To do what they want to do this year — to be a legitimate contender in the AL West — the Mariners have to have a strong bullpen.
Sure, that’s true for most contending teams. Good teams need good relief pitchers. Pretty simple, right?
Except, an effective bullpen does mean more to the Mariners. It has to because of how many close games they play.
Exactly one-third of Mariners games over the past three seasons — 162 in all — have been decided by one run. That’s the most one-run games in the American League in that stretch.
In 2022, the Mariners rode their 34-22 record in one-run games — the most one-run wins in MLB that season — to their first playoff appearance in two decades.
They missed the playoffs by one game in 2023, when their record in one-run games fell to 25-26. They missed the playoffs by one game again in 2024, when their record in one-run games was 27-28.
That’s not to point a finger solely at the ‘pen for the downturn in close games. Everybody on the roster factors into that, but how well a (presumably) healthier bullpen performs this year will again go a long way in determining how the Mariners fare in more tight games.
That in mind, let’s take a look at how the bullpen has come together as we close out our Mariners position previews ahead of the start of spring training this week.
2024 review
For three seasons from 2021 through 2023, the bullpen was the most underrated component of the Mariners’ overall pitching success.
In 2024, the script flipped. The bullpen became the underrated component of the Mariners’ decline.
The bullpen did finish with a respectable 3.71 ERA, but that marked the highest ERA from a Seattle ‘pen since 2001. Mariners relievers last season also allowed their highest rate of home runs — 1.12 per nine innings — in five years.
And from Aug. 1 on, Seattle’s bullpen ranked 29th out of 30 MLB teams in fWAR (minus-0.3).
“It’s maybe the thing that got us most in the last two months of last season, was a bullpen that got tired,” president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto said. “We pushed really hard on guys like Andrés Muñoz and ‘Voter’ (Austin Voth) and Trent Thornton, and they were all pitching a lot and in very high leverage all the time.”
Early season injuries to Matt Brash and Gregory Santos took away two of the three relievers expected to handle high-leverage innings last year.
The Mariners tried to address their bullpen needs with a midseason trade for another established high-leverage reliever, Yimi Garcia — only to lose him to a season-ending injury in mid-August.
There were some promising developments. Muñoz earned his first All-Star selection in his first full season as the closer, and the emergence of Thornton, Collin Snider, Eduard Bazardo and Troy Taylor gives the Mariners some valuable depth coming into 2025.
Voth was also a bright spot for much of the season. The Mariners opted not to bring him back this year, and he signed earlier this week with the Chiba Lotte Marines in Japan.
Projected depth chart
RIGHT-HANDED RELIEVERS: Andrés Muñoz, Matt Brash*, Collin Snider, Trent Thornton, Troy Taylor, Eduard Bazardo, Gregory Santos, Cody Bolton, Carlos Vargas, Hagen Danner, Will Klein, Casey Legumina, Hunter Cranton, Jackson Kowar*, Shintaro Fujinami^, Neftali Feliz^
LEFT-HANDED RELIEVERS: Tayler Saucedo, Gabe Speier, Brandyn Garcia^, Drew Pomeranz^, Josh Fleming^, Austin Kitchen^, Peyton Alford^
*returning from Tommy John surgery
^non-roster invite
Reason for optimism
The Mariners’ front office has largely proven it knows how to build a good (and affordable) bullpen.
Muñoz, 26, should be at the peak of his powers as he enters the prime of his career.
Dipoto said Brash is on track to return by late April. Thornton and Snider gained some valuable experience in key roles last year.
Among the many new faces entering camp — brought in through minor trades or signed to minor-league deals as non-roster invitees — it’s a safe bet that at least one reliever will emerge in spring as a viable big-league option.
Perhaps it’s a veteran arm — Feliz? Pomeranz? Fujinami? — who discovers a second (or third) wind.
Or perhaps it’s a relatively unknown reliever — Danner? Klein? Legumina? Kowar? — who finds the right formula in the Mariners’ pitching lab and breaks through.
Reason for concern
Injuries, first and foremost.
Brash was the Mariners’ most valuable reliever in 2023 — the second-most valuable in the AL that season, per FanGraphs’ WAR calculations — and he was sorely missed last year.
Coming into this year, Brash is an integral piece of the Mariners’ bullpen plans. It is a risky bet, though, counting so much on any one pitcher coming off such a major injury.
The Mariners are also banking on a lot of relievers — Thornton, Snider, Bazardo, especially — with limited track records to eat up a lot of valuable innings.
And Santos remains a total wild card. It’s not clear what he will be able to provide this year.
The Mariners are also putting a lot of faith in Tayler Saucedo and Gabe Speier as their two veteran lefties. Speier, in particular, struggled for much of 2024, but the Mariners are optimistic he will rebound this year.
Breakout candidates
Brandyn Garcia and Hunter Cranton.
Garcia, a 6-foot-4 lefty, emerged as one of the Mariners’ top starting pitching prospects after a strong season between High-A and Double-A last year. The Mariners are shifting him to the bullpen this spring, as reported earlier this offseason, with the idea that he could compete for a spot on the opening-day roster.
An 11th-round pick in 2023, Garcia, 24, relies on three-pitch mix — a mid-90s two-seam fastball, a mid-80s slider and a cutter — that he throws with a three-quarter arm slot and a deceptive cross-body delivery. If he can throw consistent strikes, he could be a valuable asset out of the bullpen.
Cranton, 24, was the Mariners’ third-round pick last year out of Kansas. He has a fastball that has touched triple digits and he projects to move quickly through Seattle’s system — and could very well be in the M’s bullpen mix at some point this year.
Troy Taylor should be included here, too. Taylor made his MLB debut as a 22-year-old last August and was thrust into a significant role over the final two months of the season, making 21 appearances with 25 strikeouts over 19.1 innings.
But there is some obvious concern after Taylor sustained a strained right lat muscle during a recent throwing session, and it’s not clear if he’ll be ready for opening day.