This story was excerpted from Daniel Kramer’s Mariners Beat newsletter, with MLB.com's Josh Kirshenbaum filling in for this edition. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
SEATTLE -- The Mariners’ biggest free-agent signing in over a decade is starting to find his groove again. And because of that, the most unexpected thief in baseball is starting to run again.
Josh Naylor, like just about everyone in the Mariners’ lineup, has had an up-and-down 2026 season, starting ice-cold in March and early April before having hot and cold runs the rest of the spring. But July has seen the first baseman put together a run, hitting safely in 13 of his past 14 games and putting together a .279/.333./.311 slash line in the month.
The 29-year-old has come back from the All-Star break on a tear, going 9-for-23 with a walk and a double in the Mariners’ first homestand of the second half.
And more time on the bases has given Naylor more chances to do what he’s become so good at: create chaos.
In the first five years of his career, Naylor totaled 24 stolen bases. Starting last season with the D-backs, he made a point of trying to run more, and picked up 11 steals in 93 games. Then, he came to Seattle ahead of the Trade Deadline and went wild, swiping 19 bags in 54 appearances to end the regular season and two more in the playoffs.
This season, he’s already up to 21. He became the first first baseman to steal 20 bases in a season in Mariners’ franchise history when he swiped second in the second inning of Tuesday’s game vs. the Reds, and just the 19th in the league in the Wild Card Era (since 1995).
Wednesday, Naylor got the scoring started in Seattle when he chipped a blooper just out of the Reds’ infield, swiped second off a massive jump, and promptly came around to score on a Cal Raleigh RBI single.
There are 23 qualified players with sprint speeds under 25 mph. They have combined for 31 steals this year -- 10 guys with one steal each, and Naylor, whose 21 steals are tied for ninth in baseball. Of the nine other players in the top 10, the slowest is Cleveland’s José Ramírez, whose average sprint speed is a full 3 mph faster Naylor’s.
“His ability to get a good jump is remarkable. It’s rarely contested, to be honest with you,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. “His stolen bases oftentimes don’t even get a throw. He’s just that good at being able to determine what it means to have a good jump and find something on the pitcher he can really use.”
That’s the key for Naylor, whose average sprint speed of 24.6 mph lands him 492nd out of 505 qualified players. It’s not so much about stealing off of the catcher; it’s a matter of Naylor vs. the pitcher on the mound, getting a jump so good the catcher has no chance.
And nobody is as good at that as Naylor is -- especially when he teams up with first-base coach Eric Young Jr., who stole 162 bags in his own playing career, including a league-leading 46 in 2013. Young has pointed out that with Naylor, it’s not just timing looks off the pitcher; the first baseman is also able to correctly guess pitch sequences, knowing when pitchers are likely to throw offspeed or breaking balls.
That’s built over the course of an inning, a game and a career, watching how pitchers have handled other runners to figure out how they’ll handle him, and watching how they pitch him to figure out how they may pitch the guys behind him.
“It seems like he’s got a catalogue in his head of each guy that he can look through and find it, and is able to take advantage of it,” Wilson said. “We talked about it last year: If you keep the door ajar, he’s going to put his foot in there and bust it open, and that’s what he does on the bases.”