Welcome back to the Winter Fungo, your one-stop shop for news, gossip, and opinion on the only Major League Baseball team within a thousand miles of you*. This week we’re talking broadcast teams, the start of Spring Training, projections, and various side servings of both this and that. It has been a long and remains a very cold winter, but the first signs of real baseball are upon us. That’s a reason for hope and good cheer, and I’ll take those wherever they’re on offer at the moment. To the fungo!
*Assuming you live in the Pacific Northwest, which you should.
The Week in Mariner
A sign of the season’s nighness is that we’re starting to get some honest-to-god projections out there. For the purposes of The Light Bat we will primarily be using the systems provided by old standbys Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs throughout the season. This is both because we have friends who work at these places and want to support them, and also because they are generally well-known and commonly accepted.
So what do these venerable systems have to say about the 2025 season for our close personal friends the Seattle Mariners? Well if you like procedural television shows that slurry together the same grab bag of characters and half-baked plot developments into a random event sequencer and call it something like COP PATROL - EVENT DIAGNOSIS: CAIRO (AT NIGHT) then the 2025 Mariners should be for you! A quick summary:
Baseball Prospectus - 86.4 wins, third in the AL West, 57.5% playoff odds
Fangraphs - 84.5 wins, second in the AL West, 56.1% playoff odds
There are many layers to the anger and frustration that born out of the infamous 54% press conference, but I think the primary agitant is that it was, and is, the absolute raw and unfiltered truth. The Mariners have not, do not, and will not build a roster that projects to be legitimately great. This is 2022-2024 on infinite loop and, unless the source material is truly legendary, anything on loop gets old pretty quickly.
Now, I’m not saying that as though these projections are prophecy. With the season getting closer we’ll start looking at the actual team itself in greater detail, and I think I may end up a lot more positive than many of you! It’s easy to be frustrated by a lack of ambition, but truly there have been many, many, many worse times to root for the Seattle Mariners, at least as it concerns wins and losses.With longtime broadcaster Dave Sims accepting a new role in New York it was obvious that Mariner games would sound different this season. With that, the team announced its revamped broadcast crew last week, and it came with another sad departure. In addition to Sims’ leaving the team announced that former player and longtime broadcast fixture Mike Blowers would not be returning.
There have been rumors for a few seasons that Blowers’ health was not great, notably last year when he missed the majority of the season. I, personally, will miss the hell out of him. Often taciturn and openly disdainful of prompts from his broadcast partner to get him to, you know, talk about the game, Blow was an everyman’s grump. When paired with Aaron Goldsmith (now the primary TV play-by-play announcer, and deservedly so), the two developed a fantastic chemistry best visualized by the below:
Additionally, no commentary on his career as a broadcaster would be complete without acknowledging that Mike Blowers provided perhaps the most incredible, absurd, amazing, and spectacular moment in franchise history; One singular in nature not just to baseball as a sport, but to the entire enterprise that is The Seattle Mariners Experience. Gentle seas and safe harbors, Mike. We will miss you.
In the place of these two stalwarts the Mariners are bringing in a four-person team of familiar faces and voices: Ryan Rowland-Smith, Jay Buhner, Dave Valle, and Angie Mentink.
I don’t have a negative thing to say about any of this. That is partially because I’m lucky enough to call a few of these folks friends, and also because the nature of baseball as a daily event engenders a very special relationship between fan and broadcast team. They are our daily window into the sport we’ve chosen to love; the small family we invite into our lives every evening after dinner. In particular two things stand out as worthy of mention:
1) Jay Buhner in the booth is outstanding, as it expands the boundaries of possibilities for Mariner broadcasts. Will Jay cook and eat a rabbit live on-air? Will the ROOT employee in charge of the dump button develop carpal tunnel syndrome? Will Jay at one point challenge Jerry Dipoto to a fight? Any, all, and perhaps more than my small imagination can conceive feels possible. I’m glad Jay is back. I hope he held out for bucks, bucks, and more bucks.
2) Ange Mentink is now the first female color commentator in club history. These kinds of things always feel awkward to acknowledge because there is a weird, loud, and incredibly lonely segment of our population that wants to twist news like this into something negative. Do not let anyone do that, in all cases such as these but in this one in particular. Angie knows the game incredibly well, works harder than anyone, and will be a huge asset to the broadcast. In addition to providing a point of inspiration and pride for any girl/woman who loves baseball and/or broadcasting she absolutely, 100% deserves this role. I am extremely happy for her.Adam Jude of the Seattle Times has started previewing the various segments of the 2025 roster. His most recent missive is on the infield. It’s a very fair write up and you should read it. That said, I’m mostly interested in the low-hanging fruit of this snippet:
Will this image be perhaps applicable and regularly featured throughout the 2025 season? Only time will tell, but the answer is absolutely yes.
Historical Massive Mariner Dinger of the Week
The Place: Safeco Field
The Time: July 12th, 2013
The Pitcher: Jerome Williams
The Distance: 429 feet
A FEAST for the senses.
Big dinger landing in the Hit It Here Cafe in a sun-bedecked Safeco Field on a warm July day? That’s right.
Mike Blowers muttering “oh boy” on contact while Dave Sims ratches his voice upwards as though someone is physically turning a comically large crank attached to his torso? Absolutely.
Pain and suffering to the Los Angeles Angels? We’ve got you covered.
In 2013 41-year-old Raul Ibanez slugged .487 in 496 plate appearances. Since then, in 11 years of Mariners baseball only five players have slugged higher: Nelson Cruz, Robinson Cano, Kyle Seager, Mitch Haniger, and Julio Rodriguez. Baseball is at its best when it is very stupid, and 2013 Raul Ibanez was exceedingly stupid.
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