a star power persona you can’t help but root for. Whether it’s his joshing around with Julio, his second-slowest home-run trot in the game, or his penchant for throwing a year’s worth of baseballs to fans in a single game, you take your eyes off Randy at your peril.
