On Monday night, the Seattle Mariners announced that they had signed outfielder Rob Refsnyder to a one-year, $6.25 million contract, for what will be the 11th season of his big-league career. As a former Yankees farmhand, Refsnyder remains a familiar name to a certain generation of Yankee fans. He struggled during the early part of his career, bouncing back-and-forth between Triple-A and the majors for multiple organizations before finding his footing in a platoon role in Boston, where he spent the 2022-25
campaigns.
Refsnyder is a lefty masher and is deployed primarily against southpaws (138 of his 209 plate appearances in 2025 were against left-handed pitching). This specific usage pattern has been a revelation for his career, as it’s allowed him to settle nicely into a role as a primary bench bat who will be in the lineup against left-handed starters and whose presence can make a manager think twice before bringing in a southpaw out of the bullpen. His proficiency in a platoon role provided a huge boost for the Red Sox in recent years and allowed Refsnyder to stick around in the majors.
Per Baseball Reference, Refsnyder’s known career earnings are estimated at $5.25 million, with almost all of that coming from the past three seasons. This is lower than the actual number since Refsnyder often played on a minor-league salary for about five years (save for his prorated league minimum-value appearances in The Show), but earning $6.25 million to play for the Mariners in 2025 will be a landmark moment for his career. His production may suffer from the constraints of Seattle’s pitcher-friendly ballpark, but if the 34-year-old Refsnyder can continue to prove himself as a reliable veteran platoon bat, he should be able to maintain a career for at least a few more years. It’s become a solid success story for a player who was never a consensus Top 100 prospect or became a star, but who once built some commotion around his young career.
Again, Yankees fans should remember that commotion all too well. Back in 2014, the Bronx Bombers were struggling to stay afloat and would miss the playoffs for the second consecutive year. Robinson Canó had just left in free agency, and the Yankees were running out one of the oldest teams in recent memory with 36-year-old Brian Roberts, 37-year-old Carlos Beltrán, and two 40-year-olds in Ichiro Suzuki and Derek Jeter (in the final season of The Captain’s career). They were just one year removed from a lineup that included Vernon Wells, Lyle Overbay, and Travis Hafner. Fans were starving for any sign of promising youth in the farm system. Then a second baseman, Refsnyder’s dominance in Double-A and Triple-A that year served as a light at the end of the tunnel for those tired of watching lackluster performances from Roberts, Kelly Johnson, and Stephen Drew.
Of course, it didn’t quite work out for Refsnyder in New York. His first big-league home run, a July 2015 shot over the Green Monster in Fenway, proved to be a sign of things to come later in his career rather than the arrival of a new young star in the Bronx.
Refsnyder only played 16 games in that debut year of 2015, but second base was such a nightmare for the Bombers that year that come playoff time, they started him at the keystone anyway against the lefty Dallas Keuchel. Refsnyder was far from the only Yankee shut down by the southpaw as they went one-and-done and departed the postseason just as quickly as they arrived.
The era of the Baby Bombers truly arrived in full after 2015. Refsnyder’s fellow first-year class* had included Greg Bird, Luis Severino, Mason Williams, and Slade Heathcott, but only Severino proved to have staying power. Gary Sánchez, Aaron Judge, and Gleyber Torres gradually seized the spotlight across the next few seasons as the fanbase largely moved on from tracking Refsnyder. He had scuffled to a 73 OPS+ in a larger 175-PA sample in 2016 and only played 20 games in 2017 before getting cleared off the 40-man roster in a minor July trade with the Blue Jays for the forgotten Ryan McBroom.
*Yes, technically Sánchez was also a first-year player alongside Refsnyder in 2015, but two pinch-hit appearances at the very end of the season can hardly be considered a true look. He was a 2016 story.
Refsnyder would spend the next four years bouncing around the league, spending time in Cleveland, Tampa Bay, Arizona, Cincinnati, and Texas, before finding a more lasting home in Boston. This wasn’t a matter of the Yankees failing to realize his potential; they just understandably didn’t have the bandwidth to let him work through it while they were surging back to relevance in the late 2010s. For a player who was one thought of as an indefinite “Quad-A” hitter, the shift in Refsnyder’s production with the Red Sox salvaged his big-league career and has become a major success story for players in similar situations.
It’s fun to obsess over 99th-percentile outcomes and project superstar careers for young players, but not every success story looks like the ones you’ll find in major headlines. Sometimes, they look like this.
Development isn’t always linear, and Refsnyder has become an example of a player who salvaged his career at age-30 and ended up earning millions of dollars through perseverance and a willingness to pivot into a new role. He projects to come off the bench in Seattle in 2026, where he will almost certainly be used in the same role as he was in Boston. Refsnyder should be a key factor late in games as the Mariners try to bounce back from a heartbreaking loss to the Blue Jays in Game 7 of the 2025 ALCS, and will serve as an important piece for a World Series contender.
If Refsnyder continues to prove himself in that role, we should continue to hear his name called through his late-30s. The former Yankee farmhand has found his calling, and honestly, good for him.
