4 ways the surging Mariners can get even better after hot April

By all rights, the Seattle Mariners' 2025 season should be careening toward disaster.

They lost two key members of their starting nine when Victor Robles and Ryan Bliss went down with serious injuries within days of each other. They were already missing George Kirby from their starting rotation, and now Logan Gilbert is also sidelined.

And yet, there the Mariners are at first place in the American League West at 17-12. They've won six series in a row and 14 out of their last 19 games overall.

It's therefore hard not to think of how hot the Mariners could get if more things begin to click into place, so here are four ways that could happen.

It should be just a matter of time before Julio Rodríguez gets hot

It must be early in the season, because the superstar upside of the Mariners' center fielder is nowhere to be seen. Julio Rodríguez is batting just .207, with 32 strikeouts against 15 walks through 28 games.

This is actually one of J-Rod's better Aprils, as even his .684 OPS trumps the .654 OPS he has for this month for the entirety of his four-year career. The Mariners were hoping for better after intentionally finding more work for Rodríguez in spring training, but so much for that.

There have been signs of an impending breakout, however, and you might say they're still there. Of note, Rodríguez's exit velocity is exactly the same as it was in 2024 and his strikeout and walk rates are both career-bests despite the apparently lopsided relationship between the two.

As such, patience needs to be the name of the game with the 24-year-old Rodríguez. In time, he'll hopefully resemble the guy who was the AL Rookie of the Year in 2022 and a 30-30 hitter in 2023.

Randy Arozarena and Luke Raley are better than this

Elsewhere in Dan Wilson's go-to starting nine, Randy Arozarena and Luke Raley haven't been finding hits much more frequently than Rodríguez. The former is batting .196, with the latter faring only slightly better with a .206 batting average.

Neither Arozarena nor Raley is traditionally a high-average guy, to be sure. Yet Arozarena is a career .251 hitter, while Raley hit in the .240s in each of the last two seasons. At this point, the only way each is going to live up to these respective numbers is via a sustained warm stretch.

With 11 hits in his last 47 at-bats and both his exit velocity and his hard-hit rate up from 2024, Arozarena may already be on his way. Raley's own contact quality is also better now than it was in '24, and he's 7-for-21 over his last eight games in his own right.

The question with Raley is how long of a pause there will be before he gets a chance to add to his numbers. He was a late scratch from the lineup on Tuesday after injuring himself taking batting practice. Nothing is official yet, but he seems likely to be the latest Mariner to go on the IL.

Hits with runners in scoring position are only just beginning to fall

Even once the Mariners started winning games following a sweep in San Francisco earlier in April, failure to convert with ducks on the pond was a frustratingly consistent theme.

Through April 22, the Mariners were only batting .173 with runners in scoring position. That was second-worst in all of MLB, with only the Chicago White Sox ranking below them. And if there's a team you don't want to rub shoulders with in any context, it's those cursed Pale Hose.

Since then, though, Seattle is batting .286 in RISP situations. That is the ninth-best mark in the league, and it coincides with the M's scoring 7.0 runs per game amid a 5-1 romp over the competition.

This is not to suggest the Mariners are going to make a run at Hack Wilson and the 1929 Chicago Cubs. It's nonetheless good enough that they're already regressing to the mean in a good way.

This is [fingers crossed] the least healthy the pitching will be all year

The Mariners had better luck than most teams with pitching injuries in 2024. By FanGraphs' figures, Seattle hurlers spent only 805 days on the injured list. Only five teams had fewer.

Lady Luck is simply not favoring the Mariners all over again in this regard. In addition to Kirby and Gilbert, also on the IL are relievers Matt Brash and Gregory Santos, the latter of whom is staring down his second straight injury-ruined season.

For now, though, there's light at the end of the tunnel. Brash is five games into a rehab stint with Triple-A Tacoma. Kirby is making progress toward his own rehab assignment, with his return likely to happen in May. Assuming a two-week checkup on his right elbow flexor strain goes well, Gilbert could conceivably be back in the rotation in weeks, not months.

You never know when more injuries are going to happen, of course, and Mariners fans have every right to be nervous given how loaded with arms the team's IL already is. But if injuries must happen, sooner is better than later. The hope must be that better health will ultimately allow Seattle's staff to finish the season better than it has started it.