The Seattle Mariners may be hurt, but they certainly are not helpless. On June 2, against the New York Mets , somebody did. Well, somebodies did. Two of their depth bats who started the 2026 season in Triple-A answered the call in a big way.
Many didn't expect Patrick Wisdom and Jhonny Pereda to be the loudest part of Seattle 's 8-3 win at T-Mobile Park. Wisdom was in the lineup because Josh Naylor is banged up with back spasms. Pereda is getting his opportunity because Cal Raleigh is on the injured list with an oblique issue. Neither are small absences. Both set-it-and-forget-it middle-of-the-order presences.
But Wisdom and Pereda did exactly what the Mariners needed them to do.
Wisdom opened the scoring in the second inning with a 429-foot, two-run homer. If you've followed his history, running into one shouldn't come as a surprise. Then Pereda came up in the fifth and turned a close game into something more comfortable by launching a three-run homer to left-center and giving the Mariners the kind of breathing room worthy of the underappreciated bat flip that came with it.
Julio Rodriguez also added to the fun with a home run, but this time it's not about him. Depth is an easy word to throw around. Every team says it has it. Every front office thinks they have versatility and matchup options when the season begins. Quickly, many of them learn they do not.
Actual depth only matters when the season punches holes in the roster. Can the catcher you stashed in the minors actually give you enough professional at-bats? Can the veteran corner infielder punish enough mistakes?
Neither Wisdom nor Pereda are expected to truly fill Naylor's or Raleigh's shoes. The assignment is simply to keep the Mariners from playing short-handed baseball while the regulars heal.
The Mets did help Seattle out with two errors in the third inning, and Carson Benge did plenty of damage for New York with a couple of homers of his own. But the Mariners never let the game drift into the territory where a missed opportunity becomes the story. They scored early. Then they responded. And continued to proceed further.
That is what good teams do when they are locked in and on a roll.
Wisdom can hit the ball a very long way, but he also comes with plenty of swing-and-miss. He entered with a .167 average and .600 OPS, so the Mariners will be far from comfortable living without Naylor. They are going to want him back as soon as possible.
Pereda's case is a little different. He's batting .263 with two home runs in 12 games for the Mariners, including a .304 mark over his last seven. Seattle is still going to need Raleigh back, obviously. But Pereda has proved he is more than capable of holding his own behind the plate, and he's starting to look like one of the Mariners' sneakiest organizational additions.
And when a team wins 8-3, hits three homers, stretches its season-high winning streak to eight games and gets five RBI from players filling in for injured regulars, that is how injury trouble fuels a winning streak.
This article was originally published on www.si.com/mlb/mariners/onsi as Mariners' Replacement Bats Turn Injury Trouble Into Winning-Streak Fuel .
