Brendan Donovan was supposed to be back on track this week. After nearly two full months of rest for a left groin strain, the plan was for him to start a rehab assignment Tuesday at the Arizona Complex League and, if everything went smoothly, return to the big club after the All-Star break.
Instead, Tuesday came and went with Donovan nowhere in the ACL lineup, and that was enough to send the Mariners beat looking for answers. Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times reported that Dan Wilson and Justin Hollander didn’t have much to offer beyond a few vague explanations.
“He wanted to get some pregame reps in the ACL to make sure he was ready to go,” Hollander said. and that was the more detailed answer of the two.
That kind of update leaves plenty of room for suspicion, even if the team isn’t saying setback. Hollander’s point was simple enough: Donovan should only play when he’s truly ready.
And given everything the 29-year-old has already dealt with, caution makes sense. He had offseason surgery to repair a sports hernia, then tried to push through a left groin issue that first popped up in April.
The problem for Seattle is that this year’s injury messaging has already worn thin. The Mariners have downplayed injuries more than once, and that history makes it hard to take a sudden change in Donovan’s rehab plan at face value. When a timeline quietly disappears, a setback theory naturally starts to breathe.
What’s also hard to ignore is how little Donovan has actually been on the field. He has played in just 25 of Seattle’s 93 games, and even that number doesn’t tell the whole story because he wasn’t fully healthy for all of them. He first hurt the groin in early April, then returned after a three-week stint on the injured list between mid-April and early-May without ever looking fully right.
The roster picture has shifted around him, too. Donovan opened the season at third base because Cole Young had second base.
Since then, J.P. Crawford has taken over third in deference to Colt Emerson at shortstop.
That setup could change if Emerson has to be sent down to Tacoma, but for now Donovan is looking at a lineup and defensive picture that no longer seems to have a clear spot for him.
Seattle has missed him most at the top of the order, though even that comes with a split-screen view of who he has been. Before his first IL stint, Donovan posted a .437 OBP.
After he returned, that number dropped to .267. Those are very different samples, of course, but they also underline the bigger issue: the Mariners can’t just assume a healthy Donovan is something they can count on the rest of the way in 2026.
If he’s more of a bonus than a foundation piece now, then Seattle has work to do. The trade market should open up soon, and ESPN’s Jeff Passan has already floated Taylor Ward as a name that makes sense.
Maybe Donovan still has a role to play. But the less the Mariners say, the harder it is to believe they’re close to getting that answer.
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Another Flat Florida Loss Exposed A Familiar Mariners Problem
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What stands out now is how much thinner the lineup looks than it did a year ago. Seattle has slipped to 14th in team wRC+ after finishing second last season, and that drop has shown up in nights like this one, when the middle of the order does not provide enough support and the margin for error disappears quickly. [Read more 🡒]