Under one week to Opening Day – let’s riff
Logan gets the nod, why I like Luke Raley, the weird shortstop situation etc. etc.
The proportional theory of time is one of those things that makes a lot of sense when you hear it for the first time and then you choose to not think too much about it ever again. The passing of time speeding up as you get older is, uh, quite brutal.
Except for right now. And this particular subject, the approach of baseball season.
It’s Friday afternoon. And if your weekend planning bleeds into keeping an eye on next week, you are already logistically planning around M’s games again.
I swear these guys just started playing practice games. Now the last one’s on Monday.
Hell yes.
Let’s riff on a few things.
Logan Gilbert is your Opening Day starter
I was talking about this with my brother the other day because that’s most of what the “Opening Day starter” label is good for, just conversation fodder. Outside of rare exceptions, you talk about it like it’s something you care about but it really isn’t.
Even so, it wasn’t the way I thought they’d go.
There’s a couple different ways teams can do this when they don’t have the clear and obvious Dude like the Mariners did with Félix for all those years.
You can just go with the guy who was the straight-up best the year before, which is where I assumed the Mariners would go and pick Bryan Woo. He would’ve been their top starter in the Postseason had he been available—and maybe that lack of availability is a factor here.
The other option is to you can treat it more like a title that has to be claimed by clearly exceeding the performance and stature of the guy who most recently possessed the role. And that feels like how the Mariners arrived at Logan Gilbert.
It could also just be that he’s older. And you don’t want to take this honorary role away from the guy closest to free agency.
I don’t know. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. We’re going to see everyone but Bryce Miller in the opening four-game set vs. Cleveland.
Can’t wait.
Yeah, this shortstop situation is a little awkward
And it isn’t going to get less awkward anytime soon.
Barring a rapid recovery combined with aggressive rostering, J.P. Crawford will not be in the lineup on Opening Day. He probably won’t even be in the building.
For those who missed it, Crawford’s got a bum shoulder this spring and while a trip recent to a surgeon didn’t lead to a daunting prognosis, time’s running out—probably already is out—to be ready for the start of the season.
Here’s what Dan Wilson said about Crawford’s recent medical check-in:
“Everything seemed to be pretty congruent with what we talked about here,” manager Dan Wilson said. “It was recommended to have an injection, so he did get that. He’ll be down for a couple of days and then start ramping back up. So we’re excited to hear that. It’s about as good of news as possible.”
He’s played three games at shortstop so far this spring, won’t play another until tomorrow at the earliest and the club heads up to Seattle on Monday night.
Crawford will almost certainly staying in Arizona, playing minor league spring training games, to make up for lost reps.
For a dude entering the last year of his contract and playing the same position as the organization’s best prospect, it isn’t what you want.
Reporting, including in the article linked to above, indicates it will probably be Leo Rivas filling in for Crawford in the likely event he misses time.
That would then slide either Ryan Bliss or Miles Mastrobuoni up the depth chart and onto the active roster.
But if it’s extended time that Crawford misses? Or even if he doesn’t, but it’s something that nags him—as injuries tend to do as guys age? Colt Emerson will be lurking.
It was already going to be a story regardless, and this potentially pushes the pace of the timeline.
But then again, he did experience this exact thing in 2023 and went on to have the best season of his career with 4.9 fWAR.
So who knows?
I’m bullish on Luke Raley
Bounceback candidates don’t come much more obvious than this. Honestly, we’re still a week away from Opening Day and talking about Raley being a potential X-factor for the 2026 M’s already feels a bit played.
But here—
So far in 44 spring training plate appearances, Luke Raley has put six balls in play with exit velocities exceeding 105 mph. It’s the exact same tally of 105+ mph batted balls as he had across 216 plate appearances in 2025.
In speaking with Shannon Drayer recently, Raley shared what most assumed—that the impact of the oblique injury that knocked him out for two months extended beyond his time on the Injured List.
“I’m not going to be one that just like lays it down and quits. But yeah, it was challenging,” he said. “When I came back from the oblique, it just never felt right. Didn’t feel like myself. And especially when you’re hitting, like a millisecond makes a huge difference. So it’s like, was my bat speed a little slower? Like, what was going on? Could I not make the move I wanted to make? I’ve tweaked a hamstring or a quad and you come back from that and it doesn’t affect your swing. It’s the oblique. You can’t do anything. It affects your running. It affects your throwing, your swinging. It doesn’t matter. You use it in everything you do.”
I actually hadn’t seen this quote until researching this post, but something that’s stuck with me on Raley since I saw it was a clip from Chris Long’s Green Light podcast.
Different sport, yeah, but similar talk on the nagging nature of oblique injuries.
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Actually, let’s go back to what Luke Raley said—alluding to bat speed. Here’s a chart with data Luke has almost certainly already seen.
It’s important to note the data for April is pre-oblique strain. So it was down from the high at the end of 2025. But, it was in line with how he started 2024 and instead of ticking up as the season progressed, it went the other direction.
Factor this in with the player Raley has shown to be—solid runner, solid defender, absolute gamer—and you’re looking at a player with a chance to be a significant contributor for a very good club.
Sooooo, Cal Raleigh and the WBC
As I’ve made very clear on this publication, I did not want Team USA to win the World Baseball Classic.
I assumed, as part of that, it would mean rooting against Cal Raleigh—one of my favorite baseball players of all time—in some big spots. Turns out I was wrong, thanks to the brilliant strategery from Mark DeRosa.
Maybe this is a stretch but there’s some poetic justice in it all.
When you sign on with these guys with a limited worldview and some pretty backwards thinking, that’s going to manifest itself in ways that go beyond who he pulls in for pregame speeches.
It isn’t a coincidence that, when you’re arguing with someone on social about some new-age baseball stuff, you go to their profile and it’s a bunch of the most abhorrent political takes you’ll ever see.
Close-minded anti-evidence people are just going to be that way in multiple settings.
And that leads to stuff like benching a guy who hit 60 home runs last year because he’s hitless over three games. Like, you’re gonna let Will Smith face a righty late when you have Cal on your bench? Alright, dude.
So of course Cal hits an absolute piss missile in his first game back in Mariners camp.
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See you on Opening Day, big man.
Go M’s.