Mariners Are Watching Josh Naylor Slip Into a Troubling Early Slump

This is not exactly the version of Josh Naylor the Mariners thought they were going to start the season with. Through Seattle’s first handful of games, Naylor has opened the season hitless, with the slash line sitting at rock bottom while the power has been completely absent.

And still, this is a little tricky. Because as cold as this looks, it doesn’t necessarily scream a total offensive collapse just yet. Naylor’s early strikeout rate is sitting around his normal range at 16.7 percent in one early split sample. It’s not the profile of a guy wildly flailing through every at-bat and forgetting how to see the ball. It looks more like a hitter who has been unproductive, a little unlucky, and a little too soft-contact heavy all at once.

Josh Naylor’s slow start is putting early pressure on Mariners lineup

There is a difference between “this looks ugly” and “this looks broken.” Right now, Naylor feels much closer to the first category. It also helps that slow starts are not really his signature. In 2025, Naylor hit .305 in April and .284 in May. In 2024, he hit .264 in April before falling to .186 in May. In other words, he has shown he can get rolling early, and he has also shown that one ugly month doesn’t define the bigger picture. That is part of why this opening freeze feels more jarring than alarming. It’s cold, no question, but it is not exactly who he has been.

The better Mariners comparison here might be Cal Raleigh, who looked completely miserable for a few days and then immediately changed the tone of the conversation on March 30. Raleigh entered that Yankees game after a 2-for-16 start that included a mountain of strikeouts, then came off the bench and delivered the walk-off single in Seattle’s 2-1 win. That doesn’t erase everything, but it is a nice reminder of how fast early-season panic can get laughed out of the room.

That’s probably the right way to frame Naylor right now. The Mariners have survived the first few games because the bottom of the lineup has chipped in, the pitching has looked like the pitching, and somebody different keeps stepping into the spotlight. Emerson Hancock shoved. Cole Young has already had moments. Raleigh just delivered one of the season’s first real big swings emotionally. Seattle has been getting rescued around the edges.

But that cannot be the whole plan.

At some point, the Mariners need the expensive, central guys to start acting like the expensive, central guys. They need Naylor. They need Raleigh to keep moving out of his own funk. They need Julio Rodríguez and Randy Arozarena to start doing star-level damage more consistently. The encouraging part is that it is March 31, and Naylor’s early numbers still suggest more cold luck than total dysfunction. The uncomfortable part is that Seattle built this lineup to be less dependent on miracles from the bottom third, and that only really works when hitters like Naylor start looking like themselves.