Monet, Pollock ... Kirby? Seattle righty gets artsy as Mariners snap skid

SEATTLE -- George Kirby already paints the strike zone as well as any arm in the sport, but he’s extended his artistry to canvases away from the mound.

And quite literally.

Kirby has taken up painting as a way to harness his ever-evolving grasp of baseball’s mental side, which was already a pointed emphasis for the Mariners’ insanely competitive right-hander.

“It just gives you, I don't know, 20 minutes to free your mind a little bit through visualization,” the 2023 All-Star told MLB.com earlier this week.

On the mound Saturday, Kirby painted five punchouts and helped lift the Mariners to a 7-3 win. It wasn’t his most dominant effort in what’s been a reign of terror over Texas that now includes a career 9-1 record and 1.33 ERA.

Yet, throughout this outing that helped snap Seattle’s four-game skid, the mental perks of Kirby’s new hobby were evident in broad brushes.

“The practice is more to just kind of free your mind,” Kirby said. “If you mess up, just keep going. Don't worry about it.”

The old version of Kirby is probably more of a Claude Monet -- the Impressionist-era artist considered one of the world’s greatest who was famously dissatisfied with his own work and occasionally destroyed it. The new Kirby doesn’t lean fully toward Bob Ross, the landscape art specialist and TV personality, who once called mistakes “happy little accidents.”

But he’s somewhere in between.

As for the hobby itself, Kirby is probably more of a Jackson Pollock -- the abstract expressionist -- sheerly from a functionality standpoint. Because, well, this is all new to Kirby and his works can be scattered. He will paint anything from pitch plots that he sees on MLB Network to whatever else is on his mind.

“Sometimes, just random [stuff],” Kirby said.

This new hobby has far more functionality than a player seeking simple arts and crafts during his down time. No, this has direct carryover to his goals on the mound for 2026. Specifically, Kirby is trying to let go of pitch-by-pitch frustrations -- be it a well-executed offering that a hitter connects or even a dreaded walk.

And never was that executed more in this young season than during Saturday’s fourth inning.

Kirby took a 107.8 mph comebacker off his backside, lost Seattle's second and final Automated Ball-Strike System challenge by impulsively exercising one himself and issued a walk that loaded the bases. It was the type of jam where “Furious George” from his early career might’ve reared.

“Oh no, it's still in there,” Kirby said postgame. “I walked two guys today. I'm not very happy about it. But I'm using it in a different way. Like, use the anger as a weapon instead of something that would kind of hold me back the last couple years.”

But this newer, more mature version of Kirby remained poised. He wound up generating consecutive flyouts to leave the sacks packed and preserve what was a 1-0 lead.

“He's just more in control of himself, his emotions, which makes him more confident, which gives him more conviction,” Mariners pitching coach Pete Woodworth said earlier this week. “And then that all just cycles.”

Kirby was overpowering at the start, but labored as the day progressed, ultimately finishing one out shy of clearing the sixth inning -- and shortly after surrendering a solo homer to Josh Jung that wound up being the lone run against him. That lowered his ERA to 2.97, but it was also the shortest of his five starts.

And that’s OK.

“In the past, I would struggle to get back in control and kind of nitpick, give up some more singles, a couple of runs,” Kirby said. “Now it's just like, 'It happened ... go back out there, worry about the batter and just keep going.'”

Coaches and teammates have said since Spring Training that Kirby is in the best headspace of his four-year career. And much of this is due to extensive work with Mariners mental performance coach Adam Bernero. But he leans on the rest of Seattle’s rotation, too.

On the eve of Opening Day, Bernero lit up a fire pit at T-Mobile Park’s home plate, where players gathered, wrote things they wanted to rid themselves of on scraps of paper and burned them. The smoke could be smelled throughout the ballpark.

“We actually kind of all opened up a little bit and just talked about the game and what goes on in our heads and stuff like that,” Logan Gilbert said. “So I think George is in a really good spot with that kind of stuff.”