Everyone on the Seattle Mariners is hoping for a big finish, and for some, that comes with the knowledge that they could be playing elsewhere in 2026.
Mariners third baseman Eugenio Suárez is the perfect example of both principles. He returned to Seattle in a trade at the deadline with the Arizona Diamondbacks, who shipped him back where he came from less than two years prior.
Suárez was great for Arizona this year, and that simply hasn’t translated to the Mariners’ offense in the middle of the pennant race. But with 12 huge regular-season games and the playoffs (hopefully) still to go, is there a shot that the 34-year-old could convince Seattle to keep him around?
Content creator and baseball analyst Robbie Hyde doesn’t believe so. On Monday, Hyde opined that the Mariners would let Suárez walk this winter in a YouTube video of early offseason predictions.
“With Suárez having a solid year overall, OPS over .800, 45 home runs at the time of this recording, … the bat hasn’t been amazing (since coming back to the Mariners),” Hyde said.
“With how much he’s expecting to get paid this offseason, I don’t know if the Mariners can pony up for that.”
With Arizona this season, Suárez posted an .897 OPS and 8.2% home run rate. With Seattle, those numbers are down to .633 and 5.3%. It’s the continuation of the same trend we saw when he was a Mariner from 2022 to 2023, and posted an OPS 40 points below his overall career average.
Suárez is also a subpar defender at third base, and if he’s going to land a multi-year deal somewhere, it’s probably going to be with a team that sees him as either a first baseman or designated hitter moving forward.
While we shouldn’t count out the possibility entirely, it does feel as if the odds of Suárez coming back to Seattle for essentially the third time are slim. T-Mobile Park is a tough place for a lot of hitters, and it doesn’t seem as though Suárez is close to cracking the code.
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