Rob Refsnyder's historically bad year must push Mariners closer to a hard choice

Oh boy, that was a rough series versus a Red Sox club with the fewest wins in the American League. Sure there was some glimmer of hope with Logan Gilbert looking more like the 2024 version of himself on Sunday, but ultimately this series highlighted a lot of the issues which have plagued the Mariners so far this season. And right at the top of the list is Rob Refsnyder.

Refsnyder played in all three games versus the Red Sox and went just 1-for-10 to -- in many ways -- sum up how dire he's been for the Mariners this season. By almost every metric he's been awful, highlighted by a team-low -1.0 bWAR, and he's on course for the worst campaign of his 11 years in the majors.

On the subject of worst, Refsnyder has taken 115 plate appearances and has only 14 hits to show for them. He has a 26 OPS+ which is awful in its own right, but doubles as the worst ever for a Mariner with 115-plus plate appearances. That's correct -- we are now officially talking about his tenure in Seattle in historically horrendous terms.

The question is, what can the Mariners do?

Look, we've said it before and we'll stress it again, no one criticizes the Mariners front office for signing Refsnyder in the first place. Plenty of people praised the move, calling it one of the underrated additions of the offseason. And why not, for someone who had mashed lefties between 2022-25, ranking third in OBP (.407) and sixth in OPS (.924) among all right-handed hitters with 500 plate appearances.

The Mariners now have two choices with Rob Refsnyder

However, we're now past the point of calling this a failed experiment. Refsnyder is just outright failing at the one job he was brought in to do, with a .146 batting average and .480 OPS versus southpaws specifically. The way we look at it, the Mariners have two options at this point.

The first is placing Refsnyder on the Injured List when Randy Arozarena or Brendan Donovan is ready to come back. And we don't even necessarily mean with one of those "phantom" injuries which seem to pop up periodically around the majors. During an interview with Mariners TV's Brad Adam following the Athletics series towards the end of May, Refsnyder talked about his right knee bothering him all year.

The second option involves just designating the 35-year-old for assignment. The only downside with this is that it would mean admitting defeat and eating the remainder of his fully guaranteed $6.25 million salary.

However, now is not the time for worrying about egos, especially if the Mariners are as serious as they claim about putting the best team on the field to challenge for that first World Series berth. As much as fans applauded signing Refsnyder in the first place, they will now likely be just as welcome about moving on from him.

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