SEATTLE -- All the way back in April, Mariners general manager Justin Hollander described the impending situation as the best sort of issue to have.
“Truthfully, like, God bless us if it is a problem 30 days from now,” he said, on the day Seattle announced Bryce Miller was ready for a rehab assignment after starting the season on the injured list with a strained oblique.
Hollander said that because in Miller’s absence, Emerson Hancock was firing not just at replacement level, but as the Mariners’ best arm. In 2024 and ‘25, Hancock began the year in the rotation due to injuries to other pitchers, but he gave way as soon as they came back. This season, he’d taken the job by the horns and not let go, giving Hollander and the Mariners six real starters and no easy way to cut it down to five.
There’ve been piggybacks. There has been a six-man rotation. There have been planned piggybacks, nixed at the last moment.
And now, the Mariners’ six starters are showing off their full firepower, all at once. Hancock was just the latest, tossing seven scoreless innings in Seattle’s 4-0 win over Toronto on Sunday afternoon at T-Mobile Park.
Hancock whizzed through the Blue Jays’ order early, then he worked around some command issues late, not allowing a hit after the second inning and walking just two -- both in the sixth.
It’s the fourth time Hancock has allowed two hits or fewer and two walks or fewer in six innings or more this year, a number that leads the AL and sits second only to Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes.
“He just kept doing what he does,” manager Dan Wilson said. “He and [catcher Mitch Garver] had a great gameplan again today, using his fastballs. He went to the curveball early, got some swing-and-miss on that and threw some sweepers, but really it was the fastballs. They were being aggressive and playing into what he needed to do, which is make outs.”
It was a great bounce-back for the 27-year-old, who posted his ninth quality start of the season but his first since June 1. Following that first start of June, Hancock did not make it out of the sixth in four straight outings.
This was a return to the Hancock who pitched to a 2.59 ERA in his first seven starts, though, and it capped a dominant pass through the Mariners’ six-man rotation.
In the past six games, Seattle’s six starters posted six quality starts. Hancock, Logan Gilbert, Miller and George Kirby all made it through seven innings -- Kirby finished with a clean eight on Monday, while Gilbert went 7 1/3 scoreless on Saturday vs. Toronto -- and allowed a combined six runs.
Per Elias, it’s the first time a team has had six straight quality starts by different pitchers since the Astros did it June 2-7, 2023, and the first time the Mariners have done so since Sept. 6-11, 2011.
“One guy raises the bar for the next guy, and that’s what we’re seeing,” Wilson said.
In 41 2/3 total innings in the past week, Seattle’s starters recorded a 1.30 ERA. And that decision to ultimately not piggyback Gilbert and Hancock, as was the original plan? It led to 14 1/3 scoreless innings from the duo -- and back-to-back shutout wins to take the series vs. the Blue Jays.
“I think you build off each one,” Hancock said. “You see what the guy does well the night before, and in a way it makes you want to go out there and continue the standard every time you get a chance to have an outing. That was just a great homestand in general for us. There were a lot of really, really good things.”
This current era of Mariners baseball has always been built around its rotation -- five guys drafted between 2018-21 and one huge Trade Deadline acquisition. The group put up league-leading numbers in 2024, but took a step back last season with multiple members of core dealing with injuries.
Now, though, all six are firing on all cylinders, possibly better as a collective unit than they ever have before -- with six stars instead of the normal five. Hancock’s start Sunday was the 17th time a Seattle starter has gone seven innings; the club had 19 such starts all of 2025.
“It’s one guy after the next,” Wilson said. “It was cool to see Emerson come out of the game today and all of the starters were there, hootin’ and hollerin’ there with him, building him up [after] a great outing today. Every guy that goes out there, it seems like that’s what they’re doing with them.”