The ties that bind Brewers and Mariners

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SEATTLE -- Before Monday night, it had been seven years since the Brewers played a game in Seattle, which is a shame because no team has more Wisconsin connections than the Mariners.

Let’s count the ways.

1. Seattle’s early-season MVP is a cheesehead.

Waukesha’s Jarred Kelenic is the highest Draft pick from Wisconsin by a significant margin, picked sixth overall by the Mets in 2018 and traded to the Mariners that December. His family is very close to Craig Counsell’s family because Jarred’s younger brother, JT, was a travel ball teammate of Counsell’s youngest son, Jack, for the last five years. Jarred’s and JT’s father, Tom, coached those teams.

“My son has spent a lot of time with the Kelenics and my dad, who ended up traveling with my son a lot, has spent a lot of time with the Kelenics,” Counsell said. “My dad watches all of Jarred’s at-bats. He’s always texting Tom about Jarred’s at-bats. So, I know my dad is a big fan of Jarred Kelenic, absolutely.”

After rocketing to the Major Leagues by 2021 and then really struggling, Kelenic is off to a hot start this season. Among players with at least 20 plate appearances for the week ending Sunday, Kelenic led AL hitters in batting average (.476), on-base percentage (.545), slugging percentage (1.211) and OPS (1.756).

Counsell would prefer to keep Kelenic in check through Wednesday, but in the long run he’s rooting for continued success.

“This league is hard, man,” Counsell said. “Every organization gets excited for their good, young players, and we want it to go perfect, right? It doesn’t go the same for everybody. Nobody’s journey is the same and nobody’s timetable is the same. Jarred did really incredible things at a young age in the Minor Leagues. He was bound for success. It’s just taken a little time, but he’s still very young.

“It’s not surprising to see him having success. He’s going to have a great career.”

The Brewers’ Wisconsin-born player, infielder Owen Miller of Fredonia, Wis., has been hearing a lot from Kelenic. Miller is three years older so they didn’t play together, but the fraternity of cheeseheads in the Majors is strong.

“He keeps calling after every one of his home runs, and I’ll answer maybe every fourth call just to listen to him talk,” Miller said. “I talked to him about his swing a lot last offseason because he worked with a hitting coach. In Spring Training I saw him and was like, ‘Jeez, you’re going to hit 30 home runs this year.’ If somebody would do it, it would be him. From him struggling the last couple of years, it’s good to see him doing well.”

That’s the bottom line for both Miller and Counsell. It’s good for baseball in Wisconsin if players like Kelenic, the Dodgers’ Gavin Lux (Kenosha), and the Blue Jays’ Daulton Varsho (Marshfield) and Danny Jansen (Appleton) fare well.

“Probably Jarred and Gavin were two players who come to mind for me who put youth Wisconsin baseball on everyone’s radar, and got people excited about it and brought some attention to other kids, and probably inspired some other kids to go after the dream,” Counsell said. “You see kids drafted from Wisconsin in the first round and you go, ‘Oh, wow.’ They’re special, and it’s not that easy, but it’s still inspiring.”

2. Seattle’s skipper is a cheesehead, too.

Fun fact: Scott Servais is the only current MLB manager born in Wisconsin. Counsell is Wisconsin through and through, having grown up in Whitefish Bay while his father, John, worked in the Brewers’ front office. But Counsell was born in South Bend, Ind.

Servais was born in La Crosse and went to Westby High School before college at Creighton.

“That was my team growing up; I was a Brewer fan. I’m looking forward to the series,” Servais said on Monday afternoon before he started rattling off from memory the entire roster from the early 1980s. “A lot of good memories going to Brewers games. County Stadium was really the only big-league park I had ever been in until I got to the big leagues. I didn’t know they could be better than County Stadium.”

Servais was 2 years old when the Brewers moved into County Stadium, which brings us to another Seattle connection. You are almost certainly aware that …

3. The Brewers started here.

A Lowe’s Home Improvement store stands today at the corner of Rainier Ave. and S. McClellan St., the former site of Sick’s Stadium. The Seattle Pilots played there for one season before a bankruptcy judge ruled in the spring of 1970 that the franchise could be sold to a group led by Bud Selig and moved to Milwaukee.

Opening Day was only six days away.

“We’re Big League Again! Court OKs Sale of Pilots,” read the headline in the Milwaukee Journal. And the Sentinel: “Brewers To Open Tuesday.”