The Mariners are riding a six-game win streak that has pulled them into a tie with Houston for the top spot in the AL West. Josh Naylor has eight hits, including a trio of home runs, over that stretch. He’s batting .260/.306/.460 with eight home runs in 41 games since being acquired from Arizona at the deadline. He’s also incredibly 16-16 in stolen base attempts, ranking third in MLB behind Juan Soto and Jazz Chisholm Jr. in steals since he was traded.
Unsurprisingly, the Mariners would like to keep the impending free agent in the Pacific Northwest. “Yeah I think we would (like to retain him),” M’s president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto told MLBTR’s Darragh McDonald on this week’s edition of the podcast. “That remains to be seen how Josh feels about the matter. It’s never easy when you’re in a playoff race to open discussions like that. I know that there is interest on our end, and I believe that there is interest on Josh’s end.”
Naylor hasn’t suffered from Seattle’s home park, which grades as MLB’s most difficult for hitters. He’s batting .338 with five home runs in 19 games at T-Mobile Park since the trade. That’s an extremely small sample, but Naylor also had success against Seattle pitching as a visiting player. He’s a career .283/.319/.535 hitter over 140 plate appearances at T-Mobile Park.
“He’s actually as good as anybody that’s played in the last handful of years at hitting in this ballpark. It doesn’t seem to bother him much. We’ll see if there’s an interest in sticking around as a Mariner,” Dipoto noted. Naylor echoed those sentiments when speaking with the M’s beat earlier this week (link via Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times).
“Every time I was an opponent, this is like the first place I couldn’t wait to come to,” the lefty hitter said. “I feel comfortable everywhere, to be honest, but I just really enjoyed playing here coming here as an opponent. I thought it was a super cool stadium. The fans were always electric. I think you see the ball well here, personally. I like the open roof. When the roof is closed, it’s cool. But I love the feeling of the roof open.”
The Mariners are going to look beyond 36 games of park-specific data when deciding how seriously to pursue a long-term deal with Naylor. His success there provides some comfort on both sides, though. The Mariners haven’t been big spenders on free agent hitters throughout Dipoto’s decade-long tenure atop…
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