The Mariners have handed Kade Anderson No. 13, and in Seattle that number comes with a history that is equal parts odd, uneven and strangely fitting.
Usually, No. 13 leans unlucky. Around the Mariners, it has been more complicated than that.
Omar Vizquel made it look sharp. Jeff Fassero gave it real weight on the mound.
Dustin Ackley arrived with huge expectations that never fully clicked. Bobby Ayala had his swings.
Abraham Toro’s link to the number came through one of the strangest and most controversial trades of the Jerry Dipoto era.
Now it belongs to Anderson, and the fit feels almost too neat to ignore.
The numbers around him are the kind baseball people love to squint at. Anderson went 10-1 with a 1.06 ERA, struck out 135 and walked only 13 for Double-A Arkansas.
Opponents hit just .147 against him, and he gave up four home runs all season. For a sport that can turn rational fans into full-time pattern chasers, that’s a lot of symmetry attached to one pitcher.
Anderson is the 19th Mariners player to wear No. 13, though there have been 18 individual players before him because Vizquel and Ackley each show up five times in the number’s player-season history. He’s also the sixth pitcher to take it on. And in one more bit of numerical weirdness, exactly 13 of the previous 18 wearers were position players.
Seattle’s best player connected to No. 13 is still Vizquel, who wore it from 1989 through 1993 and hit his Seattle peak with his first Gold Glove in 1993. He became a much bigger name after the Mariners traded him to Cleveland, which has become something of a theme for this number: recognizable names, but not many who turned into long-term Seattle icons while wearing it.
Fassero set the standard for Mariners pitchers in No. 13.
The left-hander went 16-9 with a 3.61 ERA and 189 strikeouts in 1997, logged 234 1/3 innings, started on Opening Day and threw eight innings in Seattle’s only win of that year’s ALDS. Anderson will be the first left-handed Mariners starter to wear No. 13 since Fassero’s final Seattle season in 1999.
Ayala is another memorable name in the mix. He opened with a 2.86 ERA and 18 saves in 1994, then his ERA climbed to 4.44 in 1995 and 5.88 in 1996, his last season in the number.
Ackley is the cleanest point of comparison for Anderson because of the draft pedigree. Seattle took Ackley second overall in 2009, and he came in with the reputation of being one of the best college hitters in the country.
His first 90 games hinted at a future centerpiece, as he hit .273/.348/.417. But once pitchers adjusted, he never really found the counterpunch, spent five seasons in No. 13, moved around the field and was eventually traded to the Yankees.
Anderson was the No. 3 pick in 2025, which makes the draft connection easy to see.
Toro wore the number most recently, in 2021 and 2022, after coming over from Houston in the deadline deal that sent Kendall Graveman and Rafael Montero to the Astros. That trade rattled a clubhouse trying to make a playoff push and left a fan base puzzled after watching Graveman emerge as one of baseball’s best relievers. Toro had moments, including a grand slam off Graveman, but he never became enough of a player to make the deal feel any less strange.
The rest of the Mariners’ No. 13 roll call includes Dick Pole, Iván Calderón, Ben Davis, Casey Kotchman, Nate Karns and Jacob Nottingham. A few decent seasons are scattered in there, but most of them were brief stops rather than defining chapters.
That’s the opening Anderson gets. He doesn’t have to chase some towering legacy.
The space is there. The number is there.
And if he turns into what the Mariners hope, No. 13 might finally have a name in Seattle that feels like it truly owns it.
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