Charting Vibes: The 2025 Mariners Infield
Rocky waters, these
I mentioned this last Friday but truly: Well done this week, my friends. I don’t know about you but the times in which we live are severely stress-testing the systems I’ve built in my brain to avoid despair and/or anxiety. Consider this just a well-intentioned reminder that it’s ok if not everything is done, or if not everyone in your life thinks you’re doing everything perfectly. You’re doing just fine.
Today The Light Bat is moving forward previewing the 2025 Mariners roster. If you missed the methodology used for this here’s the introduction to the Vibe Compass, and its utilization to examine the Mariners’ outfield. Today I encourage you to affix your oxygen mask firmly onto your mouth and nose before helping any other passengers in need of assistance, because we’re previewing the infield.
Listen, y’all, this sucks. I could try and be clever, slap some extra syllables on the descriptors, and gussy it up for you but frankly this group doesn’t really deserve it. This is probably one of the weaker/more unproven infield groups in major league baseball. In the spirit of fairness I will acknowledge there is a nice and shiny collection of young infield teens just over the horizon. In the spirit of “remembering the past” I’ll point out the Jerry Dipoto Mariners have spent the past 10 years telling you to keep squinting at that horizon, for just beyond it lies the promised land. Twirling, always twirling.
Anyway this infield is bad, has minimal upside, and plenty of downside. Let’s break it down:
J.P. Crawford
One of things I love about baseball writing, and really anything in which you try to offer forward-looking analysis and/or prediction, is being wrong. In the 15-or-so years I’ve been doing this I’ve never been more wrong about any player than 2023 J.P. Crawford. My man posted the 4th highest BB% in MLB! I can only assume this was through blood magic and illicit bribery of MLB pitchers but nonetheless it’s what happened. He also smacked 19 home runs, and played “perfectly ok” at the shortstop position. After the team absorbed mountains of criticism for overlooking and ignoring historic shortstop classes in free agency, J.P. went out and played like one of the very best.
In 2024, however, J.P. reverted to the hitter he has been for large swaths of his MLB career: punchless, prone to weak contact, and dependent on pitchers failing to command their stuff. The wRC+ of 89 is bad enough. The actual line of .202/.304/.321 was, even for this fan weaned on the 2010 Mariners, atrocious to watch.
For this infield to be anything resembling a league-average group, J.P. is going to have to be a lot more 2023 than 2024. At 30 his best defensive years are behind him, so it will have to start with his bat. Crawford recently indicated that injury/physical discomfort caused last season’s fall-off, and I’m sure he’s not making that up. But it is the kind of thing we hear often from players coming off bad seasons. The projections are largely bullish, with ZiPS calling for a return-to-form 110 wRC+ and a 3-win season. It is badly, sorely, desperately needed.
Tyler Locklear
Tyler is a second-round draft pick, and Baseball America Top 100 prospect. At 24 he’s getting towards the end of the prospect's lifespan, but it’s not over yet. There are obviously plenty of players with his profile and pedigree who have gone on to have quality MLB careers. That hedging aside I do not see anything particularly compelling about his minor league track record nor the (admittedly brief) times I have seen him play.
He’s the kind of player good teams’ fans don’t know because they never hear about them when the team is winning games, because they’re nowhere near the big league roster. I’m sorry if that’s harsh, and hope to be wrong. I’ll be hoping to be wrong a lot in this article.
Leo Rivas
Like a thousand Mariners before him, Rivas is a guy it would be fun to root for if the team didn’t need him to be more than he is. To consider Rivas is to always ponder “well I didn’t expect anything at all, but I got very little, so I guess that’s a win?”
Look, that may sound mean but we’re talking about a 27-year old infielder who slugged .274 last season. He’s Jose Caballero after being xeroxed 75 times, only without the 80-grade redass tool. I have nothing against him, but I also totally forgot to write this blurb until after I’d already published the article, so that should give you an indication of how important I think he is to the 2025 Mariners.
Austin Shenton
The Light Bat is never going to speak ill of local ballplayers without cause*, and I’ve heard on good authority Shenton is a great guy. Unlike some other younger guys on this list he really hit in the minor leagues, and falls firmly in the “he’s not going to hurt you” category defensively. Of the team’s seemingly endless flawed longshots for infield usage in 2025, his success is the one I would personally find most enjoyable.
*Such as, I dunno, blocking me on Twitter because you didn’t understand the Seahawks joke I was making TAYLOR SAUCEDO! We’ll get to you LATER, pal.
Blake Hunt
A perfect name for a backup catcher. I do not recall ever watching him play baseball. Next!
Dylan Moore
Probably the single most divisive Mariner on the roster. An extremely low batting average and lack of any true eye-popping tools makes Moore an easy target for fans and media looking to take out their frustrations over the Mariners’ poor roster construction over the years. If you’re an anti-Moore person hey, you do you, but please do so with a knowledge of some FACTS.
Mariner positional fWAR leaders, 2019-2024
Julio Rodriguez - 15.4
J.P. Crawford - 14.3
Cal Raleigh - 13.9
Dylan Moore - 8.1
Stolen bases, 2019-2024
Dylan Moore - 104
Julio Rodriguez - 86
Mallex Smith - 48
Sam Haggerty - 33
BB%. 2019-2024
J.P. Crawford - 11.2%
Dylan Moore - 10.8%
Eugenio Suarez - 10.8%
Kyle Seager - 9.9%
fWAR/600 PA, 2019-2024
Julio Rodriguez - 4.9
Cal Raleigh - 4.7
Eugenio Suarez - 3.5
Dylan Moore - 2.9
Look, his offensive profile is flawed, and what he does do well with the bat is not a good fit for his home ballpark. I think he is miscast as an everyday position player on a playoff roster. I can also make a case he’s the best 3B, 2B, SS, AND 1B on this roster at the moment. Do I earnestly believe that in my soul? Not fully. But the case is there to be made.
Also, he saved Felix’s last start with that diving catch in left field. The heart, it makes its own choices.
Someday we are going to look back and it’s going to be readily apparent that Dylan Moore was among the better Mariner positional player of this era. How that truth rings over history? I cannot really say. But everyone gets their irrational favorites with these things, and D-Mo is one of The Light Bat’s irrational favorites. If you focus on what he does well in addition to what he doesn’t, you’ll see a fine major league baseball player, who has had a fine career.
Mitch Garver
The state of the Mariners infield is such that it was going to be a very, very, very bad thing if the team’s 34-year old DH coming off a season in which he hit .172/.286/.341 had to miss significant time due to injury. Here’s where I re-assert a few things:
-I am very, very glad Mitch Garver wasn’t injured, mostly for his sake
-He has hit quite well before, as recently as 2023
-His 2024 season produce career highs in both games played and plate appearances
I don’t think it’s a good idea to need Mitch Garver to bounce back, and even if the bat does come alive history says staying healthy for a majority of the season is going to be a big ask. Bodies do not tend to get healthier over time, and while I can very much believe Mitch is in a better state of mind than last year, time is still going to exact its toll on the legs and back.
I’ll be rooting hard for him because he seems like a decent guy who took it on the chin last year but anything more than, say, 1.5 fWAR feels like it would be a big win all around.
Donovan Solano
Extremely miscast as a central offseason acquisition, and probably miscast as a fixture in the 2025 infield plan, I still find myself extremely invested in rooting for the success of Donovan Solano. There’s something about late-bloomers; guys who endure years and years of toil in the mines of MiLB, watching teammate after teammate either reach the bigs or give up the dream, before finally breaking through themselves.
He’s probably going to max out at something like one-win, he has minimal power and defensive utility, and really shouldn’t get more than 250 PA or so on a good team, but he’s the kind of guy I think I’ll find myself happy to be at the plate in a close and late situation. That’s bad analysis, but it’s also how I feel. ADDITIONALLY:
THAT’S MY FIT HELL YEAH DONNY BARRELS
I WEAR TAPERED PANTS TOO! I’M ALSO OLD AND IN THE BEST SHAPE OF MY LIFE WE’RE GONNA LIVE FOREVER DONNIEEEEEEEE!
Miles Mastrobuoni
SYNTHESIS: Why?
/through cracked, burning lips as I crawl through ash
I ask you, WHY?
I acknowledge eternal damnation is my rightful reward, yet still I cry for succor, for release, for respite from the ceaseless torment that is…..whatever this is. There can be no further justice wrung from continuing to flay my utterly ruined and wretched soul. Release me, Jerry. Have mercy upon me, Justin. I recant. I recant!
Cal Raleigh
The very highest praise I can give Cal is that he utterly defies The Light Bat’s whole deal. My desire to find a sliver of contrary negativity or mildly smirk-worthy snark is utterly defeated by a player who is already the greatest catcher in franchise history, an astounding statement for a player with only three full seasons in the big leagues. Here’s a quick comp:
Dan Wilson, current Mariner manager and Team Hall of Fame inductee: 14.3 fWAR in 4616 PA
Cal Raleigh, greatest catcher in Mariner history: 13.9 fWAR in 1760 PA
It’s hard to think of something you’d call a weakness in Raleigh’s game. For a nitpicker it would be cool if his batting average were higher and his K% lower, but that says as much about the era he plays in as it does the player himself. He’s fabulous defensively, the unquestioned North Star of the clubhouse around which everyone orbits, a fan favorite, has an all-time nickname, and has hit the biggest home run in the last quarter century of Mariner’s baseball.
If there is something to give solace about the rest of this group in this article, it’s that you never quite know when and where a player like Raleigh is going to come from. A jackwagon like me will write a million write ups about mid-range prospects, all denigrating their skillsets while highlighting the long odds to get them to MLB stardom. Those write ups will be correct 99.9% of the time, less because I know what I’m doing than that the arc of baseball tilts towards affirming pessimism. Well players like Cal Raleigh make all the failures, the careers ground to dust in 50 MLB PA, the shattered dreams and real estate career pivots, worth it.
He’s the reason you love baseball! He’ll make a terrific Red Sox. (Hey I got the contrary negativism in! A win for the brand!)
Ryan Bliss
If there’s a player on this list I would tab as a potential “break out” candidate it would be Bliss. He’s toolsy, fairly young, and at 25 decidedly Not Old, especially by the standards of this positional group. Additionally, while I have already gushed plenty about Dylan Moore in this article, his best use on a good roster is as a UTL. There is the potential for Bliss to get significant run at second in 2025. While I think a best-case scenario is something like a 2-win season, even that would be a huge boon for such a thin and unproven infield group.
I will say, however, that his going on record saying he will “swing through a bunch of sliders before I miss a fastball this year” better be a ruse. Not only will MLB pitchers be happy to throw him a million sliders, he hit them well in limited MLB action last year:
Do not sit on the fastball Ryan. The fastball is a lie!
Jorge Polanco
Like a couple of college friends who drunkenly agree to get married at 40 if they’re both still single, only to find each other deeply unattractive and regrettably single when that age arrives, so it is in 2025 with Polanco and the Mariners.
The winter journey that led to Polanco being inarguably the premier offseason addition for this club is exceptional dark comedy, which is the kind of comedy the Mariners are best at. I maintain re-signing him was something this team had to do since, well, do you see the other names on this list? That said, in order for this to work let’s play a game of LIST THE “IFS”.
Jorge Polanco can give the Mariners a stabilizing veteran presence at 3B IF:
-IF he transitions to a position he has never regularly played before
-IF his already poor defense does not further suffer in the positional transition
-IF he stays healthy (something he never does)
-IF his bat bounces back from the worst season of his career
-IF he defies aging curves
So, uh, I dunno man. It probably won’t work very well and they really need it to. Do you want Ben Williamson?!? Because that’s how you get Ben Williamson!