Being that 2025 has reached its end, there has been a lot of looking back at the MLB season in recent weeks. And the Seattle Mariners have shown up quite a bit.

Where the Seattle Mariners could pivot for an infield bat

For example, the M’s were all over MLB’s list of the top 40 bat flips of the year, with Randy Arozarena, J.P. Crawford and Julio Rodríguez all appearing in the top 10.

Those were all positive moments for Seattle. On Tuesday, though, there was a more painful memory from the 2025 season that was highlighted. Luckily, this story ultimately has a good ending for the M’s.

You may or may not remember that before they acquired Josh Naylor in a big deal about a week before the MLB trade deadline, the All-Star first baseman had actually been a thorn in the Mariners’ side in an early-season series in Arizona.

In three games between the M’s and Diamondbacks from June 9-11, Naylor went off by going 8 for 12 with a home run, two doubles, two walks, three runs and six RBIs to lead Arizona to a sweep that actually dropped the M’s below .500.

That one home run was pretty significant. It was a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the 11th inning in the series opener. But it turns out it’s significant in another way.

On social media Tuesday, the MLB Stats account was posting various fastest and slowest milestones from 2025, and Naylor’s grand slam for Arizona got some time in the spotlight for being the slowest home run trot of the entire season.

It took Naylor a whopping 37.10 seconds to finally touch home plate as he took his time to watch the ball leave the yard, and got some good height on a bat flip for good measure before finally starting to jog around the bases.

The fortunes would change for the Mariners and D-backs over the next month, though, and would result in Naylor switching sides. Seattle responded to the sweep in Arizona with a 22-14 stretch to improve its record to 55-48, while the Diamondbacks stumbled by going 16-19 over the same period to drop to 50-53.

That made the M’s buyers and the D-backs sellers ahead of the July 31 trade deadline, with Naylor and later All-Star third baseman Eugenio Suárez going to Seattle in two of the biggest trades of the MLB season. The duo gave the Mariners a boost as Seattle would win its first AL West title in 24 years and come within one win of reaching the World Series.

Naylor had huge moments down the stretch of the regular season and in the playoffs for Seattle, making it a bit surreal to go back now and watch his grand salami against the Mariners from just a little over a month before he joined the team.

Seattle fans can count on Naylor taking his time trotting around the bases exclusively for the Mariners going forward after he re-signed on a five-year, $92.5 million deal in November.

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