The 24 best players in Seattle Mariners history

The best player to ever wear a Seattle Mariners jersey is center fielder Ken Griffey Jr., so it should come as no surprise to find him at number one on the team's all-time WAR list. Griffey had a strong rookie season for Seattle in 1989 as a 19-year-old when he finished third in the Rookie of the Year voting, and immediately after that blossomed into one of the premier stars in the sport. In the next ten years Griffey would make 10 All-Star Games, win ten Gold Gloves, win the 1997 AL MVP award and capture seven Silver Sluggers. He broke the hearts of Mariners' fans when he left the team as a free agent ahead of the 2000 campaign to go home to Cincinnati, and while he was good for the Reds, his best days clearly came in the Pacific Northwest. It was really cool that the Mariners brought him back in '09 to finish his career where it started and give their fans another chance to see him play in Seattle. Griffey is the Mariners all-time leader with 417 home runs, and he was enshrined in Cooperstown with an M's hat in 2016. 

By talent alone Ken Griffey Jr. was clearly a better overall player, but a teammate of his every year he played in Seattle, Edgar Martinez, was probably the guy you wanted at the plate with the game on the line. Before David Ortiz enjoyed unprecedented success in Boston, Martinez was the gold standard for what a DH should be. He spent the entirety of his 18-year career with the Mariners, slashing .312/.418/.515 with 309 homers, 1261 RBI and 514 doubles. The right-handed slugger qualified for seven All-Star Games, won five Silver Slugger awards and two batting titles. He's Seattle's all-time leader in RBI, doubles, runs and extra-base hits, and was deservedly voted into the Hall of Fame in 2019. 

When Ichiro Suzuki left Japan to join the Mariners in 2001, he was already one of the most accomplished Japanese hitters in history. So when he instantly won AL Rookie of the Year in his first season in North America, it seemed a little unfair to the other rookies that year. Of course, that wasn't the only award the right fielder won in '01. After winning the batting title with a .350 mark and leading the majors with 56 stolen bases, Ichiro was named AL MVP. Along with Boston's Fred Lynn, he is the only player ever to win both awards in the same season. Throughout his Mariners' career, Ichiro would lead the AL in hits seven times, qualify for 10 All-Star Games, win a second batting title and win 10 Gold Gloves. Like Griffey, he left Seattle late in his career but then returned to play out his last MLB games in the city where he started. Ichiro retired as the Mariners' all-time leader in hits, batting average, and stolen bases, and will almost certainly be inducted into the Hall of Fame the first year he's eligible in 2025. 

Right-hander Felix Hernandez debuted for the Mariners as a 19-year-old rookie in 2005, and over the next decade and a half would author one of the best careers in the franchise's history. Hernandez made every one of his 418 major league starts in a Seattle uniform, winning 169 games with a 3.42 ERA. He won the AL Cy Young award in 2010, won the ERA title twice, led the league in innings in 2010 and was chosen to represent the junior circuit in the All-Star Game six times. Hernandez is the Mariners' franchise leader in starts, wins, strikeouts and innings. 

Randy Johnson is probably most remembered for his excellence in Arizona and the World Series trophy he helped deliver to the Diamondbacks in 2001, but let's not forget how dynamic the big southpaw was in Seattle early in his career. In 10 years with the Mariners, the 'Big Unit' won 130 games with a 3.42 ERA, while striking out 2,162 hitters in 1,838.1 innings. He represented Seattle in five All-Star Games, won the 1995 AL Cy Young award, won an ERA title and led the AL in punchouts in four straight seasons from '92-'95. Johnson was enshrined in Cooperstown in 2015, understandably with a Diamondbacks cap on his head, but that doesn't change the fact that for most of the '90s he was the most-feared starting pitcher in baseball and called Seattle home.

Alex Rodriguez has become one of the most polarizing names in Major League Baseball history. The Manhattan-born shortstop spent most of the first half of his career as the best player in the game, before controversially skirting his original club to sign what at the time was the richest contract in history with their primary rival. He later got blackballed from the sport for his inclusion in the PED scandal and has since resurrected some of his reputation and become a respected broadcaster. Got all that? Let's go back to the beginning, though, because during the first seven years of his career in Seattle, A-Rod was the golden child of baseball. In just under 800 games in a Mariners uniform, Rodriguez slashed .309/.374/.561 and hit the first 189 of his 696 career homers. He represented Seattle in four All-Star Games, won four Silver Sluggers, led the AL in hits once, doubles once, and won a batting title. Following the 2000 campaign he left Seattle to sign with the Rangers, a development that was understandably not received well in the Pacific Northwest, and while Mariners fans still may hold a grudge, it doesn't take away from how well he performed in their uniform.

The Mariners selected third baseman Kyle Seager in the third round of the 2009 draft, and the UNC product would go on to become a mainstay for them at the hot corner for over a decade. In 11 years in Seattle, Seager slashed .251/.321/.442 with 242 homers and 807 RBI, and his 309 doubles are the third-most in club history. He made his only All-Star team and won his only Gold Glove award in 2014. After his retirement in 2021, Seager had a chance to come back and play with his younger brother Corey in Texas, but Seattle fans were delighted when he chose to stay in retirement and be one of the only players in his generation to suit up for only one organization. 

Crafty southpaw Jamie Moyer had already pitched for five other major league teams before arriving in Seattle in 1996 at the age of 33, but something seemed to click for him when he got to the Pacific Northwest. In his 11 years with the Mariners, Moyer enjoyed the most success of his career, winning 145 games and pitching to a 3.97 ERA in 324 outings. He made his first and only All-Star team as a 40-year-old in 2003, and while the St. Joseph's University product was never considered a star, you may be surprised to learn that only Felix Hernandez earned more victories as a Mariner. 

The Mariners signed Robinson Cano to a massive free-agent contract ahead of the 2014 season, and at the time it was viewed as a coup. Cano was one of the best players in baseball and played for the mighty New York Yankees, so when the M's convinced him to leave the biggest media market in the world to move across the country to the Pacific Northwest it seemed like the beginning of a bright new era in Seattle. Unfortunately, Cano's Mariners' career quickly became tainted. After four productive seasons, the veteran tested positive for PEDs in 2018 and received a long suspension, which likely played a role in the club working hard to trade him that following offseason. During his Mariners tenure, Cano did slash .296/.353/.472 with 271 extra-base hits, but fans don't have much patience for cheaters. The Dominican Republic native was once a sure-fire Hall of Famer, but a second PED suspension while with the Mets all but put an end to that notion. 

Right fielder Jay Buhner played the first 32 games of his big-league career as an ineffective role player with the Yankees, but his career took on a much different trajectory when he landed in Seattle midway through the 1988 campaign. Buhner developed into a dynamic right-handed run producer with the Mariners, and while he was often overlooked in a lineup that included Ken Griffey Jr. and Edgar Martinez, Buhner could mash with anybody in his prime. In the three seasons between 1995-1997 he crushed 124 homers and drove in 368 runs. Buhner is still third on the club's all-time list in both home runs and RBI — behind both of his Hall of Fame former teammates — and he'll always be remembered as a fan favorite in Seattle. 

Third baseman Adrian Beltre did not spend all that much time calling Seattle home, but he was a productive offensive piece for five different Mariners teams. In 715 games with the M's, Beltre slashed .266/.317/.442 with 103 homers, 396 RBI and 172 doubles. He made his first All-Star team in Boston the year after he left Seattle, but he did win the first two of his five Gold Glove awards as a member of the Mariners. 

Left-handed swinging first baseman Alvin Davis broke into the big leagues with the Mariners in 1984 and enjoyed instant success. In 152 games that year, Davis slashed .284/.391/.497 with 27 homers and 116 RBI and was the clear choice to be named American League Rookie of the Year. Surprisingly, that would end up being the best season of Davis's career. He did hit over 20 home runs for the Mariners two other times and reached triple digits in RBI once more, but he never came close to duplicating the overall excellence he displayed as a rookie. The Riverside, California native left Seattle to join the Angels in 1992, where he was released midway through the season and ultimately ended up finishing his playing career in Japan. 

Before there was Randy Johnson and later Jamie Moyer, the Mariners employed another left-handed starter that continually befuddled the rest of the American League. San Jose State product Mark Langston spent the first six seasons of his major league career pitching for Seattle, and for most of that time was the M's ace. In 173 starts for the club, Langston won 74 games with a 4.01 ERA, while making an All-Star Game, winning two Gold Gloves and leading the American League in strikeouts three separate times. 

Right-handed swinging Bret Boone was drafted by the Mariners in 1990 and got his feet wet with the team before being traded to Cincinnati. And while he was a productive everyday player for the Reds, Braves and Padres, he didn't become an elite run producer until coming back to Seattle in 2001. In his first year back in the Pacific Northwest, Boone enjoyed a career season, slashing .331/.372/.578 with 37 homers and an AL-high 141 RBI — easily new personal bests in every category. The second baseman knocked in well over 100 runs for Seattle in each of the next two seasons as well before slowly fizzling out as he reached his late 30's. With the Mariners, Boone made two All-Star Games, won three Gold Gloves and earned two Silver Sluggers. 

Venezuelan-born righty Freddy Garcia won 17 games and tossed over 200 innings for the Mariners as a 22-year-old rookie in 1999, and while his Seattle tenure ultimately proved to be a little up and down, when he was on his game he was as dominant as any pitcher in the American League. With Seattle, Garcia took the ball 170 times across six seasons and pitched to a 3.89 ERA with a 1.29 WHIP in just under 1,100 innings. He hurled nine complete games in a Mariners uniform — including four shutouts — and represented the organization in a pair of midsummer classics. 

During his career, center fielder Mike Cameron had a reputation as one of the elite defensive players in the sport, but the LaGrange, Georgia native was far from one dimensional. While he didn't call Seattle home for long — only four seasons — some of Cameron's best offensive outputs came in a Mariners jersey. To this day his M's career is remembered most for a game in May 2002 when he crushed four home runs and hit a fifth ball to the warning track, narrowly missing setting a new single-game record. Cameron made an All-Star team and won two Gold Glove awards while in Seattle, and on a personal note drove in a career-high 110 runs in 2001. 

The Mariners made righty Mike Moore the top overall pick in the 1981 draft coming out of Oral Roberts University, and while he was for the most part a serviceable pitcher for the M's, it's safe to say the pick was a bit of a bust for the organization. In six seasons in Seattle, Moore went 66-96 with a 4.38 ERA. The best year of his career came in '89 after he'd left Seattle in favor of joining the Athletics. Watching Moore win 19 games with a 2.61 ERA for their rival en route to an All-Star appearance and later a World Series championship had to be difficult for the Mariners to stomach.

Veteran right-handed DH Nelson Cruz is actually still an active player and is currently ramping up for 19th major league season, this time as a member of the San Diego Padres. But not all that long ago the 42-year-old was terrorizing AL West pitchers in a Seattle uniform. Cruz spent four seasons in the Pacific Northwest and every one of them was dominant. In 606 games for the Mariners he slashed .284/.362/.546 with 163 home runs and 414 RBI. He was an all-star in three of those seasons, won two Silver Sluggers, and in 2017 was under consideration for AL MVP when he led the league with 119 RBI. 

John Olerud already had a reputation as one of the best pure hitters in baseball when he signed with the Mariners as a free agent ahead of the 2000 campaign, and his Seattle tenure only bolstered his already strong resume. In five seasons with the M's, the veteran first baseman slashed. 285/.388/.439 with 238 extra-base hits. He won three Gold Gloves with Seattle and was an all-star in 2001. 

Right-hander Hisashi Iwakuma had already established himself as an excellent starting pitcher in Japan before making the move to North America in 2012, and during his relatively brief MLB career he gave the Mariners a reliable middle of the rotation arm. In 150 games for Seattle, Iwakuma went 63-39 with a 3.42 ERA and a 1.14 WHIP. He enjoyed his best year in '13 when he made the All-Star team and finished third in the AL Cy Young voting thanks to a stellar 2.66 ERA across 219.2 innings. 

Erik Hanson spent the first six years of his big-league career as a consistent member of the Mariners starting rotation, and while his only All-Star appearance came later as a member of the Red Sox, the right-hander's best days clearly came in Seattle. In 145 outings for the M's, Hanson went 56-54 with a 3.69 ERA and a 1.27 WHIP, while striking out 740 batters in 967.1 innings. Hanson threw 26 complete games during his career and 21 of them came as a member of the Mariners.

In November 2016, the Mariners acquired right-handed swinging outfielder Mitch Haniger in a heavily scrutinized trade that sent talented major leaguers Ketel Marte and Taijuan Walker to Phoenix. Seattle viewed Haniger as the type of middle of the lineup force that could carry their offense for the next several years, and he very well may have done just that had injuries not gotten in the way. Haniger was healthy for only two full campaigns while with the Mariners. In 2018 he slashed .285/.366/.493 with 26 homers, 93 RBI and 38 doubles and was named to his first All-Star team. He blasted 39 homers and drove in 100 runs in a resurgent 2021 season, though managed to appear in only 57 games in 2022. San Francisco rewarded Haniger's career campaign with a lucrative three year free-agent agreement during the 2022 offseason, marking the end of a Seattle tenure loaded with 'what ifs?' 

Switch-hitting second baseman Harold Reynolds played the first 10 seasons of his career in Seattle and carved out a nice legacy for himself as a gritty table setter. Taking the field 1,155 times for Seattle, Reynolds slashed .260/.326/.345 with only 17 homers and 295 RBI. But power was not Reynolds' game; he relied on speed and stole 228 bases while with Seattle —including an American League-high 60 in 1987. He also racked up 200 doubles and 48 triples for the Mariners — the latter category is second to only Ichiro Suzuki in club history. Reynolds made back-to-back All-Star teams in '87 and '88 and earned three Gold Glove awards with the Mariners. Today he is a popular analyst on the MLB Network. 

Left-handed swinging Raul Ibanez had three different stints where he called Seattle home and was an offensive force for the Mariners all three times. In 1,110 total games for the M's, Ibanez slashed .279/.341/.466 with 156 homers, 612 RBI and 216 doubles. The Miami Dade College product never made the All-Star team while with the Mariners, but notably drove in over 105 runs for the club for three straight seasons from '06-'08.