Mariners 2022 Report Cards: Grading the season for Adam Frazier

I really want to like Adam Frazier. I do. He just hasn’t been great since coming to the Mariners in the trade that saw Corey Rosier and Ray Kerr head to the Padres. He’s had a couple of really strong seasons while in the majors, but we saw arguably the worst since his rookie year in 2022 for the Mariners.

Adam Frazier gets a D+ for his time on the Mariners this year

Look, it just wasn’t a good year for him in 2022. His defense slipped a bit, and if not for his strong play in RF of all places, he would’ve been a league-average defender. He finished with a 0.4 dWAR, which is nowhere near good enough for someone that puts together a slash line of just .238/.301/.311 and an OPS+ of 80.

Most of us thought we were going to get someone that was a lot closer to the players that reigned in Pittsburgh for the start of his career. During his 5.5-year stint there, Frazier hit .283/.346/.420, with about 7 HR and 7 SB a year, a dWAR of about 0.5, an average WAR of 1.8, and an OPS+ of 105.

If that’s the player the Mariners could’ve gotten, things might’ve been a lot different in Seattle this year. The big question from 2021 returned in 2022, “Who is going to play second base?”, as the answer was not Adam Frazier. Still, the team stuck with him there most days, as he ended up playing 113 games there.

If not for the clutch hitting against Toronto, Frazier nearly would’ve had a failure of a season. Yes, we could’ve had someone do much worse i.e. Long Jr, Toro, but it was the expectations that sit alongside Frazier that made 2022 so tough. He’s a free agent, and I have heard no rumblings so far this off-season about the team looking to bring him back. The Mariners are reportedly going to go hard after one of the core four big-name SS, and it would be a massive upgrade.

Adam Frazier is a great dude, seems like a really good teammate, and is the kind of guy that you watch and think “man, that guy just plays the game the right way”. That would’ve been fine on plenty of Mariners teams in the past when we knew they weren’t going to compete. With where they are headed, it just doesn’t seem like there is any room left for Frazier, especially with how he performed in 2022.