Mariners

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Seattle Mariners signed Gold Glove shortstop J.P. Crawford to a $51 million, five-year contract on Friday ahead of the start of the ...

MINNEAPOLIS -- Jerry Dipoto said all offseason that J.P. Crawford would be the Mariners' shortstop now and of the future, and on Friday, ...

\n\n","providerName":"Twitter","providerUrl":"https://twitter.com","type":"rich","width":550,"__typename":"ExternalEmbedContent"},"$ROOT_QUERY.getForgeContentBySlug({\"locale\":\"en-us\",\"slug\":\"j-p-crawford-extension-with-mariners\",\"type\":\"story\"}).parts.7":{"data":{"type":"id","generated":true,"id":"$ROOT_QUERY.getForgeContentBySlug({\"locale\":\"en-us\",\"slug\":\"j-p-crawford-extension-with-mariners\",\"type\":\"story\"}).parts.7.data","typename":"ExternalEmbedContent"},"type":"oembed","__typename":"ExternalEmbed"},"$ROOT_QUERY.getForgeContentBySlug({\"locale\":\"en-us\",\"slug\":\"j-p-crawford-extension-with-mariners\",\"type\":\"story\"}).parts.8":{"content":"When the Mariners courted high-profile free agents to play the infield this offseason, notably Trevor Story and Kris Bryant, they did so while reiterating that Crawford would remain at shortstop. Everything's just falling into place, and the stars are aligning for us over here in Seattle. I can't wait to get going.\"","type":"markdown","__typename":"Markdown"},"$ROOT_QUERY.getForgeContentBySlug({\"locale\":\"en-us\",\"slug\":\"j-p-crawford-extension-with-mariners\",\"type\":\"story\"}).parts.9.data":{"html":" “Getting traded over here was a breath of fresh air, and I was able to get back on my feet and get in a good headspace. Everything's just falling into place, and the stars are aligning for us over here in Seattle. I can't wait to get going." \n","providerName":"Twitter","providerUrl":"https://twitter.com","type":"rich","width":550,"__typename":"ExternalEmbedContent"},"$ROOT_QUERY.getForgeContentBySlug({\"locale\":\"en-us\",\"slug\":\"j-p-crawford-extension-with-mariners\",\"type\":\"story\"}).parts.3":{"data":{"type":"id","generated":true,"id":"$ROOT_QUERY.getForgeContentBySlug({\"locale\":\"en-us\",\"slug\":\"j-p-crawford-extension-with-mariners\",\"type\":\"story\"}).parts.3.data","typename":"ExternalEmbedContent"},"type":"oembed","__typename":"ExternalEmbed"},"$ROOT_QUERY.getForgeContentBySlug({\"locale\":\"en-us\",\"slug\":\"j-p-crawford-extension-with-mariners\",\"type\":\"story\"}).parts.4":{"content":"Crawford had recently settled on a $4.85 million deal to avoid arbitration for ‘22, and this deal will replace those terms.\n\n“I love Seattle,” Crawford said. Crawford has hinted at it in the three years since, but on Friday he vulnerably described that he was “in a really dark place,” mentally and emotionally. For a club that last year was among the youngest in the American League, Crawford represents stability and longevity. “Kyle was the one who said to me first -- ‘J.P. is the new leader of this team,” said John Stanton, Mariners chairman and managing general partner. \n\n","providerName":"Twitter","providerUrl":"https://twitter.com","type":"rich","width":550,"__typename":"ExternalEmbedContent"},"$ROOT_QUERY.getForgeContentBySlug({\"locale\":\"en-us\",\"slug\":\"j-p-crawford-extension-with-mariners\",\"type\":\"story\"}).parts.5":{"data":{"type":"id","generated":true,"id":"$ROOT_QUERY.getForgeContentBySlug({\"locale\":\"en-us\",\"slug\":\"j-p-crawford-extension-with-mariners\",\"type\":\"story\"}).parts.5.data","typename":"ExternalEmbedContent"},"type":"oembed","__typename":"ExternalEmbed"},"$ROOT_QUERY.getForgeContentBySlug({\"locale\":\"en-us\",\"slug\":\"j-p-crawford-extension-with-mariners\",\"type\":\"story\"}).parts.6":{"content":"Crawford is coming off an impressive ‘21 in which he hit .273/.338/.376 (.715 OPS) for a 103 wRC+ (league average is 100) and was worth 3.1 wins above replacement, per FanGraphs, trailing only team MVP Ty France.\n\nThat production flirted with an All-Star bid, emerging as the Mariners’ Iron Man, having played in all but two of the club’s 162 games. It was a breakout of sorts given that he won the Gold Glove Award at shortstop in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and hadn’t yet played a full year in The Show. Crawford was again a finalist for the award last year, which Houston’s Carlos Correa won.\n\nDescribed as the “heart and soul” of the team by Mariners manager Scott Servais, Crawford has passionately embraced a leadership role among position players, particularly in light of Kyle Seager departing via free agency and then retirement last offseason.\n\n“Kyle was the one who said to me first -- ‘J.P. is the new leader of this team,” said John Stanton, Mariners chairman and managing general partner. “When we finally got to this moment, we knew it wouldn't take very long to negotiate the actual numbers,” Dipoto said. It's just finding out if the player is interested in spending the bulk of the rest of his career, if not the rest of his career here, and for J.P., that was an easy answer.”","type":"markdown","__typename":"Markdown"},"$ROOT_QUERY.getForgeContentBySlug({\"locale\":\"en-us\",\"slug\":\"j-p-crawford-extension-with-mariners\",\"type\":\"story\"}).parts.5.data":{"html":"

September of last year ended on a somewhat high note as well, with young guys like Kelenic and Gilbert showing resilience. The season began with the team ...

It was the only game they beat the division-winning Astros, and the only grand slam on the team all season. In the most technical of terms, it was not a Murphy’s Law of a season at the plate. Some of the answers they did get were acceptable, some were not, and none exceeded expectations. The questions that needed a promising answer more were the performances of the rotation, and a hitting lineup whose prowess would need to be reflected in run differential as opposed to fun differential and Chaos Ball. When that rookie was your best hitter and it wasn’t even close, it is not a good thing. We knew, I knew, that in order for the Mariners to succeed to the level of ending the drought it would take an exorbitant amount of Everything Going Right. Truthfully, for my own satisfaction, I would not even have needed them to make the playoffs, expansion or no. A rough start after a shortened spring training was to be expected, and big question marks like Kyle Lewis and Evan White were never going to be answered in the first few months of the season. If the young core made steps forward, if we were at least close, I could smile about it and get ready for watching a promising 2023 campaign. The season began with the team collectively putting up a slash of .245/.319/.421 during spring training. The M’s did spend big on one guy in free agency, the reigning Cy Young Award winner Robbie Ray. September of last year ended on a somewhat high note as well, with young guys like Kelenic and Gilbert showing resilience. A battle I am familiar with, especially on the battlefield that is Seattle sports fandom. Mayday Parade’s acoustic version of Three Cheers For Five Years is playing in a dark room, the light from a television splashing and diving across its features, casting long shadows.

Today's starting pitchers give you a good indication of each team's Master Plan going into the current season. Joe Ryan is a rookie many Twins fans hope ...

Ryan Jeffers - C I like the idea, in theory... Get Ryan into hunting and homebrewing and we’ll have another Glen Perkins on our hands. And self-assembled bikes (the kind you pedal, not the kind yuppies go “vroom” on because they’re having a midlife crisis). Futhermore, there seems to be no sort of outdoor activity Ryan doesn’t enjoy, including surfing and jogging halfway up the sides of mountains. Obviously, Ray is expected to help Seattle push Houston for the AL West’s top spot. Today’s starting pitchers give you a good indication of each team’s Master Plan going into the current season.

Crawford won his first career Gold Glove Award in 2020 and is second among all AL shortstops in Defensive Runs Saved (DRS) since the start of the 2020 ...

“He showed me the passion for it again, and he just taught me how to have fun again out there. “He took me under his wing and showed me how to really love baseball again,” Crawford said. “Honestly, then we didn’t see it as much as we see it now, to be fair, because we didn’t know the person,” Dipoto said. “Man, getting traded was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” The most oft-mentioned acquisition in that homework assignment was Crawford, who was trending downward from being a top-10 prospect in baseball to being a bust with the Phillies. “What we saw then was a guy who had all the tools to be an excellent defender in our league. When the Mariners started their rebuild plan after the 2018 season, Dipoto asked 15 people from the front office and analytics team to put together a roster for the 2019 team with a payroll in the $155 million area. “Over these last three years just getting a chance to see how he became a part of our environment, the leadership skills that J.P. has are notable,” Dipoto said. This is something we’ve been working on for a little while now and to be able to bring it home before we start our season, it’s just a great way to start. “This is a fun way to kick off our season,” Dipoto said. And when the stakes rise, he has a knack for kind of rising with it. In a news conference at Target Field, hours before first pitch, Crawford, Dipoto and Mariners chairman John Stanton discussed the extension.

Robbie Ray, the reigning American League Cy Young winner, battled through seven innings, allowing one run on three hits with four walks and five strikeouts.

“I was getting ready to jump,” Winker said. “It happens,” Servais said. “I didn’t have the spring I wanted, but I know what I need to work on. “But talking to him in the dugout and the look in his eye, it was ‘OK, you’ve got three hitters.'” He was introduced to what used to be the Hernandez-level of run support. Ray’s one run allowed came in the third inning on one of the few curveballs he threw. “I still felt strong going into that seventh inning so really happy to get through it.” Drew Steckenrider found drama immediately in the ninth. “I felt really good,” Ray said. Ray became the fourth pitcher in Mariners history to toss at least seven innings while allowing one run or fewer on opening day. He’s going to be super aggressive. “How many times did we play this game last year?” Mariners manager Scott Servais said after a long exhale.

The contract is front-loaded, so instead of the $4.85m deal that the two sides had agreed on in arbitration, Crawford will make $10m this season ($5m salary and ...

Regardless, this deal preserves financial flexibility down the road (which, it should be noted, does not earn you extra wins in the standings) and gives J.P. significant security. With news of the Crawford extension, one has to wonder if we’ll get any other late-breaking extension news before first pitch this afternoon. JP Crawford $51M, 5-year Mariners extension contains no option years, full no-trade in 1st year, 5 team protection after that with $1M bonus with each trade. That success is what the Mariners are betting on in this contract, which buys out three years of arbitration (With three years and 163 days of service time, Crawford was first eligible for arbitration last year and would have hit free agency in 2025, since the Mariners kept him down in AAA for just long enough in 2019.) First off, congrats to J.P.! You can read all about him in Isabelle’s excellent 40 in 25 piece from a few weeks ago, but we’re only a few years removed from Crawford being a post-hype prospect with significant questions about whether he could hit major league pitching. And he flashed the leather throughout, including one of the most spectacular throws I’ve ever seen live:

They'll do so with plenty of optimism that they can snap the longest playoff drought (dating back to 2001) in Major League Baseball. And they'll do so with a ...

The Mariners have had several good seasons in recent years, but always have come up short in making the playoffs. They'll do so with plenty of optimism that they can snap the longest playoff drought (dating back to 2001) in Major League Baseball. And they'll do so with a newly-extended shortstop. Friday afternoon in Minnesota, the Mariners begin their 2022 season.

Plenty of new faces contributed for the Mariners in their 2-1 win over the Twins on opening day, led by 2021 AL Cy Young winner Robbie Ray.

He flew out to left field in his final plate appearance of the day. He did showcase some wheels on the play, though, with MLB.com’s Daniel Kramer noting Rodríguez had a sprint speed of 30 feet per second, which qualifies as “elite” in MLB. Sanó would run to the bag and get the out, but replay appeared to show he missed the base while Frazier slid feet-first into it. That lineout had an exit velocity of 98.7 mph. He did just that, though, picking up two double play balls to help him get out of some self-inflicted jams. The Mariners challenged and lost, however, and Frazier started his day with a groundout. “Was really impressed with him today and how he went about his business … Great competitor. Those two runs turned out to be all the M’s would need thanks in part to one of the biggest additions any team made this past offseason. So how did the other new guys do? That’s certainly what he did on opening day, throwing seven innings while allowing just one earned run and picking up the win. Ray allowed three hits while striking out five, walking four and allowing eight hard-hit balls, per Statcast. Ray also induced 17 swings and misses. I felt really good.”

Mariners lose to Twins in battle of passive aggressive niceties, win baseball game 2-1 · Lookout Landing Podcast 183: Hope Springs Eternal (Part II) - Best In ...

Paul Sewald was his Paul-the-Wall self, getting the top of the Twins lineup to pop out softly (Buxton, Polanco), and saw off Correa on a grounder capably handled by Eugenio Suárez, who had a rough day at the plate but made several solid plays at third. Ty France managed to turn 101 on the outside black around for a hit, and Jesse Winker followed with a base knock of his own, but Duran proceeded to strike out the side to cap any damage. It was a visual leap forward from where Cal was last year and hopefully a sign of things to come. Twins starter Joe Ryan was clearly the weaker of the two-first-names pitchers, struggling with the zone mightily; he issued as many walks as he did strike batters out (4), and threw a mere 42 of his 70 pitches for strikes—and that was with a zone that more often resembled a post office than a postage stamp. I’ll be so very happy to see the back of Correa for a while at the end of this series. There was one opportunity in the third where the Mariners threatened against Ryan, which was snuffed out when Correa made an excellent snag on a Mitch Haniger hot shot (106.3 off the bat, giving Hanimal two of the three hardest-hit balls in this game) that seemed destined for left field and an RBI. Correa also robbed Adam Frazier with a leaping grab, meaning Frazier got cheated out of two hits today. That’s the unpleasant part of Chaos Ball, remember, that in order to get to the one-run win, we have to suffer a lot of not-capitalizing-on-opportunites first. The Mariners battled the Twins in a game of “no, actually, you first,” stranding ten—1-0!—batters of their own on base. The Mariners got batters on base against Ryan but failed over and over to pounce in his four innings of work, and thus were left to deal with the absolute stinky to high heaven filth of Jhoan Duran. This was my first time watching Duran and man, the Edwin Díaz comparisons are not misplaced. Yes, this team looks different, with a bona fide ace heading up the rotation and a franchise cornerstone missing from third base, but the 2022 Mariners are here to reassure you that they’re ready to still be the lovable goofballs you fell in love with last year, equal parts fun and frustrating, ready to make you get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It feels like a long time ago that we watched a red-eyed Kyle Seager waving goodbye to the crowd at T-Mobile Park. It feels like a very long time ago that we saw Taylor Trammell laughing as he made an improbable catch in the outfield, or Ty France blossoming into a Gold Glove-adjacent first baseman, or Paul Sewald baffling hitters with a fastball that sits a full tick lower than MLB average, or any of the other nightly heroes that stepped up to help propel the 2021 Mariners to an improbable 90 wins. Ray ran an incredible 90% strand rate last season; haters will say it’s unsustainable but he stranded all six of the runners he allowed to reach base today, dialing up clutch double plays, strikeouts, and weak contact when he needed it.

You can see what you want in these 2022 Mariners so far. If you want to nitpick, you can, and if you want to dream about what could be, you...

Servais said that when Julio Rodriguez lined out sharply to right field in his final plate appearance after beginning his major league career with three lackluster at-bats, he told the manager in the dugout, “I’m trending in the right direction.” Winker backed to the wall and prepared to leap as high as he could to keep it in the yard. And then I was like, ‘OK, I don’t have to jump.’” As the Mariners headed into opening day, general manager Jerry Dipoto said, “This is as excited as I’ve ever been for the start of the season. The Mariners see Crawford as a foundational piece, one of their core players whom they are counting upon to build a brighter future. And I was like, ‘Oh, man.’ I just wanted to get back and find the wall. In right field, Haniger said he had no idea if the ball was going to be caught — the swirling wind had been playing havoc with fly balls the entire game. It turned out no leap was necessary as the ball dropped into Winker’s glove as he approached the wall. It was, as manager Scott Servais said with a look of relieved bliss on his face, a game the Mariners have seen before, and will see again often. Ray was sharp from the beginning — an eight-pitch first inning, all eight of them strikes — and just willed himself through seven innings. But you could also be encouraged by the fact the Mariners had a constant stream of base runners, indicative of what they believe will be a much deeper lineup. Mitch Haniger, who by his own admission left spring training still searching to find his swing, crushed the second pitch he saw over the left-field wall for a two-run first-inning home run that held up.

The Seattle Mariners announced they have signed shortstop J.P. Crawford to a new five-year contract ahead of Friday's season opener against the Minnesota ...

"And when the stakes rise, he has a knack for kind of rising with it. Crawford hopes to carry the Mariners back into the playoffs and beyond. And that was never more apparent than toward the end of last season." The Mariners acquired Crawford and infielder Carlos Santana from the Philadelphia Phillies in trade in Dec. 2018. I really wanted to stay here ever since then, and so I'm really happy for this opportunity." It's something we've been working on for a little while now and to be able to bring it home before we start our season is just a great way to start