A tale of two months: Mariners offense regresses after fantastic April

A baseball season is full of ups and downs, and it seems as though this one will be no different.

After a scorching start, the Mariners are finally starting to feel the consequences of the injury bug that has plagued them. They have lost consecutive series for the third time this season, and the second time this month.

Frustrations mounted in Thursday night’s rubber game—a 9-3 extra innings loss that saw Collin Snider surrender seven runs in the top of the 10th inning. It was only the Mariners’ second loss in a rubber game this year.

J.P. Crawford was ejected by home plate umpire Andy Fletcher in the sixth, arguing a pitch that appeared to be well outside the strike zone. While Crawford’s reaction was justified in the sense that the call was bad, it probably wasn’t the most ideal time for one of the team's leaders to get thrown out of a game—down two runs, headed into the late innings, on a team currently lacking reliable infield depth at the Major League level.

With the M’s coming off a series loss to the division rival Astros, who have been inching closer and closer in the standings, the moment felt like a boiling point. Two runners were in scoring position with nobody out prior to the ejection—the Mariners would end up stranding those runners, and the only run scored after tying the game in the seventh was a free baserunner inherited to start the bottom of the 10th, down seven runs.

Offensive production has dropped off in the month of May. As a team, the Mariners are sporting a 100 wRC+ since the beginning of the month. While that is exactly league average, it is a far cry from their month of April (129 wRC+). Many have said that league average production would be plenty to get it done with this pitching staff, but those words didn’t account for the absences the Mariners have seen from their starting rotation. It also puts immense pressure on your bullpen, who also is working back toward full strength.

This isn’t meant to disparage the contributions they’ve gotten from their starting pitching depth, either—an assortment of Emerson Hancock (3.71 ERA), Logan Evans (3.60 ERA) and Casey Lawrence (3.60 ERA) have performed about as well as you could reasonably expect them to in a time of extreme need. However, you can only rely on this unproven group for so long before the situation begins to feel unsustainable.

Many have probably heard me say this before, but this is the latest example of why building a roster on razor’s edge is not always ideal, at least from the perspective of a fan. The Mariners’ contention window with this core is going to last a finite amount of time, and potentially wasting precious years of that window because everything didn’t go exactly as planned is not a good way to try to reach the pinnacle of the sport.

This division should be the Mariners’ to run away with—and even if they don’t, a wild card spot is extremely attainable this year in a weakened American League. This city’s fans have waited so long for a true contender. Hell, even the writer of this post has only seen his team in the postseason one time (not including the times before he could even walk). Is it too much to ask to try to be great for once, rather than just good enough? Especially considering there’s no guarantee that ‘just good enough’ will actually be just good enough? Surely, we’ve learned that plenty over the last few years.

All this said, it’s not time to panic. The Mariners still hold a half-game lead in the AL West and appear poised to have their best five starting pitchers back in the rotation in the next couple of weeks. The AL is lackluster, and the Mariners, at least to this point, appear to be a more fundamentally sound baseball team than they were last year. Here’s to hoping the offensive regression is just a part of the standard ebbs and flows of a 162-game season.

Down on the farm: what to do with Cole Young and Harry Ford

Speaking of the Mariners’ infield depth, the Mariners ought to seriously consider calling up infield prospect Cole Young.

In the first two months of the 2025 season, his first 53 games at the Triple-A level, Young is slashing .279/.391/.432 in Tacoma. The 21-year-old had a five-hit game on Wednesday night, then followed it up Thursday with a walk-off RBI fielder’s choice to give the Rainiers a win over the Salt Lake Bees.

Though defense is third baseman Ben Williamson’s primary calling card, his bat has certainly cooled off since a decent start after being called up a few weeks ago. After putting up a 95 wRC+ in April, he has seen that number drop to 62 in the month of May. His strikeout rate has also ballooned from 20.8 percent in April to 26.4 in May.

Some time to play every day and make adjustments in Triple-A may be the move for Williamson, who has appeared to have been figured out by Major League pitching of late. This would open the door for Young to make his debut, perhaps taking the bulk of the starts at second base.

Young looks head-and-shoulders above the competition down in Tacoma, and the Mariners’ lineup badly needs a jolt. If he is ready to make the jump—and it seems he may be—there really isn’t anything to proclude him from the Major League roster.

In the case of catcher prospect Harry Ford, however, that is not the case. Cal Raleigh is likely the starter catcher for the American League in the All-Star Game, and Mitch Garver is effectively an overpaid (by Major League standard) backup catcher that likely isn’t getting removed from the roster unless his numbers truly tank.

A roster slot that allows Ford to play every day in Seattle—which you would want him to do if you called him up—appears hard to find at the moment. Frankly, it’s hard to see when you will be able to find it, even as he continues to put up monster numbers in Tacoma this season (.315/.431/.483).

The Mariners could potentially look into packaging Ford with some others from their loaded farm system to acquire proven talent and fill some holes at the Major League level as the trade market opens up this summer.

What’s on tap?

Things aren’t going to get much easier for the Mariners as they host the Minnesota Twins for three games this weekend. While the Twins have appeared to cool off a bit in the last week, they have gone 17-7 in the month of May to insert themselves back into contention in the American League after a slow start to the season.

Making his return from the injured list, Bryce Miller is the announced starter for the Mariners on Saturday.

Following those three games, the Mariners will welcome the Baltimore Orioles to town for three games starting Tuesday, rounding out a nine-game homestand. The Orioles—last place in the AL East with a 19-36 record—are staring right down the barrel of a severely disappointing season where they hoped to contend for their division and the pennant. One can only hope they will not get right in time for their series in Seattle.

Saturday’s game against the Twins will be televised nationally on FOX, with a special late-afternoon start time. Besides that, the other five games this week will be televised on Root Sports and broadcast over the radio waves on 710 AM Seattle Sports, per usual.

This is Rolling Roof Rundown’s weekly Mariners newsletter. You can follow James @johnstonsports.com on Bluesky and, if you haven’t already, subscribe to the newsletter for more news and commentary. Rolling Roof Rundown is now on Instagram and Threads as well.

Correction 5/30/25: After J.P. Crawford’s ejection in the sixth inning of Thursday’s contest, the Mariners scored two runs in the seventh inning to tie the game. It was thereafter that they would not score again besides the inherited runner in extra innings.