Everything's coming up Gilbert: Righty having quite a stretch in rotation

This story was excerpted from Daniel Kramer’s Mariners Beat newsletter. Melanie Rau filled in on this edition. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

In baseball, "dad strength" usually manifests itself in the form of a memorable homer.

For Mariners right-hander Logan Gilbert, dad strength has shone through in a different way: Throwing gems on the mound (and throwing noticeably harder while doing so).

Gilbert is putting together one of the strongest seasons of his six-year career. The best part is, the 29-year-old might just be getting better as it goes.

On Monday, the righty was named the American League Player of the Week. Across a pair of quality starts last week, Gilbert went 2-0 while recording a 1.35 ERA with 18 strikeouts in 13 1/3 innings. His last punchout was his 100th of the season. Entering Wednesday, he is one of 13 big league starters to tally triple-digit strikeouts in 2026 and one of seven in the AL, and he paces the Mariners’ staff. It was the second time Gilbert has received the honor and first since the week ending on July 9, 2023.

His most recent start was also on Father’s Day, and his son, Henry, made an appearance at his dad’s press conference. Henry has also been bonding with Emerson Hancock’s son, Myles. Gilbert capped his week by twirling 6 1/3 frames of one-run ball on three hits and a pair of walks with eight punchouts.

“I think everything's in a good spot. You never have it all figured out, but we're always trying to just trend upward, and I don't know, whatever's working, we're just gonna try to keep rolling with it,” Gilbert said after his start Sunday. “So I feel like everything's in a pretty good spot.”

On June 16, in his start prior to Father's Day, he spun seven one-run innings on two hits, a walk and a hit batter, with 10 strikeouts.

This stretch has to feel good for Gilbert, who after leading MLB in innings pitched in 2024 with 208 2/3, has since struggled at times to go deep into games, because while he can record a lot of strikeouts, he can rack up a high pitch count to go along with them. In 16 starts this season, he’s gone less than six frames in seven of them.

So, what’s gotten into him lately?

“Just being aggressive. Trying to think of quick at-bats, like three or four pitches,” Gilbert said after his June 16 start. “The funny [thing] is, I'm kind of always doing that. It's not always seven innings with 10 strikeouts. You take it when you can, but there's also some humility in this game to know that I really don't have that much control -- none of us do -- but good things happen when you're aggressive and challenging hitters, and hopefully they miss it.”

“It's about attacking,” manager Dan Wilson said June 16. “He does attack the zone early, he gets a lot of first-pitch strikes, he gets ahead, and that's key. Then, when you get ahead, continue to attack, continue to pound the zone. You want to make it more difficult, you want to make it a little bit more nasty in some ways, but you still want to be around the zone to get that swing-and-miss or get that weak contact. I thought he did a really good job of that tonight. When he got to two strikes, he still kept attacking. That was a big key for him to get deeper, to get less deep counts, to get less at-bats where they were fouling it off. He just continued to attack, and that was impressive.”

After being drafted No. 14 overall by Seattle in 2018, Gilbert has been a huge part of the Mariners' rotation once he debuted in '21 -- with his 2024 All-Star season especially noteworthy, when he logged a 3.23 ERA in 33 starts (208 2/3 IP) with 220 punchouts.

Gilbert's 2025, though, saw him deal with a right elbow flexor strain, which has made this hot stretch in '26 all the more important.

Gilbert’s also approaching a couple career milestones: He’s sitting at 984 strikeouts and 928 1/3 innings pitched.

While the return of the piggyback strategy yielded mixed results for Bryce Miller and Luis Castillo on Friday, Gilbert will team up with Hancock on Saturday, which should lighten his load a bit.

And for a team that is vying to win the AL West for the second season in a row (they hold a 2 1/2-game lead over the Athletics, Astros and Rangers), giving Gilbert some rest now so he still has plenty left in the tank down the stretch could pay dividends.