Spring Training storyline: Who will win the 13th roster spot?
Fighting for the genuine honor of giving Mitch Haniger a day off
This year’s Mariners roster is about as set heading into Spring Training as it’s been in years, maybe ever, with twelve players as written in ink as you can be at this point. You’ve got the starting nine in Cal Raleigh, Ty France, Jorge Polanco, J.P. Crawford, Josh Rojas, Luke Raley, Julio Rodríguez, Mitch Haniger, and Mitch Garver. Then there are Rojas and Raley’s platoon-mates in Luis Urías and Dylan Moore and the backup catcher, Seby Zavala.
That leaves just one roster spot. Given the construction of this roster, the thing that makes the most sense for that spot is a lefty outfielder. The Mariners could use a guy who can give Mitch Haniger a day off his feet, either on the bench or at DH while Mitch Garver takes a rest. Not-so-coincidentally, the Mariners have a bunch of those guys. It’s the position on the roster where it’ll matter the most how they look in Spring Training. People love to argue about who’s going to make the club out of camp, and there are so few opportunities to do it this year.
Taylor Trammell would seem to have the inside track because he’s out of options. Since he can’t be sent down to Tacoma, one of three things has to happen: he makes the big-league team, he gets traded, or he gets put on waivers. TT has 351 MLB plate appearances spread over three seasons so far in his career, and it’s been the same story pretty much every time he’s been up. On the positive side, he can absolutely run into one, has always been able to take a walk, and while it hasn’t translated to his MLB time yet, he’s good on the bases and a capable defender in left field. (Raley and Moore are both good in right field, so I don’t think Trammell’s arm is too big a limitation.)
The problem, however, has consistently been the swing-and-miss. While that problem had previously been limited to MLB, last year, it even dogged him in AAA. As a major-leaguer, he’s swung and missed on 17.9% of pitches. That would have put him in the 2nd percentile among last year’s qualified hitters. So the key thing to watch with Trammell this spring will be how often he’s making contact. If he can’t get it together, then sadly for his many fans, his time in the organization is probably at an end.
Dominic Canzone seems to have the favor of the organization. The most recently acquired player in the mix, he played a ton down the stretch last year. But he has two big holes in his game. First, he makes too much weak contact; he needs to let some strikes go by that he could make contact with in order to find the pitches he can damage. I loved his approach in Sunday’s Spring Training, when he only swung at three of the ten pitches he saw in his two plate appearances. I’m not surprised he ended up with a well-struck double into the gap. His second problem is that he’s the weakest defender in this group, and it’s not particularly close. Still, he also probably has the highest overall ceiling among this foursome. If he can readjust his approach at the plate, he could be a monster masher. But precisely because of that, it might make sense to have him playing every day in Tacoma rather than once a week in Seattle.
Cade Marlowe catapulted himself from 20th-Round pick to Prospect Of Note with a dynamite 2021, when he hit 26 home runs and stole 23 bags across two levels. He followed it up with another 20-20 season in 2022, though his strikeouts crept up and his overall lines were a little more BABIP-aided than you’d want them to be. He got 100 chances at the plate last year and acquitted himself well, though again with too many strikeouts and some good luck on balls in play. His most impressive at-bat came early on in his time with the club, when he socked a ninth-inning, lead-changing, 0-2 grand slam on a high 100-mph fastball to put a dagger in the heart of the fledgling Anaheim Angels. But one-time heroics do not an MLB player make. What Marlowe has going for him, though, is that among this group, he has the best profile as a fifth outfielder: he does everything pretty well—he can even cover center—but nothing so well that you’re tempted to see him as an everyday player. Given that contrast with Canzone, it might help his chances at breaking camp with the Mariners.
The wild card is Sam Haggerty. (Wild card feels like such a natural descriptor for him, doesn’t it?) He’s performed the best at the big league level. But he doesn’t make the best fit for the roster as presently constructed. He’s a switch hitter, but he’s much better from the right side than the left with a career wRC+ of 141 from the right side v. 61 from the left. So he doesn’t make an ideal match to give Haniger the occasional day off. His other differentiator, that he can play some infield too, isn’t as valuable with Urías and Moore on the bench already. Still, given his track record, I wouldn’t count him out if none of the other guys on this list are lighting it up.
Most of the guys on the 40-man will see significant playing time over the course of the year. The 162-game season comes with a lot of nicks and bangs, beyond which there’s the injury history of this team and the possibility of underperformance, especially in the outfield corners. So, with the exception of Trammell, the stakes of who makes the team on Opening Day aren’t that high. But it’s the rare known unknown this spring, so in games that don’t count, it’s one of the few things that does.