Mariners' surprise Mitch Garver reunion blows the lid off hidden roster flaw

Mitch Garver coming back to the Seattle Mariners on a minor-league deal is the kind of move that feels harmless on the surface. He’s a familiar face providing veteran depth and a little spring-training insurance. It’s also the kind of move that accidentally tells on the roster.

If Seattle is circling back to Garver again, it’s not just about liking the fit. It’s about not having a real answer behind Cal Raleigh.

Garver agreed to a minor-league contract that would pay $2.25 million if he makes the big-league roster at any point in 2026. That’s a low-risk flier, sure. But it’s also a pretty loud admission that the backup catcher plan is still basically about collecting a few replacement-level options and hoping the universe doesn’t test the depth chart.

Mariners’ catching plan gets exposed by a surprising Garver reunion

Garver just spent two seasons in Seattle, and the offensive results were rough. In 2024, he hit .172 with 15 homers and 51 RBI across 114 games. In 2025, he bumped the average to .209, but the overall line still landed at a .639 OPS in 87 games. There were situational bright spots — he was better vs. lefties in 2025 — but the big picture stayed the same: the bat didn’t play like the “power catcher/DH” version the Mariners were buying. 

So why bring him back?

Because the current catching mix needs bodies, and each option offers a hypothetical tool that can be talked into mattering over a long season. Garver has pull-side power if the timing shows up. Andrew Knizner and Jhonny Pereda, both new additions, are defense-first catchers — glove-over-bat options meant to keep the pitching staff stable and the innings orderly.

That’s fine as a spring competition. It’s not fine as the contingency plan if Raleigh misses time.

And that’s the hidden flaw this reunion drags into the sunlight: the Mariners are one Cal Raleigh injury away from turning catcher into an active problem. Game-calling, framing, blocking, keeping the running game honest — all of it gets shakier, fast, when the room turns into a tryout. And that’s before we even get to the part where Raleigh hit 60 home runs last year, because replacing the defense is hard enough. Replacing that bat is obviously a fantasy.

This is also why it’ll take a little longer for the Harry Ford conversation to go away. We all understood the pushback: keeping Ford just to sit behind Cal Raleigh could’ve slowed his development, turned a premium prospect into a part-time safety blanket, and wasted the kind of reps that actually make a hitter and game-caller grow. 

But that was never really the debate. The debate was risk tolerance. Ford wasn’t about backup reps. Ford was about having a real parachute if the position got tested. 

Garver being back doesn’t wreck anything, but it does confirm what we already knew. Seattle still doesn’t have a clean Plan B at catcher, and the front office is trying to patch that reality with volume instead of certainty.