Your 2019 Ex-Mariner of the Year is…

Pitchers and catchers report to Mariners camp in just eight days. Winter wasn’t so long was it? Over here at Playin’ in the Dirt we spent the offseason deliberating how the hell to come up with a winner. A man fully representative of the perils, glories, and heartbreaks of ex-Marinerdom. A man fit to join our grand pantheon, a man worthy of the title Ex-Mariner of the Year.

A look at our past awardees:
2016: Mike Montgomery
2017: Munenori Kawasaki
2018: Mike Marjama

“When it’s over for me, would I be hanging on with the Ross Eversoles?”
– RIP Jim Bouton

We’ve lost track of how many beloved ex-hometown favorites are out there, still dancing on basepaths somewhere north of the Ross Eversoles. But just a few stood out, for us, in 2019.

There’s gotta be an honorary nod to Jim Bouton, who changed the face of baseball and left us last summer at the age of 80. Bouton and Mincher and Oyler and Joe Schultz turned this Seattle 11-year-old’s 1969 summer into magic. But nope. He’s not playing anymore, at least not here on earth, and as much as the Pilots are responsible for the Mariners being here… he’s not a Mariner. Wish he was, but he’s not.

Who knew? Judge Rheinhold pitches for the Yanks? (mlb.com)

Thanks to alert reader #ericfromspokane’s creative suggestion nominating well-traveled Yankee J.A. Happ. Well Eric, your nomination was based on ridicule, and if we were only after the ridicule, that’s awesome and we just might go there. But here at Playin’ in the Dirt, we’re all about the love, or at least until we start talking about sexual abuse, in which case we’re not about the love, but we’re not talking about that right now so nope. Thanks for reading though. Eric’s comments are always most appreciated, and we even got to meet him on a trip to the frozen eastland last month. Dude likes the NBA even more than he likes baseball, and he looooves him some baseball.

Skinny and weak no more. (Seattle Times)

What about the most obvious choice — unexpected, outta-frikkin-nowhere, scrawny little shortstop Ketel Marte, who batted .329 with 32 homers for the D-Backs… which is to say, he had the season we expected out of Jean Segura when we sent Marte to the Diamondbacks to get Segura. Marte put up 6.9 WAR in 2019, over half his total in five seasons in the majors, finished fourth in MVP voting, and confirmed a local sportswriter’s comment when he came here: “I hope Jerry knows, Ketel Marte will not carry this team into the future.” Well no kidding. And we’d love to pull his name out of the winning envelope, but where was his team in October?

2-time winner?  (baseball-reference.com)

If we’re gonna pick a guy who wasn’t playing in October, why not break the norms and go with a man we already love and admire over here, our 2018 Ex-Mariner of the Year, Mike Marjama himself? When deliberations began as the playoffs rolled along, Marj wasn’t on the radar. He’d been out of baseball for over a year. His Moonlight Graham story was still fresh though. Unlike Graham, Marj did get to bat. Wonder if he winked. It was still inspiring, right up to the moment where he walked off his own field of dreams and said naw, I got more to do, lives to save. Then last November, it pulled him back. The green field, the chalk, the dirt, the crack of Louisville ash on cowhide. Marj signed with Australia’s Brisbane Bandits, spent two months down under, and came back to the states looking for a team to grab him for Spring Training. Damn, Marj. you continue to inspire us, and we know it’s gonna be awesome. Just for your drive and persistence you oughta get another trophy. But then there was…

Crooked cap and all, Fernando, you’re our man.

The last man standing of the 25 noted in the 2019 Ex-Mariners’ postseason lineup was, well, we guess appropriately, 42 years old and unemployed in June… only to be swept from the ash heap into the fiery inferno that was the Washington Nationals.

Let’s just face facts for a second, you don’t go picking up a guy with Fernando Rodney’s postseason history in July, expecting he’ll be your main man throughout the playoffs. In five trips to October with five different teams, he’d surrendered ten walks, twelve hits, and nine earned runs in 12.2 IP. And never earned a ring. But the Nationals took a shot, and when the time came around, there he was.

Back home in Ex-Marinerland, the haters were ready. In the World Series game two blowout over the Astros, a Seattle tweeter twittered, “you know your team sucks when the other guys take a lead and feel OK about pitching Fernando Rodney against you.” Or words to that effect.

But there he was, still on the mound, with that cap bill turned to the side to honor his father, still pitching at 42, with his eleventh franchise after eighteen major-league seasons. There he was, dancing in a cascade of beer and champagne after the game six victory finally earned him his ring.

And there he was, released again two days later, before the echoes of the party had even faded from his ears. Once again, Fernando Rodney is a free agent.

But that doesn’t matter. Fernando Rodney is a World Series Champ. And he’s our 2019 Playin’ in the Dirt Ex-Mariner of the Year.