The Mariners must answer the awkward Kyle Seager question sooner than they think

At some point, the Seattle Mariners are going to run out of ways to dance around Kyle Seager.

Not because he’s lobbying. Not because he’s doing any kind of “remember me?” media tour. To be honest, he may still be living without home internet. Seager just never moved like that. He just showed up, played every day, took the hardest infield assignment for a decade, and quietly became one of the most valuable position players this franchise has ever had.

And now Seattle has to answer the simplest question that somehow keeps getting treated like a debate prompt: Is Kyle Seager a Mariners Hall of Famer?

The Mariners can’t dodge the Kyle Seager Hall of Fame conversation much longer

If the Mariners want to make this easy on themselves, they can start by reading their own criteria out loud. The team’s Hall of Fame guidelines say the main criterion is on-field impact, measured “primarily” by the statistical record. Seager clears the eligibility bar comfortably and then some.

So the only thing left is narrative. Some will meet the argument with a “Yeah, but…”

And the problem is the “Yeah, but…” case doesn’t survive contact with reality.

Start with the cleanest argument: Seager is the best third baseman in Mariners history, and it’s not close. MLB.com did the franchise ranking and treated No. 1 like a formality. The stat they used is brutal: Seager’s 30.7 fWAR is higher than the next three Mariners third basemen combined.

Yes, people will bring up Adrián Beltré, because Beltré is a legend and he won two Gold Gloves in Seattle. But he was only here five seasons, and even MLB.com’s own breakdown lands him behind Seager because the franchise résumé just isn’t comparable.

Zoom out even further and it gets louder. Seager’s WAR total among Mariners position players trails only four names: Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martínez, Ichiro Suzuki, and Alex Rodriguez. That’s it.

And if you need the “signature season” exhibit, it’s 2016. 30 homers, 6.7 bWAR, plus MVP votes and elite defense at third base. That’s a star season, the kind of year that should’ve ended the Hall of Fame conversation before it started.

“But he only made one All-Star Game.” True, and it’s always been weird. But it’s also a lazy shortcut. In 2016 — the exact year Seager was doing the full two-way monster act — the AL’s third base All-Star spots went to Manny Machado and Josh Donaldson. Seager’s prime overlapped with a stupidly deep era at the position that included Miguel Cabrera playing third base, Evan Longoria, the aforementioned Beltre, even the arrival of Alex Bregman. That’s not his fault.

The only remaining pushback is the ending. Some fans still don’t love how the final chapter felt. Fine. But even Seager’s final season had value: 35 home runs and 101 RBIs in 2021, despite the .212 average. The Mariners’ own Hall of Fame language doesn’t say “exit perfectly.” It says impact, record, legacy.

And the legacy is simple: Kyle Seager was the metronome. The constant. The guy who made a decade of unwatchable Mariners baseball watchable.

For some, the question is awkward. Not because it’s unclear.

It’s awkward because the Mariners are going to have to admit they had a Hall of Famer in their dugout for 11 years… and treated it like background noise.