The other week, Ryan Blake wrote a piece looking at the 2025 Mariners’ penchant for pinch hitting, and the results were...unsightly, to put it mildly.
The constant barrage of pinch-hitters has, unsurprisingly, not borne much fruit for the Mariners, but there were a couple exceptions in Ryan’s analysis: Mitch Garver and Miles Mastrobuoni. Mastrobuoni’s success is especially remarkable considering he is tied with Donovan Solano for the second-most pinch-hit at-bats in baseball this year (19); only Randal Grichuk of the Diamondbacks has more (25). But Mastrobuoni has been so much more successful than Solano in these situations because unlike Solano, the Mariners are selective and purposeful in the scenarios where they use him and the desired results of his at-bat.