Seattle Mariners Overreactions: Let's make too much of 1 game

The anticipation for the Seattle Mariners’ 2026 season was sky-high going into opening day on Thursday, but the M’s came up just a bit short, falling 6-4 to the Cleveland Guardians.

Recap: Mariners fall to Guardians 6-4 on opening day

One game is but a drop in the very big bucket that is a 162-game baseball season, but it’s really hard to not want to overanalyze after getting that first contest after the long baseball-less winter – particularly when it comes to this Mariners team that both won the American League West and went to the AL Championship Series for the first time in 24 years last season.

Rather than take the usual road of exercising patience after a Game 1 loss, I’m going to indulge the desire to put way too much weight into Seattle’s opener. Here are five overreactions as the M’s sit at 0-1 to begin the 2026 MLB campaign.

1. Dominic Canzone is this year’s Cal Raleigh.

With two home runs on Thursday night, Mariners designated hitter Dominic Canzone is now tied for the MLB lead in homers this season. A Mariners slugger was the MLB leader in home runs last year, too – All-Star catcher Cal Raleigh. Clearly Canzone has his sights set on making it two years in a row for a Seattle player.

Canzone shows breakout can continue in ’26 with two-homer game

OK, but to be serious, the 28-year-old Canzone has been pretty impressive dating back to his last call-up from Triple-A in June 2025. He hit .304 with 11 homers, 11 doubles, a .362 on-base percentage and .850 OPS in 80 games after returning from Tacoma last season, then had a few big hits in the World Baseball Classic for the surprising Italy team, and quietly had a nice spring training (.321 average, .845 OPS).

But if we’re going to base our expectations for the rest of this season on Canzone’s first game, then we gotta believe he’s going to immediately challenge Raleigh’s Mariners record of 60 homers.

2. Does anybody want to get on base?

The Mariners hit four home runs on Thursday night, which is good. But they were all solo shots, because the M’s had just two hits that didn’t leave the ballpark plus two walks.

Mariners GM: When J.P. Crawford, Bryce Miller could be back

Seattle’s lineup is deeper this year, as evidenced by the presence of new leadoff man Brendan Donovan, who followed up a great spring by blasting a homer in his first regular season Mariners plate appearance and later added a double. But the Mariners’ hitters didn’t look to be all that in sync in the opener.

Here’s where things get weird. It’s not just that the Mariners only had two hits that weren’t home runs on Thursday. It’s that they didn’t have any singles whatsoever. Which brings me to my next overreaction.

3. Actually, check those baseballs.

Time to break out the tinfoil hat.

We know that in 2022, MLB used a few different kinds of baseballs, and there was one kind that flew better – and seemed to find its way into Yankees games in particular because of course. And now that the Mariners are a new national baseball darling coming off of their 2025 postseason run, it feels like they could be getting similar treatment.

There were six home runs total in Thursday’s opener. At T-Mobile Park. In March. When it was 52 degrees at first pitch. Not exactly a place or time known for the ball to be flying all over the yard, and especially not when you would expect to see Canzone and Guardians rookie Chase DeLauter sending missiles way out to the seats beyond the gap in right-center, a place where deep flies usually go to die.

I kinda wonder if the Mariners started getting baseballs that fly better back in the ALCS last October against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Remember how neither the Mariners nor Detroit Tigers scored more than three runs in a single game in Seattle during the AL Division Series, including two games that needed to go to extra innings before a team scored the deciding third run? And remember how in the first four playoff games at T-Mobile Park after the M’s ended their postseason drought in 2022, just 16 runs were scored in 53 innings, an average of an absolutely minuscule 2.7 runs combined by two teams per a nine inning game?

Well, when the Mariners and Blue Jays got to Seattle for Game 3 of the ALCS, they combined for 17 runs. And then 10 runs in Game 4. Followed by eight runs in Game 5. The park started playing very differently all of the sudden.

And now with Thursday’s homer-fest, it kinda feels like marine layer-proof baseballs have found their way to the corner of Edgar and Dave for good.

4. Let’s freak out about some guys.

Ooh, there are some players off to rough starts this season.

Coming off of a breakout 2025 campaign, left-handed reliever Gabe Speier gave up two runs on three hits in his first outing of 2026. Speier also had a tough spring (10.13 ERA in three appearances) and didn’t exactly shine for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic (7.71 ERA in three appearances).

He’s not the only M’s standout who was in the WBC and didn’t look great on Thursday. Julio Rodríguez was 0 for 4 with three strikeouts, Raleigh was 0 for 3 with three strikeouts and a walk, and Josh Naylor was 0 for 4.

Finally, spring standout Cole Young was 0 for 3 with three strikeouts.

5. Start making Fall Classic plans.

Despite all of these overreactionary concerns, this is the only thing that’s important.

Do you know who also suffered a close and deflating loss at home in their first game of the season? The 2025 Seattle Seahawks. And all the Hawks did after that 17-13 defeat at the hands of the San Francisco 49ers was win 17 of their next 20 games, including the Super Bowl.

By the way, the Mariners’ two biggest rivals in the AL West, the Houston Astros and Texas Rangers, also lost their openers on Thursday. The division is still wide open.

So mark it down. Just like their neighbors from the other side of Royal Brougham Way, the Mariners are clearly going all the way this year.

Seattle Mariners Overreactions: Let’s make too much of 1 game

Tags: