Expect uncomfortable Seattle Mariners pursuit of Josh Naylor

The No. 1 storyline for the Seattle Mariners’ offseason will be the free agency of Josh Naylor, and that’s likely going to make for a different ride through the winter months than most M’s fans have grown accustomed to.

What will Josh Naylor’s market be in free agency?

It’s been a long time since the Mariners went into an offseason where the focus for them was trying to bring back a player they’ve already had. Seriously, try to remember the last time.

Mitch Haniger? When he went to the San Francisco Giants as a free agent, he was coming off an injury-shortened and less than stellar 2022 campaign.

Nelson Cruz? At 38 years old entering the 2019 season, he didn’t really fit into Seattle’s plans as it began a rebuild.

Teoscar Hernández? There wasn’t that much of a call to bring him back after he had a sub-par (for him, at least) 2023 season with Seattle.

The big departures from Seattle in the past decade have tended to come in trades (Robinson Canó, Edwin Díaz, Robbie Ray), and the M’s have been pretty good about signing players they want to keep to long-term extensions before they hit the open market (Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodríguez, Luis Castillo and J.P. Crawford).

That’s going to make the Josh Naylor situation an unfamiliar and almost certainly uncomfortable saga for M’s fans to watch play out before the 2026 season.

Mariners fans are used to hoping that Seattle makes a splash in free agency, even though that hasn’t typically been their modus operandi, but they are not used to hoping that splash is a player who they just saw play well in a Mariners uniform before testing the open market.

And while the M’s have said all the right things about re-signing him being a priority, all signs have pointed to Naylor going all the way to free agency and seeing exactly what he can get for his services.

All of the good that Naylor provided to the Mariners after his July trade from Arizona may have endeared him to Seattle and raised the desire to re-sign him, but it isn’t going to make matters easier on the Mariners to retain him. Neither is the fact that at 28 years old, he’s on the young side for a player hitting free agency for the first time.

And as much as we’d like to wish it wasn’t the case, the Mariners won’t be the only team this offseason looking for a first baseman.

For their part, the Mariners seemed to do as much as they could during the season to show Naylor how special Seattle – and the M’s franchise – can be as a long-term home.

“They had been working on it quite a bit, and you heard about it,” Mariners insider Shannon Drayer of Seattle Sports said Wednesday to Brock and Salk. “There was pretty active recruiting – not just the Mariners but pretty much the city of Seattle. They pulled in the Kraken and… just everything they could do to highlight the city and showcase it.”

And yet…

“For him to still go out and look around, that shouldn’t be surprising,” Drayer continued. “And is there a possibility there is a place that he would feel might be better for him (than Seattle)? Yes. He was here for a short amount of time, and he’s had a lot of time to think about (his free agency). He’s been thinking about this probably for the last two, three years.”

There’s hope that Naylor grew a fondness for the Pacific Northwest, but the fact is that the Ontario native spent just three months with the Mariners, who were his fifth MLB organization since he was drafted by the Miami Marlins in 2015.

“He is somebody that I don’t think has been too sentimental to where he has been,” Drayer said. “I talked to him one day about all the different places that he’s been. He lived for a time in Texas – ‘Texas? Why Texas?’ That didn’t add up to anything. There was a great trainer out there, and he said, I’ll go anywhere to get better and to get that kind of work.

“So I really think that he’s kind of a wild card in that situation. I don’t think he’s going to be too sentimental to any one area. I think it’s going to be about what’s best for him professionally and his family.”

Maybe that will end up being Seattle. But if you were hoping the Mariners had a home-field advantage with Naylor like with other players they’ve signed to extensions, it’s probably best to forget that notion and gear up for a long hot stove season waiting to see what Naylor chooses to do.

Expect uncomfortable Seattle Mariners pursuit of Josh Naylor

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