A Walk in the Park: Sixty-Two Throws That Got Away
By Jess Henderson ·
My favorite play in baseball takes about four seconds and never gets a graphic. A ball splits the gap, the center fielder cuts it off, the shortstop drifts onto the grass with his arms up, and the throw goes from glove to hand to glove to the bag at third in one clean line. The runner is out by a step, and I will take that over a 450-foot home run most nights.
The 2026 Mariners did not make that play often enough. They made the other one, where the ball sails past first base and the runner trots into second.
Seattle committed 62 throwing errors this season, the most in the majors, according to MLB's official stats. San Francisco was next at 59. The detail that stuck with me: Seattle made 88 errors in total, a middle-of-the-league figure. Most of the trouble came at the end of the play, after the hard part was done.
The advanced numbers are less forgiving. Seattle finished last in baseball in Statcast's Outs Above Average at minus-58, per Baseball Savant, and last in Fielding Run Value at minus-58. The Athletics were next-worst in both and still came out 14 outs and about 15 runs better. Baseball-Reference has Seattle last in Defensive Runs Saved too, at minus-60. All three systems put Seattle in the same place.
On Monday, Sept. 28, a day after Dan Wilson said he would not return as manager, the club announced that four coaches would not be back in 2027: bench coach Manny Acta, infield coach Perry Hill, hitting coach Kevin Seitzer and first-base coach Eric Young Jr.
Young is the one I keep coming back to. He was not the infield coach. That was Hill, who helped three Mariners infielders win Gold Gloves. Young spent 2025 and 2026 coaching first base after a year as the organization's baserunning coordinator, and MLB.com's Daniel Kramer reported he also oversaw the outfield. Lookout Landing's John Trupin called his exit the most surprising of the four. He was also on the staff for Josh Naylor's second straight 30-steal season, a sentence I did not expect to write about a first baseman.
So the outfield and the bases, the two things I watch most closely, were partly his. Dipoto's stated reason had less to do with any one coach: "We thought it was important that whoever we hire as the manager come in and have the ability to have his hand on the wheel in creating his own staff," he said, per MLB.com.
His press conference at T-Mobile Park was mostly about standards. "Our culture needs a reset," he said, per Ryan Divish of the Seattle Times. Of the 2022 to 2025 teams, he said: "We played buttoned-up, efficient defense, with or without rangy players, and we didn't beat ourselves."
On defense, he was blunt. "Being a bad defender is a choice," he said, per Kate Preusser of Lookout Landing. A little later in the same answer: "This year we led the league in throwing errors. It was awful to watch."
The line I would underline sits between those two. "Being a good defender sometimes requires a skill set that some players may or may not have." That one makes space for the part the front office owns. Dipoto said some of it can be solved "through more focus, more demanding and challenging practice, but especially in the positioning of those players," and he put the positioning piece on the club's own scouting and advance group.
A lot of throwing errors start before the arm ever moves, with feet that were not set, or a fielder three steps from where he should have been, throwing across his body to make up for it. Positioning and footwork are both teachable, which is encouraging or maddening depending on how many of those 62 you watched.
The next manager will come from outside the organization, Dipoto said, and will help pick the new staff. Whoever coaches the infield and outfield in Peoria next spring, I will be watching the plainest drill there is: a ground ball, a shuffle, a throw to first, over and over, until it lands chest high every time.
Farmer's Market Pick
Northwest hazelnut harvest runs through September and October, and market tables pick up paper bags of them between the squash and the apples. Holmquist Hazelnut Orchards in Lynden, Washington, has been growing them since the 1920s. Five generations in, the family keeps a table in the main arcade at Pike Place Market.
For anyone not walking past that arcade on a Saturday, the Holmquist Dry Roasted Hazelnuts come in a one-pound resealable bag. Unsalted, no oil, nothing added. They go in oatmeal, on a salad, into a pie crust, or into a rain jacket pocket for a long walk. I have plenty of those pockets. Oregon grows most of the country's hazelnuts and gets most of the credit. Lynden sits a few miles south of the Canadian border, so consider this a small vote for Washington.