Seattle Mariners Acquire All-Star 1B Josh Naylor From Diamondbacks

The Seattle Mariners and Arizona Diamondbacks made the first significant move of deadline season on Thursday evening.

Mariners have acquired first baseman Josh Naylor for rookie left-hander Brandyn Garcia and pitching prospect Ashton Izzi. Naylor and Garcia are each on the 40-man roster, so no additional moves were required in that regard. The D-Backs recalled Tristin English to fill the spot on the active roster.

 

Naylor, 28, is a free agent at season’s end and was a Mariners target over the offseason before he was traded from Cleveland to Arizona. He’s earning $10.9 million this year and is hitting .292 with an .807 OPS, 11 homers and 59 RBIs in 93 games. He’ll immediately be injected as a middle-order lefty presence that the Mariners hope will fortify a lineup that’s quietly been much more productive over the past six weeks.

Naylor hasn’t gotten quite the same amount of deadline hype as now former teammate Eugenio Suárez, whose power barrage makes him the top impending free agent hitter available. The 28-year-old first baseman is having a strong year in his own right, though. Naylor is hitting .292/.360/.447 with 11 homers in nearly 400 trips to the dish. He has even chipped in a career-high 11 stolen bases in 13 attempts. There may not have been a better left-handed rental bat on the market.

In 93 games this season, Naylor is hitting .292/.360/.447 with 11 home runs, 59 RBIs and 49 strikeouts in 394 plate appearances. An All-Star in 2024 known for occasional displays of on-field emotion, Naylor has hit .267/.329/.444 with 95 home runs and 402 RBIs in 691 career games. One hundred one of them came at designated hitter, where he could see time in Seattle, which ended a 20-year postseason drought in 2022 but finished one game behind the final wild-card winner in the American League each of the last two seasons.

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