Before his return to Seattle, Jesse Winker reflects on down year with Mariners

Jesse Winker is scheduled to return to Seattle on Monday, now as a member of the Milwaukee Brewers.

He was asked over the weekend if he has any hesitation coming back.

“It’s a very fair question,” Winker told Adam McCalvy, the Brewers beat writer for MLB.com. “Hesitation? No. Not hesitation, that’s not how I would say it. I would say I’m ready to go help the Brewers win a series. The fact that it’s there doesn’t really matter to me.”

A year ago, Winker was a new member of the Mariners, brought to Seattle in a 2022 spring-training trade to be the middle-of-the-order thump the M’s desperately needed.

It didn’t work out for Winker or the Mariners. He didn’t hit and he didn’t fit into the Mariners’ clubhouse culture, and no one was surprised when Seattle unloaded him on the Brewers in December (along with Abraham Toro) for second baseman Kolten Wong.

Winker hit just .219 with 14 home runs and a career-worst .688 OPS for the Mariners. He was not on the Mariners’ postseason roster after he was placed on the injured list on the final day of the regular season.

He had surgeries on his left knee and neck in the weeks after the season ended.

“How everything went down, I take responsibility for my part of it, obviously. My behavior and everything,” Winker told McCalvy. “But there’s no hesitation. This is part of the job; you’re going to go play different places, experience places and, all in all, my experience there was fine. I learned a lot. I believe in their system, and I wish nothing but the best moving forward.”

Winker was off to a decent start for the Brewers – hitting .308 through April 9 – before missing a week of action because of a bout with bronchitis.

He returned to the lineup Saturday and went 1 for 4 with a double.

But he was scratched from the Brewers’ lineup Sunday because of right-oblique tightness. It’s unclear if he’ll be available when the Brewers-Mariners series opens Monday at T-Mobile Park.

Winker said he hasn’t talked to anyone with the Mariners since the trade to Milwaukee.

“To hang up on something that was said to me or how somebody felt, that’s not fair to myself and that’s not fair to my future teammates moving forward,” Winker said. “How I behaved, I have to take accountability for that, and I do. I didn’t handle things right. I let things in my personal life bleed into my work life. As a baseball player – as a person, really – that’s what you have to be able to control. I didn’t.

“But I learned better outlets. I learned how to communicate more to people who can help me. That’s the learning lesson in all of this, is having people you can lean on to help you.”

M’s stay patient with Wong

Wong hasn’t found his footing in Seattle either.

The veteran second baseman did have one hit in three at-bats in Sunday’s 1-0 victory over the Rockies – a solid line-drive single up the middle – a day after a meeting with Mariners manager Scott Servais.

“He’s struggling. He knows it,” Servais said. “I sat down with him (Saturday) night and tried to simplify things for him. I’ve been there. You go through struggles like that, certainly when you join a new team – you want to feel like you’re part of it. In your mind, the only way you can feel a part of it is if you’re contributing on the field. There’s a lot of good baseball left in Kolten Wong. He’s going to have a good year when it’s all said and done.”

Wong has five hits in his first 44 at-bats with the Mariners, with a .114 batting average and a .216 on-base percentage.

“He’s pressing a little bit because he wants to contribute here and he knows there’s a spot for him to contribute,” Servais said. “And he’s going to continue to get opportunities. You’ve got to be patient.”