With only a couple weeks to the All Star break and the halfway point of the 2022 season, I’d like to start off this blog by catching up with the Mariners season so far. In classic fashion they’ve been mediocre, with a 36-41 record. They’re sitting 4th in the AL West, 13 games back from first place Houston and 5 out of a Wild Card spot. But there are enough signs to make the optimistic (and perhaps masochistic) among the fanbase hopeful. I’ll cover each position group in a separate post, looking at players of note to catch both you and myself up on how it’s been going for the M’s so far. Let’s go!

The Log Jam With One Log

The Mariners outfield was shaping up to be their best position group by some margin, with too many talented players and not enough spots. If I were to rank the Mariners potential starting outfielders before the season started, I would have probably had:

1. Jesse Winker (2021 All Star)
2. Kyle Lewis (2020 AL ROY)
3. Mitch Haniger (2018 All Star and MVP-vote-getter)
4. Jarred Kelenic (#1 OF prospect)
5. Julio Rodriguez (#2 OF prospect)

Not a bad position to be in given you only need to field three at once. So why have Dylan Moore, Adam Fraizer, Steven Souza Jr., Sam Haggerty, and Justin Upton played a combined 355.2 outs in the outfield (roughly 42 games) through only 77 games this year? Let’s take a look at each of the 5 names I ranked and then everyone else to see what’s gone wrong.

Mitch Haniger & Kyle Lewis

Haniger and Lewis had the biggest head start to get playing time this year given their experience, which was only topped by Jesse Winker. Unfortunately, they both haven’t been able to play due to injury. Haniger caught COVID in April and then injured his ankle in his first game back, only playing in 9 games this season. He appears ready to return soon though and should rejoin the lineup in July.

Lewis on the other hand is dealing with more concerning circumstances. After tearing a meniscus in 2021 after only 36 games, he made his return to the Mariners in May. However on May 28th, after only 4 games, he suffered a concussion and hasn’t returned. Taking over a month to return from a concussion is highly concerning, although there hasn’t been a need to rush him back given some of the other Mariners’ performances as of late. But with only two missing, that still leaves three potential starting outfielders, so what else has happened?

Jesse Winker

Winker would have been the popular third outfielder to go with Lewis and Haniger coming into the year, given his excellent batting history and All Star appearance last year. While he has been a consistent starter, his bat has not been what the Mariners were hoping for. He started off very cold and cumulatively is slashing a relatively pedestrian .231/.351/.345 with 111 wRC+, a noticeable amount worse than his career .279/.379/.477 and 131 wRC+. However, things have really turned around as of late. Take a look at his stats by month, and you’ll see that he’s been improving over the course of the season and in June, Winker was back to beating the crap out of the baseball.

So while he hasn’t been great over the whole season, if he keeps his June momentum going he should solidify his claim on at least the DH spot if not left field. It also helps that he’s obviously a big team guy given he’s charged not one, but two AL West dugouts over fellow Mariners getting hit by pitches (one was definitely intentional, one probably wasn’t, but it’s the thought that counts).

Jarred Kelenic

Kelenic has sadly not panned out in the way he or the Mariners would have hoped. Both this season and in 2021, he has really struggled with Major League pitching despite excelling in AAA. In 2021 he hit an underwhelming .181/.265/.350 with 73 wRC+ in 93 games. This season has been even worse with a dismal .140/.219/.291 with 49 wRC+ and a 37.5% strikeout rate through his 30 games with the Mariners before being sent back down to AAA for a rotating door of right fielders. Given how well some of the Mariners other outfielders are performing, it’s hard to tell if Kelenic will even get another shot.

Julio Rodriguez

And just like that, the last name on my list turns out to be not only the Mariners best outfielder, but easily their best all-around player this year and their biggest potential star since Felix Hernandez. Despite making the jump up from AA and having an abnormally large strike zone early in the year (which warranted a letter to MLB), JRod has been amazing, playing in all but 1 game this season. You can take a look at his stats, but that doesn’t do justice how fun it is to watch him play:

AVG	OBP	SLG	HR	SB	wRC+
.275	.334	.460	12	19	132

I won’t write any more about him because I just don’t think my writing skills are there yet. If you don’t want to submit yourself to the potential pain of watching another loss, same, but do it just to see Julio play. It’ll be worth it, trust me.

The Other Guys

Given Julio has really been the only consistently good player in the outfield this year, the Mariners have had to find someone else to go out in right field with the slowly progressing Winker taking on left field duties. That has largely fallen on two of their utility players in Dylan Moore (182.2 OF innings) and Adam Fraizer (74 OF innings), although they’d be much happier leaving Fraizer at second base (his primary position this year) and Moore as a backup given his poor .163/.320/.306 slash. Sam Haggerty has been a plus as a third utility man, with .316/.381/.474 and 153 wRC+. However, it’s been in a small sample size at just 14 games, and he’s spent just as much time in right field as at second base. He may compete for a permanent spot somewhere on the roster if he keeps it up, but for now it’s too early to tell.

Looking at the true outfielders, things haven’t been good apart from one name. Unsurprisingly, it’s the player who’s gotten the most time in the outfield bar Julio and Winker, but it’s someone who I haven’t mentioned at all yet:

Player	OF Inn	AVG	OBP	SLG	wRC+
Taylor Trammell	222	.235	.323	.457	126
Steven Souza Jr.	40	.158	.158	.140	-13
Justin Upton	19	.129	.270	.161	43

Taylor Trammell was the forgotten man heading into the year, and not for nothing: he hit just .160/.256/.359 with 73 wRC+ in 51 games in 2021. But this year he’s become a plus with the bat and is beginning to stake a claim on that third outfield spot. He’s not only been walking more (11.7% vs. 9.6% last year), but he’s successfully lowered what was a pretty shocking strikeout rate last season. In 2022 he has a K rate of just 25.5% compared to an enormous 42.1% last year. At the very least his name deserves to be in the conversation now when it comes to the future of the Mariners outfield, even if its as just a trade piece.

Looking Ahead

While the promised bounty of talented outfielders hasn’t come quite yet, with the return of Haniger and Lewis, the Mariners embarrassment of riches is on the horizon. Winker is on the rise, Trammell has been a pleasant surprise, and Julio looks like a star in the making – heck, you could even say the star is here. That gives the Mariners a more than respectable starting outfield, and that’s without Haniger and Lewis. Kelenic, unfortunately, likely finds himself on the outside looking in. All 5 of these players, and even Sam Haggerty, have shown more than Kelenic has in his time with the Mariners.

So what happens when Haniger and Lewis do come back? The Mariners can reasonably handle 4 guys by rotating them through the DH spot, but that still leaves one player left over. It’s hard to make a decision when Haniger and Lewis have barely played, but the upside to having too many good players is they can take their time bringing them back, and they should. There’s still over a month to the trade deadline, and the Mariners would be wise to use that time to evaluate everyone except Julio as a possible trade piece, because until then, there’s no clear answer.

So there you have it, that’s how the Mariners outfield has been shaping up so far in 2022. It so far hasn’t been quite what we’d hoped for, but the future is very, very bright. Keep an eye out for the next position group, and likely some Silverstone GP comments too!

Statistics gathered from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, and Baseball Savant