Former player's worrisome Josh Naylor story gives Mariners a problem to manage

Stone Garrett has told the world how he really feels about Seattle Mariners first baseman Josh Naylor, and it isn't flattering. In Garrett's mind, Naylor is "the most psychotic person" he's ever met.

It's all there in an Instagram comment by Garrett. He was teammates with Naylor in the Miami Marlins' minor league system back in 2016, which was apparently an experience replete with pranks. And finally, we have the story of what happened with the knife:

"Josh Naylor liked to play stupid games. Dude would come into our apartment (we were neighbors) with aerosol and lighters multiple times, that wasn't his first time in our apartment with a butchers knife, the guy hid in my closet waiting for me to get home, when I went to hang my shirt up he jumped out with a knife pointed at me. It caught my thumb, sliced it wide open, I went to the ER (he waits for me when I get back, first question is 'are you gonna press charges?') next day coach holds team meeting saying front office wants to keep it hush hush lmao!!!"

Stone Garrett

To be clear, that something happened between Naylor and Garrett involving a knife and an injury to Garrett's thumb wasn't kept under wraps back in 2016.

It was a whole news cycle, and there was some smoke even at the time that Marlins president of baseball operations Michael Hill was downplaying what happened. He tried to impart that Naylor and Garrett were good friends and that this was just a prank that, in Hill's exact words, "obviously went a little too far."

Yet if Garrett's newly unveiled side of the story is true, what happened wasn't as innocent as a prank gone wrong. Naylor created a fundamentally dangerous situation that hurt someone, yet all he got was a one-game suspension and what sure looks like protection from the Marlins, who had drafted him 12th overall just a year earlier. Ultimately, his "prank" was little more than a footnote when he got traded to the San Diego Padres that summer.

For his part, Garrett's comment mentions he still can't feel the thumb that Naylor cut.

Stone Garrett's Josh Naylor story adds to an uncomfortable season for the Mariners first baseman

Naylor was 19 years old at the time, and still three years away from his major league debut. The story might as well have been ancient history when the Mariners traded for him last July, much less when they re-signed him as a free agent for $92.5 million last November.

If nothing else, however, the Garrett story is another unwanted layer on a season that is testing Naylor's honeymoon phase in Seattle.

He just isn't having a good season, playing in 79 games but posting just a 96 OPS+ and -0.1 rWAR. He has at times looked aloof at the plate and in the field, yet his power to stir up trouble is apparently as strong as ever. Garrett's story was seemingly inspired by Sunday's game against the Cleveland Guardians, in which Naylor got into it with former teammate Austin Hedges.

For what it's worth, it was only two weeks ago that Bryan Woo was out there calling Naylor one of the best teammates he's ever had. That's part of a broader narrative of a mutual love affair between Naylor and his Mariners teammates, which has never felt forced.

Right now, though, any defense of Naylor is a defense of a player who is under fire for reasons that can't simply be shrugged off. The Mariners didn't create the situation or ask for it, but it's theirs to deal with all the same.

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