The biggest development from Mariners opening series? This team has real depth | Jacob Thorpe

SEATTLE – With a blistering, emphatic 8-0 shellacking of visiting Cleveland on Sunday the Mariners put a punctuation mark on a scorching weekend and declared themselves a .500 team.

Only in baseball can such mediocre result portend such significance. This team, which is anchored by its starting pitching, averaged 5.5 runs and never scored fewer than four in four games against the Guardians.

And this was in March, when Seattle’s dewy air slows home runs into flyouts and Julio Rodriguez’s bat typically still has a few months of hibernation to go. With last year’s MVP runner-up swinging like this year’s Mario Mendoza.

Four games in, what can we extrapolate 2.4% of the way into this 162-game season? Well, nothing. But what if we squint real hard?

This team, notable for wattage of its star players, may win with its depth in 2025. The offensive burst of the initial series came not from Seattle’s All-Stars of last season, but from the oft-maligned back of the order.

Luke Raley, Dominic Canzone, and Cole Young hit 6-7-8 in Seattle’s lineup, and have accounted for six of their eight home runs.

I clarified “Seattle’s” All-Stars of last season above, because 2025 All-Star and Mariners leadoff man Brendan Donovan has the other two home runs, and was superlative in his PNW debut.

Donovan hit a three-run homer in his third trip to the plate on Sunday to break the game open. He’d been hit by pitches in his first two at-bats and Cleveland pitcher Slade Cecconi surely wishes he’d made it a charming three.

Cal Raleigh followed with a strikeout. Raleigh, the victim of the 2025 American League MVP race, now has 10 strikeouts in 15 at-bats, which is almost as impressive as hitting 60 home runs when you think about it.

And to be clear, this is just the bats. Nowhere was Seattle’s depth more apparent on Sunday than on the mound. Starting pitcher Emerson Hancock pitched on Sunday because ace pitcher – well, one of the ace pitchers – Bryce Miller is on the injured list.

The 26-year-old righty made the most of his appearance, striking out nine batters in six innings without allowing a hit. The last Mariner to accomplish the feat was Felix Hernandez during his perfect game in the 2012 season.

Expect that to be the first of many references to King Felix this season – he’s on the Hall of Fame ballot and the Mariners are doing a media blitz.

If you happened to find yourself online at the end of the sixth inning, you may have seen no shortage of people calling for manager Dan Wilson to leave Hancock in to try for the complete no-hitter with 97 pitches.

These folks are idiots and the last people who should be giving Wilson advice on these sorts of decisions.

If there is one place to nitpick the team’s depth I suppose their bullpen additions, Jose A. Ferrer and Cooper Crisswell, have been fine not great. But the bullpen was already pretty good.

Last year the Mariners’ best players were as good, or better, than anyone in baseball. But time and again in the playoffs the gaps in the lineup were exposed leading to too many scoring droughts against more complete offenses.

This year? Seems like the team has plenty of depth.

Maybe the mascot’s understudy lacks panache.