Episode thirteen and finally some traction. The boys capped an eight game win streak with a 5-1 homestand and three straight series wins, the first time that's happened all year. Losing 7-1 to end it barely stung. That's what an eight game streak buys you.

Injury news first. Cal Raleigh is targeting rehab games in Everett this weekend, sold out two hours after they announced it, then Tacoma, with a likely June 16 return for the first game back off the road trip. No rush. The point is getting Cal in-game swings he never got in spring while off at the WBC, where the swing and miss was real. Brendan Donovan has no clear timeline, working the anti-gravity treadmill on his groin in Arizona. When he's back the puzzle gets fun. Colt isn't leaving third, JP and Cole stay put for defense, so Donovan slots into a DH or outfield platoon. The dream is parking Randy at DH to hide his glove and his hustle, because if he does his one job everybody wins.

Friday we were there in person. JP Crawford led off with a homer, Julio went deep, and then the wave started with runners on and cursed the whole thing. Brash couldn't locate, a 5-1 lead evaporated. Luke Raleigh tied it with a solo shot that landed near our seats. Naylor booted a barehand play, his defense is not great, but Mooney limited the damage and Cooper Chriswell has been absolute dynamite when called on. Then they walked Naylor to set up the double play and pitch to Randy, who lifted a ground ball pitch into a walk-off two-run blast. JP's first career two-homer game.

Saturday was a four-homer slugfest with no other offense, which is the whole problem. Nearly seventy percent of our runs come from the long ball, and that backfires in October against arms throwing 97. Luke Raleigh, a platoon bat, leads the team in homers. Colt and Dom both went deep, Dom's getting baseballed hard with no luck. Woo went seven, nine K. Julio capped his best month ever, ten bombs and a .357 stretch in May. That's the Julio we've been waiting for.

Sunday in the steelhead unis we survived 3-2 in extras on the last successful piggyback, Bryce and Luis each going five, homers from Cole Young and Canzone, and Victor's first career walk-off infield single. Two tenth-inning walk-off wins in one series. Thin margins, but these are the games we lost all April and May. Then we swept the Diamondbacks.

Mets series, and they're loaded with Soto, Bo Bichette, and Semien hitting seventh, yet they keep metting it up. Monday was four hits and a 2-1 grind win, Hancock dealing, Naylor tying it with a back-tweaking homer, Cole Young walking it off after Randy stole third uncontested. Tuesday was a laser show, Patrick Wisdom and Johnny Pareto tanks. Pareto bat-flips singles and has made himself a real tough demotion when Cal returns, a serviceable backup with great energy. Wednesday the streak ended at eight, Kirby got George'd to death pounding the zone too predictably while Peralta shut us down.

Around the league: the Yankees hung thirteen in a single inning on the A's, eighteen batters, eleven hits. The Rangers and A's won't go away, both within striking distance. The White Sox are somehow chugging, new management and a better locker room going a long way. And yes, the Pope is a Sox fan.

Ten game road trip ahead through Detroit, Baltimore, and Washington. Ryan's high on his own supply at 8-2, the saner take is 7-3. Split Baltimore, handle the Nationals despite James Wood. Just pray it doesn't rain in Camden like it always does.

Show Notes:

The Mariners went on the road and came back 4-2, which sounds fine until you remember how painful the first half was. KC came in on a ten-game losing streak, and naturally, the M's gave them life. Game one was all pitching. Logan Gilbert looked sharp through five and two-thirds, his velo sitting 93-95 now instead of the 96-97 of years past, but the stuff was there. He kept Bobby Witt Jr. quiet. The offense had one productive swing: a Mitch Garver homer in the seventh. Two-nothing.

Saturday was a gut punch. Steven Kolek threw a complete-game shutout. The Mariners were so aggressive at the plate it was almost disrespectful to themselves. JP grounded out on the first pitch. Guys swinging at everything, letting a starter cruise when they should have been driving up pitch counts and getting to a bad bullpen. Kolek should have been out by the seventh. Instead he went the distance.

Sunday started with a Julio homer two batters in, but Bryan Woo couldn't hold it. The Royals broke through in the fifth and kept piling on. Colt Emerson went 4-for-4 with three doubles, becoming just the 18th player aged 20 or younger in MLB history with four-plus hits and three extra-base hits in a game. The kid has an OBP north of .360 and barely strikes out. Down 8-3 in the ninth, the M's rallied for three and brought the tying run to the plate. Too little, too late, but Ryan saw a spark. He was right.

Oakland was the biggest series of the first quarter, and the Mariners delivered a sweep. Game one was Piggyback 2.0. Luis Castillo had his best stuff of the year: four shutout innings, two hits, six K's. Ryan thought he deserved another inning instead of handing it to Bryce Miller. The transition still feels clunky. It didn't matter because the offense hung seven runs on the A's starter with four homers from Raley, Canzone, Crawford, and one more. Nine-two.

Game two, the A's called up a lefty throwing 95 with a funky delivery to exploit Seattle being dead last against left-handed pitching. The M's settled in and manufactured all four runs without a homer. Refsnyder and Robles got hits. Emerson Hancock was locked in for seven shutout innings. The only blemish: Andres Munoz giving up a solo shot on that slider he can't bury. It sits around 85, doesn't get down, and lefties are sitting on it. That pitch is becoming a real problem.

Game three, another lefty in Jeffrey Springs, and Refsnyder cracked it open with a three-run homer. Emerson drove in three. Julio hit his tenth of the year, eighth in May, off a 97-mph fastball. Gilbert threw six shutout frames. Nine-one. The three starters combined for zero runs allowed across the series. Twenty-two runs scored, 28 in the last four games. First place in the AL West at 28-29, half a game up on Oakland.

Around the league, the Astros threw the first no-hitter since 2024 with rookie Alimber Santa finishing two innings in his MLB debut. Jordan Alvarez hit four homers in two games to reach 20. The Cubs remain the most confusing team in baseball: two ten-game winning streaks and a twelve-game losing streak, all before game sixty. Tampa Bay is building around speed, contact, and platoons, doing the opposite of everyone else, and it's working. D-backs and Mets come to Seattle next.

The Padre series was the low point of the season so far, and there's no dressing it up. All 27 innings played from behind, sloppy defense, and a Sunday performance on Peacock that the rest of the country got to watch up close: one hit, off a Lucas Giolito who tops out at 90 and made the M's look completely overmatched. Game one, Emerson Hancock was solid and the offense was dog turd. Game two, Logan Gilbert had a good two innings before San Diego got on the heater and the whole outing fell apart in the third. Gavin Sheets went absolutely nuclear on the whole weekend, hitting three home runs in two games. Brutal home stand.

Then Tuesday happened. Bryce Miller was supposed to start and hand off to Castillo in a piggyback setup, but Miller went no-hit into the sixth and the plan unraveled. Dan Wilson doubled back to the mound, which you can't do, which let runners on base turn into a double steal, which meant the infield had to come in, which meant soft contact bleeders won the game. Mooney gets a clean inning and it's a different story. The offense left everyone stranded again late, with Rayleigh and Kenzone sitting until the ninth before getting one at bat with the bases cleared against the closer. The debate on how much is Dan and how much is front office direction is alive and well. It's probably both.

Monday was a reset. Brian Woo dealt: six innings, one run, eight strikeouts, back to the guy he was before the Missouri teams had their way with him. And the Colt Emerson story is already a good one. Called up that afternoon while suited up for Tacoma, he drove to Seattle and made the Sunday game. His parents missed it, went back to Ohio, and then made it back Monday to watch him hit his first career homer, a three-run shot in the eighth that broke the game open. It barely stayed fair, but it landed in the seats, and that's all that mattered. Wednesday, Hancock got out of a bases loaded jam with nobody out, Pareto hit his first MLB homer, Randy went deep to left center, and Rafe closed it out after working three straight. Series win over the White Sox. Two of the last three series taken.

JP Crawford has told the team he's willing to move to third if it means keeping Emerson at short, and that says everything about Crawford's character. He credits the mentality to Kyle Seager and D Gordon. Whether the arm holds up on cross-diamond throws is an open question, but the leadership isn't. On deck: three in Kansas City, then three at Sacramento in what amounts to a minor league ballpark. Ryan is calling five and one. Travis's at two and four. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, and the Royals being one-win-in-forever is exactly the kind of thing that makes Kaufman dangerous.

The road trip is in the books and the Mariners are still exactly where they've been: right around .500, holding the second wild card spot in the AL, not further along than they should be. Four and three felt like progress on paper. It felt like a missed six and one in practice.

Chicago started hot. Raley went nuclear in game one, a grand slam and a three-run homer, seven of the team's 12 RBIs, Naylor added a three-run shot, 12-8 win. Then Saturday: a veteran lefty with an ERA over five shows up and the offense dies. One run. A Refsnyder sac fly. Castillo pitched well enough to deserve better. Sunday they had their shot, bases loaded, one out, Cole pops up and Donovan dribbles one down the first baseline. One out of three in Chicago and it should have been two.

Houston started clean. Kirby went five innings, nine strikeouts, one run, and became the 12th pitcher in franchise history to reach 50 wins. Game two was all Canzone, his first career grand slam off Imai, who couldn't find the zone. Randy went four for four with a two-run homer. Woo gave six innings and two runs. Then game three happened. Miller was dealing in his season debut, on pace for six scoreless, until an umpire took a foul ball to the face and got concussed badly enough to still be in the hospital when the team left town. The rhythm broke, the Astros scraped two runs, Julio walked one home to tie it, and then the Mariners lost on a Naylor infield dribbler that was half an inch from a walk-off win. Cal backed up a throw awkwardly, tweaked his oblique, and was on the IL the next morning. Game four, Raley hit a three-run homer in the first, Garver went deep, Donovan went double-triple-single in his first three at-bats, and Castillo went five and two-thirds on 108 pitches. Back-to-back solid outings from the guy who used to be the "oh no, he's pitching today" guy. Four and three. Could have been six and one.

Cal is probably done until the All-Star break, but Garver is a proven big-league catcher and Cal hasn't been Cal this year anyway. The bigger question is Raley, the team's home run leader hitting .270, still getting platooned against lefties. It's a Jerry-era roster philosophy, but at some point you have to let the hot guy hit. The rotation logjam is a good problem. Miller looked sharp coming back, Hancock has been great, Kirby is Kirby, and Castillo is in a groove. They're talking stack starts to get everyone their innings. It probably lasts one outing before something else solves it.

Around the league: the Cubs have spent 20 of 45 games inside two separate 10-game win streaks. The Braves hit 30 wins first. The White Sox are above .500 for the first time since 2022, two years after setting the all-time loss record. Tatis still hasn't gone yard despite hitting the ball harder than ever. Yandy Diaz rockets, no lift. The Padres are only three wins ahead of Seattle. Flip three of those one-run losses and nobody's treating them like a tier above.

Prediction for the homestand: four and two. But Mason Miller is pitching Friday, so the first eight innings of that game are going to matter a lot.

Just when we thought the Mariners had found something, Kansas City showed up and took the broom to us. Travis and Ryan break down a brutal sweep at the hands of the Royals — a team that has gotten a lot better lately, but still. Three games, three losses, and a bullpen that lost two of its biggest arms: Brash and Spire both went to the IL, leaving Munoz as the closer and the back end looking thin.

Saturday night was the real gut punch. Randy Johnson retirement ceremony, the number 51 going into the rafters, the whole ballpark riding high. Then Emerson Hancock goes out and deals: fourteen strikeouts, a sweeper nobody could touch. We still lost in ten innings because Randy did Randy things on the basepaths, Julio missed a ball in the outfield, and Munoz couldn't hold it. It felt very Felix-era. All the strikeouts in the world, zero run support.

Then the Braves came to town. A rotation of studs, a bullpen with sub-1.00 ERAs, four guys hitting over .300. We were expecting a second sweep in five days. Game one looked like we were right until Luke Raleigh, 1-for-17 coming in, had a chat with Edgar Martinez and hit a three-run bomb. JP Crawford followed with a moonshot to right that Aaron Goldsmith tried to talk us out of believing in. It had plenty. 5-4 final, bullpen held. Series.

Game two, Kirby shoved for six and JP hit another two-run shot, but Munoz served one up to Matt Olson in the ninth. Game three, Brian Wu put up nine strikeouts over six shutout innings, Julio hit a tank off Martin Perez, and Jose Ferrer worked three straight days, 10 outs across three appearances, to close it out. Series win against the best team in the NL.

Big topics this week: the closer conundrum (Munoz is streaky, a committee approach might be smarter until Brash returns), the Emerson Hancock question (his 14-K gem has forced the fifth starter conversation with Bryce Miller on his way up), and the fact that the American League is historically bad right now. Three teams over .500. Two solid weeks and we could be in first by three games.

Also: Framber Valdez threw at his own catcher, started a bench-clearing brawl, and got five or six games. The Phillies have taken off since making their managerial change. And the NL Central's worst wild card team has a better record than we do.

The roller coaster keeps rolling. It's early. We'll forget that tomorrow night around the seventh inning.

THE NAUTICAL 9 — Episode 8 Week of April 27–May 1, 2026 | Hosts: Travis & Ryan

The M's closed April at 16-16 after a 5-1 road trip through St. Louis and Minnesota. Cole Young is becoming something special, Matt Brash is a question mark, and Luis Castillo remains the $25M elephant in the rotation.

@ Cardinals (April 24–26) — Sweep

• Game 1: Kirby's 3rd straight quality start, Naylor 418-ft go-ahead blast, Muñoz closes it. W 3-2
• Game 2: Woo gets shelled (5 HR allowed), but the offense chips back inning by inning. Will Wilson ties it with a homer off Riley O'Brien. W 11-9
• Game 3: ABS challenge in the 9th changes everything — Ruf Schneider battles back, gets a hanger, walk-off homer. W 3-2. Sweep.

@ Twins (April 27–29) — 2-1

• Game 1: Castillo struggles, cold weather, rookie pitcher nobody had film on. L 11-4
• Game 2: Gilbert solid, Naylor bat flip of the year, Randy 3 hits, Julio 3 doubles. W 7-1
• Game 3: Cole Young 3 RBIs including the go-ahead 2-run single in the 9th. Brash exits after 2 pitches. W 5-3

STORYLINES

Cole Young is for real. .383 with 10 RBIs over his last 13 games. 2nd-best WPA in all of baseball behind only Trout. #1 among all position players in defensive WAR. He went from one of the worst defensive 2B in baseball last year to the best this year. Where does he hit in the order, and when does he get his first All-Star nod?

Matt Brash. Exited Wednesday after 2 pitches with right-side discomfort. Had a 0.00 ERA in 13 outings. IL stint likely. Bizzardo probably slides into the leverage role. Oblique word has been mentioned. Not great.

Luis Castillo. The $25M question. Sometimes has his 95-96 stuff, sometimes doesn't. Cold weather theory has merit. But Hancock has been dominant and Bryce Miller is rehabbing. When everyone's healthy, something has to give.

JP Crawford's defense. Still the captain, still hits. But the range isn't there anymore and it shows. Leave it alone while we're winning — revisit if we stop.

AROUND THE LEAGUE

• Red Sox fired Cora and 5 coaches at 10-17, then won 17-1. Phillies fired Thomson (9-19), offered the job to Cora, he said no, Donnie Baseball steps in. Mattingly wins his first two.
• NL Central: every team is at or above .500. Reds are 20-11 with Tito Francona out of retirement. Wild.
• Braves at 22-10, rookie J.R. Richie from Bainbridge, WA gave up a homer on his first MLB pitch then struck out 8.

COMING UP

• Randy Johnson #51 retirement ceremony — Saturday May 2, T-Mobile Park (80s jersey night giveaway)
• Home vs. KC Royals (May 1–3) then the Braves (May 4–6)

The conversation covers the Seattle Mariners' performance in April, focusing on their struggles, bullpen issues, and offensive performance. The discussion delves into the team's challenges and successes, providing insights into their current state and future prospects.

Takeaways

• Seattle Mariners' April performance
• Bullpen struggles
• Offensive performance

Travis and Ryan break down a week that tested every M's fan — from the darkest record since 2011 to right back in the AL West race in four days. That's baseball.

🏥 Injury News & Roster Moves JP Crawford is back and already clutch — he's tied the team walk-off record. Victor Robles back on the IL, Schneider on paternity leave, so Patrick Wisdom gets the call from Triple-A.

🌾 Down on the Farm Cade Anderson is dealing — 11 K's in 5 innings in his last Double-A start. The guys dig into the logjam: if Bryce Miller returns and Emerson keeps rolling, something has to give. Six-man rotation? Trade? Move Emerson to the pen? Colt Emerson projected for a May call-up.

😤 Anaheim — The California Nightmare

• G1 (W 3-1): Woo dealt. Cole Young breaks it open in the 10th.
• G2 (L 1-0): Zack Neto leadoff homer — that was all she wrote. Jo Adell robbed Cal, Naylor, AND leaped into the stands to rob JP. Three robberies. Greatest defensive outfield game we've ever watched against us.
• G3 (L 8-7): Offense scored seven but Luis gave up six and the bullpen gave up more. Brutal finish.

😤😤 Texas — Four Losses, Four One-Run Games

• G1 (L 2-1): Cal's first career homer. deGrom and the pen did the rest. Gilbert wasted again.
• G2 (L 3-2): Donovan leadoff bomb. Still not enough. Third straight one-run loss.
• G3 (L 2-0): Two hits. Two. Four and nine. It was dark in Arlington.

☀️ Houston Home Stand — The Cure

• G1 (W 9-6): Season-high 9 runs. Three in the first on walks and chaos. Randy two-run bomb breaks it open.
• G2 (W 8-7): Down 7-2, came all the way back. Cal's first homer at T-Mobile. Julio's first homer of the year. JP walks it off with a bases-loaded single.
• G3 (W 6-1): Walked until the cows came home. Julio extends his on-base streak.
• G4 (W): Nails goes nuclear — back-to-back homers. 13 hits. Kirby goes 7.2. Back to one game under .500.

🌍 Around the League Dodgers are 12-4 being Dodgers. Everyone else is bunched up. Rangers lead the AL West at 9-7. Blue Jays and Astros rotations are in shambles. Pirates and Reds quietly hanging around. Cubs gave up 14 to Philly.

🔭 Looking Ahead Padres (10-6) in town — soft schedule but a real lineup. Woo goes tonight. Jackie Robinson Day tomorrow. Then Rangers at home for redemption, followed by the A's. Travis wants a win streak. Ryan says take it one series at a time. Either way — stay on the roller coaster.

Thanks for listening to The Nautical 9. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.