Josh Naylor Is Stealing the Spotlight

Until the Mariners traded for the Diamondbacks’ Josh Naylor on July 24, they had a first base problem. For the second season in a row, subpar first-half production from their first sackers threatened to derail their bid for a playoff spot, and while they hadn’t shied away from addressing the issue last summer, they ended up missing a Wild Card berth by a single win nonetheless. In his first big swing at upgrading their roster this summer, president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto dealt for Naylor, and since then, he’s proven to be one of their most reliable players — not just at the plate, but on the bases and in the field as well. He’s shown off all facets of his game during this postseason, including in Monday night’s 10-3 ALCS Game 2 win over the Blue Jays, during which he notched his third three-hit effort in the past four games.

After collecting the hit that helped the Mariners clinch a playoff berth — a bases-loaded, eighth-inning double off the Rockies’ Victor Vodnik on September 23 — and closing the regular season with a 12-game hitting streak, Naylor’s October actually began inauspiciously. He went hitless in the Mariners’ first three Division Series games against the Tigers, with a first-inning walk against Game 1 starter Troy Melton his only positive result across a stretch of 14 plate appearances; he just missed hitting one out against Melton in the fourth inning of that game, a 108.2-mph drive hauled in just a few feet in front of the right-center field wall. Only once during the regular season had he gone hitless in three straight games, that from June 1–4 while a member of the Diamondbacks. One of the few highlights from his more recent dry spell was his unassisted double play to seal the Mariners’ Game 3 victory, when he speared a liner off the bat of Parker Meadows, then doubled Andy Ibáñez off first.

Naylor started filling in the hit column with a 3-for-4 afternoon in the Mariners’ 9-3 loss in Game 4, doubling off Casey Mize and scoring a run in the second inning, then singling off Tyler Holton and coming around to score in the fourth, at which point the Mariners led 2-0. He pulled off another unassisted double play in the fourth, this time off a Colt Keith one-hopper that caught Gleyber Torres retreating to first base. Alas, by the time Naylor led off the eighth with a single off Melton, Seattle trailed 8-3. Too little, too late.

Still, that performance set up Naylor’s star turn in the decisive, epic Game 5. In the second inning, he smacked an opposite-field double off Tarik Skubal, then showed off the base-stealing savvy that few might have guessed he possessed given his 5-foot-11, 235-pound build and third-percentile sprint speed. Skubal hadn’t allowed a steal of third all season, but with Mitch Garver at the plate, Naylor took a huge secondary lead, and almost appeared to be in disbelief that a steal could be so easy. On the broadcast, former catcher A.J. Pierzynski noted that Tigers infielders were shouting, “Step off!” but that Skubal couldn’t hear them over the din of the T-Mobile Park crowd. Once Naylor went, catcher Dillon Dingler’s throw was late and offline to the third base side; the play wasn’t close. The steal proved pivotal when Naylor scored the game’s first run on Garver’s lineout to center, and as a bonus, he got to wear dirt all over the front of his uniform for the next 13 innings, a reminder of his extra effort:

In the seventh, with two outs, Polanco on first and the Mariners now down 2-1, Naylor fell behind 0-2 against Kyle Finnegan, then singled to right field. Finnegan departed in favor of Holton, whom pinch-hitter Leo Rivas greeted with a game-tying RBI single. Naylor’s two-out single off Will Vest in the ninth inning went for naught, and the rest of his night was comparatively uneventful, but he’d played a vital role in helping the Mariners reach their first ALCS since 2001.

After going hitless in the ALCS opener against the Blue Jays, Naylor went 3-for-4 against a trio of pitchers in Game 2, highlighted by his two-run homer in the seventh inning, and he survived an injury scare as well. By the time he faced Trey Yesavage in the first, the Mariners already led 3-0 thanks to Julio Rodríguez’s three-run homer. With two outs and the bases empty, Naylor fell behind 0-2, watched a splitter sail high way off the plate, fouled a couple pitches off — including a very painful-looking one off his right ankle, causing him to hobble around for a few moments — then reached out and poked a high-and-outside four-seamer just past a diving Ernie Clement for a single:

In fact, that ball’s 4.17-foot height as it crossed the plate made it the highest for any base hit thus far this postseason. That type of hit was actually nothing new for Naylor. His 30 hits above the strike zone led the majors this year, as did his 75 hits in the upper third of the zone or higher, and he had the majors’ third-highest batting average in that context:

After Eugenio Suárez struck out and Dominic Canzone took ball one, Naylor swiped second base standing up, his second steal of the postseason. He didn’t get any further than that, because Canzone struck out. With his ankle still smarting to the point that manager Dan Wilson considered removing him from the game, Naylor hit another two-out single off Yesavage in the third, though he was stranded again.

“I just told him I’d let him know, and that’s really it,” Naylor said afterwards. “Yeah, maybe a lot of us are sore, a lot of us are hurt, probably on both sides. But these are important games, and I don’t really want to get taken out if I can still stand.”

In between those two plate appearances, Naylor made an error that helped the Blue Jays get back into the game. After George Springer led off the home half of the first with a double off Logan Gilbert, Nathan Lukes hit a chopper to the first base side. Naylor charged the ball, and while still on the run, attempted a backhand flip to Gilbert covering first base. But his throw sailed behind the pitcher, allowing Springer to score and sending Lukes to second; he scored on Kirk’s two-run single:

Naylor at least partially atoned for his defensive miscue in the fifth, after Jorge Polanco’s three-run homer off Louis Varland (who struck Naylor out) restored the Mariners’ three-run lead. Springer hit a soft roller down the first base line and Naylor ranged over to make a backhanded sliding stop, followed by another unorthodox throw, this one kind of a sky hook while still on his stomach — and on target to pitcher Eduard Bazardo, who was covering first. More dirt for the front of that uniform!

With the Mariners up 7-3 in the seventh, Naylor helped put the game on ice. Following a one-out single by Polanco off Braydon Fisher, he worked the count full, then crushed a middle-middle slider for a 359-foot homer to right-center field:

The extra runs allowed Wilson to stick with lower-leverage hurlers Carlos Vargas and Emerson Hancock to close out the game, and more notably made Naylor the fourth Canadian-born player — and the first visiting one — to hit a postseason homer in Canada, joining Blue Jays Russell Martin, Michael Saunders, and Guerrero the Younger. Naylor was born and raised in Mississauga, Ontario, about 16 miles from the Rogers Centre, grew up a Blue Jays fan, and had plenty of family and friends in attendance.

Thanks to that trio of three-hit games, Naylor has lifted his postseason line to .290/.313/.452 (118 wRC+), a good approximation of his regular season .295/.353/.462 (128 wRC+) slash line save for a couple of missing walks. That latter line looks like the second coming of John Olerud given the Mariners’ recent production from their first basemen.

At the time they traded for Naylor, the Mariners were 54-48, six games behind the Astros in the AL West race and in a virtual tie for the second and third AL Wild Card spots with the Red Sox. Their first basemen — Rowdy Tellez (who was designated for assignment and released in late June), Donovan Solano, and Luke Raley — had hit a combined .233/.298/.412 (104 wRC+) with 0.4 WAR to that point, bad enough to land on my Replacement Level Killers list. Mariners fans could be forgiven for a sense of déjà vu, as the subpar work of Ty France had landed them on that list in 2024 as well. Last year, the team solved that problem by trading France to the Reds, adding Justin Turner from the Red Sox, and shifting Raley from the outfield, a move that provided an offensive jolt yet wasn’t quite enough; the Mariners finished three games behind the Astros in the AL West and one behind the Tigers and Royals in the race for the last two Wild Card spots.

Naylor, whom the Diamondbacks had acquired from the Guardians last December — after he’d made his first All-Star team, hit a career-high 31 homers, and helped Cleveland reach the ALCS — hit .292/.360/.447 (122 wRC+) with 11 homers and 11 steals during his brief stay in Arizona. His trade to the Mariners in exchange for a pair of pitching prospects (lefty Brandyn Garcia and righty Ashton Izzi) was the first of five the sub-.500 Diamondbacks made over the final eight days of July, as general manager Mike Hazen dealt away half a dozen pending free agents to contending teams; Suárez rejoined Naylor in Seattle in a deal seven days later.

With the Mariners, Naylor continued the revamped approach he took this year, trading a bit of power for more contact; his average bat speed slowed from 72.9 mph last year to 70.9 this year, with his fast swing rate falling (from 32.7% to 17.7%) and his squared-up rate rising (from 27.3% to 31.2%). He hit .299/.341/.490 with nine homers and 19 steals for the Mariners; his 137 wRC+ ranked fourth on the team over that span, behind Rodríguez, Cal Raleigh, and Polanco. While his total of 20 homers was 11 shy of last year’s mark, his overall 128 wRC+ represented a career high, and his 13.7% strikeout rate matched a career low. But the most eye-catching part of of his stat line was those steals. Given his burly frame and lack of speed, Naylor acquired the nickname “Thickey Henderson” somewhere along the way, but his athleticism and baseball IQ have often been underestimated, and his success is no joke. He stole 30 bases in 32 attempts, including 19 without being caught once after the trade, tied with former teammate Corbin Carroll for the majors’ third-highest total in that span, behind only Juan Soto (25!) and Jazz Chisholm Jr. (21). His overall 93.8% success rate ranked third in the majors among players with at least 20 attempts. Via Baseball Reference’s Stathead, his 30 steals equaled the combined total of the 15 other non-pitchers listed under six feet and at least 220 pounds, only six of whom even attempted a steal this season:

“He has a good baserunning IQ, good instincts,” Guardians first base coach Sandy Alomar Jr. told The Athletic in late August, referring to Naylor. “He sees tendencies and stuff.”

“For Josh, it’s the intellectual part of the game,” his brother and former teammate Bo Naylor told The Athletic. “It’s the pattern recognition and being able to take advantage of those things… You compare him to someone who has just crazy speed, they can just trust their legs to do the work. To everyone who has the potential to steal bases, it just depends on whatever your ability is and making the most of it.”

“Once I started playing baseball, I really wanted to just understand it on a different level,” Naylor told MLB.com earlier this month. “It’s hard sometimes, but I think if you can pick one thing a game to lock in on and try to understand and try to read a little better, you’ll be ready for the next time the opportunity arises. And then the next time, you pick something else to work on.”

Updating some Statcast data previously highlighted by Defector’s Kathryn Xu and our own Davy Andrews, the latter for our August 16 FanGraphs Weekly Mailbag, Naylor’s average lead distance gained of 3.1 feet on stolen base opportunities is below the league median of 3.6, but he’s done a great job of picking his spots. On his stolen base attempts, his leads expanded from an average of 16.1 feet with Arizona to 17.2 with Seattle, both well above the major league median of 10.6 feet. Rarely did his stolen base attempts draw competitive throws from catchers.

As for his defense, Naylor’s 5 DRS and 1 FRV in 441.2 innings at first base for the Mariners represented notable improvements both upon his metrics with the Diamondbacks (-6 DRS and -2 FRV in 639.1 innings) and as compared to the Mariners’ other first basemen this year (-11 DRS and -5 FRV in 1,020.1 innings). Sample size caveats certainly apply here, and for what it’s worth, his own metrics have fluctuated; he posted -6 DRS and 2 FRV in 1,205 innings for the Guardians last season. Still, it’s fair to say he’s provided an upgrade at the spot for the Mariners.

On a team with a potential MVP (Raleigh), another franchise cornerstone (Rodríguez), and a player whose clutch postseason hitting will live forever in franchise lore (Polanco), Naylor has found his own place in the spotlight while helping his newish team come within two wins of its first trip to the World Series. Whatever happens to the Mariners from here, it won’t be a surprise if he’s near the center of the action.