A few weeks ago while on a chilly morning walk with my dog, I got a text that gave me goosebumps even more than the howling wind. “Mitch Haniger is coming back.”

Just a few hours went by until the trade was released to the public, a shocking deal that sent veteran starting pitcher Robbie Ray to the San Francisco Giants. While the deal was certainly surprising, fans rejoiced to see who was coming back to Seattle.

Haniger was a Mariner from 2017-2022 before signing a three-year contract with the Giants last offseason. The former All-Star was the author of some of the greatest moments of the last 10 years, including an all-time Dave Sims moment.

His 2021 season was truly one to remember, blasting 39 bombs and trying to will a short-handed Mariners offense into the playoffs. Now he’s back in Seattle once again, and I got a chance to ask him about it.

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Earlier this month the MLB Draft happened inside Lumen Field across the street from T-Mobile Park. It just so happened that the host team, your Seattle Mariners, had three first-round picks that day. With their third pick in the first round, Seattle selected Tai Peete, a shortstop out of Trinity Christian School in Georgia.

In a recent episode of The Wheelhouse with Jerry Dipoto, the Mariners President of Baseball Operations told a story about his 17-year old first round pick. Peete was clocked as the second fastest high school player in the MLB Draft Combine, behind new teammate Johnny Farmelo.

When players are drafted they are invited by the Mariners to sign their contracts at their eventual home ballpark as well as take batting practice before a home game. During his session, Peete turned around after several swings and asked, “How many home runs did Farmelo hit?” The group of front office members responded with “two.”

Peete responded by cracking three straight home runs to beat Farmelo, ending his BP session.

The 17 year old Georgia native has a bright personality and electric tools, which at one point were on display in the Little League World Series.

Peete is going to be a fan favorite in this system. Get to know one of the newest Mariners here at Sea Level.

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(Photo via Mariners/Twitter)

When the Mariners acquired J.P. Crawford back in 2018 from the Philadelphia Phillies, there was still plenty of optimism about his bat. As the years have gone by we have seen a consistent version of Crawford, one that consists of plus on-base and bat-to-ball skills, with well below-average power.

Many believed the Seattle shortstop had reached his ultimate ceiling, especially after a rough second half in 2022. In January, I wrote a column here detailing three reasons why Crawford could be better in 2023.

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One of the main reasons I believed in an improved version of the 28-year-old shortstop was his decision to train at Driveline Baseball this offseason. Crawford’s average exit velocity is up from 85 MPH all the way to 90 this season, and his hard-hit rate is up nearly seven percent from 2022.

So what did Crawford change? I sat down with Maxx Garrett, one of his hitting trainers at Driveline to find out.

@drivelinebaseballMariners SS Jp Crawford working with Director of Hitting Tanner Stokey in a swing design session 🙌 #hitting #baseballswings #baseball #mlb

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Check out my conversation with Maxx Garrett below, and make sure you subscribe for all the content we offer plus an autographed card of your favorite Mariners! You can also find the audio version here.

What was J.P.’s focus or reasoning for signing up to train at Driveline? Why Driveline over somewhere else?

MG- J.P. really wanted to get healthy and improve at the plate. He battled a lower back injury and a knee injury for most of the season last year, which was really difficult on him. He also knew the track record of success Driveline has because of some of his teammates who have hit here. He also lives in Seattle in the offseason which makes it logical for him.

What did you think of him as a hitter before his assessment?

MG- Watching the M’s a lot, you notice that JP is a scrappy hitter. He finds ways on base. You’ll see him extending at-bats, fighting off tough pitches, and coming through in big moments. He doesn’t pose a huge threat to hit a ball out of the yard but he’s disciplined at the plate. It also seemed like he had this innate ability to catch a ball super deep with two strikes and throw it into left for a hit. I even thought about him not wanting to lose this with the work we were doing haha.

When we got word that his training here might happen, I looked a little deeper into it and his swing decisions grade was pretty good on our models. He swung at good pitches and his contact quality was good. There was room for improvement as far as bat speed and bat path (attack angle/spray angle) go.

How did the assessment go? What issues and strengths showed up? 

MG-He started in a unique position and put himself in a difficult position to swing and generate speed from through his load and stride. At contact, things looked pretty good, but he was basically fighting himself the whole time trying to get there. We thought if we could get him into some better positions earlier in the swing, it would improve his efficiency, and therefore improve his bat speed.

We also wanted to help him get on plane with the pitch sooner in the swing. His attack angle was negative in his initial assessment so it was important to get the barrel working up earlier in the swing. We saw that he was above average in swing decisions and smash factor, but below in bat speed and top 8^th exit velocity.

(Smash Factor is Smash Factor measures the collision efficiency of the bat and ball at contact. In simpler terms, balls that are “squared up” with minimal deflection or glancing at contact will have the highest Smash Factors.)

(Top 8th exit velocity is the average of the top 12.5% of a hitter’s hardest hit balls.)

How did you address his weaknesses? What drills, tools, etc..

MG-Besides changing intent, one of the big things was changing up his load. We worked on setting his hips further back during the load and stride to put him in a better position to rotate. We had him swing long implements to help him feel his barrel get behind him sooner (less steep into the zone) and hit the ball out front (working on spray angle and turning the barrel). We had him hitting higher descent angle pitches out of the machine to force matching planes at higher attack angles.

There are a bunch of cage environments we could talk about here but the drill he liked the best was the Hook’em. It helped him set the pelvis into a good spot that he felt much more powerful from (more hip flexion and over his back leg). That combined with a LH breaking ball from the 1B side is something I’d probably tee up today for him haha.

What kind of progress did you see him make both in the gym and so far this season?

MG- Of course, we ripped the speed trainers too because it was important to us to increase his bat speed so he had the capacity to hit the ball harder. He puts the bat on the ball too well to not be swinging faster.

In his re-test, we saw some really cool changes. The biggest change was his bat speed increasing from 65.6 to 71.1. We’ve seen that play out this season in-game where he went from below league average last year to above, this year. His attack angle went from -3 to 4.7, so that was a nice change as well. His attack angle this season is slightly up from last year (about 1 degree) but his top 8^th exit velocity is above league average and he’s maintained his high-level swing decisions and smash factor. Of course, him putting in the concerted effort to move faster and produce more force has a great deal to do with these changes. I think he also found some better positions to move through allowing his body to create speed a little cleaner.

For years people have said that Crawford “is what he is” at this point. Do you believe that and if he were to continue training what kind of strides could he make?

MG- Moving forward, we want to continue to work on getting the ball in the air more. I don’t think JP is done getting better. As we’ve seen this year, he’s a gamer. His production at the plate has been better this year and I’m excited to see how he wants to continue to grow. His abilities are not capped here.

The owner of one of baseball's most popular Twitter accounts is here to talk about the Mariners’ pitching staff, how he started Pitching Ninja, and much more! Please feel free to subscribe and share, the video and audio of our conversation will be at the end of the article.

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How did Pitching Ninja start? What is the story behind it, and what made you wanna grow this into the monster you have created?

RF- I still don’t know what made me want to grow this thing. Basically, I just started coaching baseball. It’s not like I was a great baseball player growing up, but I had a kid who was playing baseball. For some reason everybody wanted me to coach, so I stepped in. You know, I was a lawyer, so I just started asking questions. I didn’t want to teach what I was taught because I didn’t think it was any good, and I knew there had to be a lot of advances, so I just started asking questions of some of the smartest people that I knew.

I started with some internet message boards. Kyle Boddy from Driveline started out there, as well as Ben Brewster from Tread Athletics. We were all part of the same message board group and just started asking each other questions, bouncing stuff off each other, and really taking apart pitching mechanics. It ended up that I was coaching for a while, but I knew I wasn’t going to coach forever. So I wanted to pass along what I had learned over the years to help other people who didn’t have as much time and money on their hands to spend on all these gadgets and crap.

So I did that and just started sharing it on Twitter. More and more people got interested and it just grew organically. I had no plan, I still don’t really have a plan to conquer the baseball world or anything like that. It’s just what I wake up and want to do. It really started totally innocently, and then MLB players started following me. This must be good stuff, but I was always in shock that anybody would be interested in what I had to say. I still am. But it’s been fun.

It feels like every pitcher wants to end up on Pitching Ninja, it is almost like one of their goals to have their clip show up on your channel.

RF-That still amazes me. Like a guy will make his debut and say “Mama I made it because I got on Pitching Ninja.” I’m like, you just made your MLB debut. You made it THEN! I mean I think it’s awesome, and I never lose the fact of that perspective that it’s just awesome and fun every day.

So Justin Topa is in the Mariners bullpen and having a great year. He credits the Flatground app as helping him get noticed, can you explain that app to those that don’t know about it?

RF- As my Twitter account started growing I had a lot of scouts and everything following me. Players both high school kids and guys who weren’t in an organization would always keep tagging me in stuff, and I don’t want anybody to go unseen because they don’t have money or have geographic concerns. There has to be a way to share these folks with my followers, but you don’t want to water down the content you are putting out there by retweeting a bunch of high school kids and have everybody go, “I don’t wanna see this.” And then trolls and everybody else get involved.

I just thought it was better to start a whole new Twitter account focused on getting people seen. It’s really designed to help younger kids get coaching for free, and people can always chime in and give feedback on mechanics. It helps high school kids find college coaches and that happens every single day. And then MLB scouts or pitching coaches can find folks to pick up in their organizations that have either improved or they are just looking to make a jump. That part is always really fun, and he (Topa) was one of them. There has been something like 40-50 folks that have been picked up by MLB organizations from Flatground. That stuff is always really cool because it makes me feel like I have helped them in some way.

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So transitioning to the Seattle Mariners is obviously a really fun pitching staff. Probably one of the five best pitching staffs in all of baseball, kicked off by the acquisition of Luis Castillo. What did you think of that acquisition and do you think Castillo has CY Young ability in him?

RF- Well, I thought that acquisition was great. He has always been a fantastic pitcher with high-end stuff. I mean I always loved his changeup but also his fastball is electric. His personality is electric. He is one of those guys you love to watch, great K strut, is just a fun guy to watch pitch.

As far as his stuff, I mean I have thought for a while he has a Cy Young ceiling in him. The question is what year is it gonna be in? There always seem to be these little bumps and things that take you down, to win a Cy Young you really have to have few of those.

I think he can do it. I have no doubt he has Cy Young talent, and everybody considers him one of the best pitchers in baseball. Is he the best pitcher in the American League? He is one of them. I mean he certainly has a shot. So yeah, I think he has a Cy Young ceiling.

It just seems to be that high-end consistency he doesn’t have. We saw in the playoffs last year he can be as good as anybody when he is on. In my opinion, he was maybe the best arm in the playoffs last year.

RF- Yeah, he was one of those guys that (the playoffs) bring out the best in them. I agree with you, I thought he was fantastic. That’s one of those things that makes you see what his ceiling can be. I hope he gets there. But then again I think the Mariners have a few guys that have a Cy Young ceiling. So we’ll see! He may be battling it with his own teammates.

I agree. You actually got a chance to talk to a couple of those teammates George Kirby and Logan Gilbert. What did you take away from that conversation?

RF- Number one they are really good dudes. They are always looking to add to their arsenals, with good heads on their shoulders in many different ways. I think they understand themselves really well, Kirby is a much more even-keeled guy. I have made this comment before, but he has Greg Maddux-type command, with 10 MPH more velo. He is also just a good dude, a very easy guy to cheer for. He’s got a Cy Young ceiling I think too. The funny thing is, I told my wife if anybody asks her who her favorite pitcher is, tell them it’s George Kirby.

They will sit there and go, “Wow that’s brilliant. How did you know?” I’m like, if you follow and understand pitching you will understand why George Kirby is that good. I don’t know that his pitch arsenal blows anybody away like with any specific pitch, it’s just the way he uses them. His command is incredible. Like, usually that’s the last thing that comes for a pitcher and his (command) is like better than anyone else in the major leagues.

Gilbert is more flashy and a competitor. He is more like a Max Scherzer type to me, like he talks to himself on the mound, you know he dismisses people with the little hand wave when he strikes them out. You just see his bigger movements, but really good stuff. I love the fact that he picked up the splitter, Kirby said he did too. He tried to learn Gausman’s splitter, it just seems like they get along really well and there is a great comradery among the staff in general. I just think that makes all the difference, and I expect to see things click for the entire team.

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Whether he is making acrobatic catches, getting clutch hits, or stealing bags, Sam Haggerty has made plays all over the field during his time in Seattle.

To many fans, Haggerty has become a fan favorite over the last few seasons for his exciting style of play. He is a sparkplug and has a ton of playmaking ability all over the diamond.

Last season the 28 year old slashed .256/.335/.403 and a 114 WRC+ last season in 83 games. This was good enough for 1.5 WAR, and plenty of highlight reel plays.

Haggerty carries the ability to play all over the field, but his versatility isn’t just on the field. “Ham Swaggerty” has an assortment of hobbies and passions off the field, including a clothing line called Epic Souls.

If you order before the end of the day on April 2, you receive 25% off any merchandise at Epic Souls! This is a great way to support Sam and his new venture, as well as get some sweet clothing.

You can find them @epicsoulapparel on Instagram or at epic-soul.com

He is a fun and creative guy who is loved by his teammates, so let’s get to know the Seattle utility man.

How was your offseason and rehab? 

SH- The off-season is always welcomed. Getting to spend time with family and loved ones, and an opportunity to reflect on how blessed I am. 

You had a spectacular year filled with moments last year, what was it like coming into your own like that and did you have a favorite moment (aside from Cal’s homer)? 

SH- 2022 was an amazing year, filled with many exciting moments. Cal’s homer will always stick with me, but that entire night was truly remarkable.  The fans never left the stadium, and you could feel 21 years of a drought vanish in a night. 

Have you heard the Ham Swaggerty nickname and what do you think of it? 

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