Taylor Ward’s time with the Mariners went off the rails fast, and the numbers never gave Seattle much reason to hope for a turnaround.
The deadline move came with Ward already in the middle of a rough season, but what followed in Seattle was far worse. He appeared in 32 games for the Mariners and finished with just 11 hits across 101 plate appearances. That left him at a .125 batting average, a .238 on-base percentage and a .148 slugging percentage.
Power was almost nonexistent. Of those 11 hits, only one went for extra bases: a triple against the Tampa Bay Rays in his sixth game with the club. Everything else was a single.
The plate discipline that had made him useful with the Orioles also slipped. His strikeout rate jumped from 20.4% to 26.7%, while his walk rate fell from 17.2% to 11.9%. That still left him drawing walks at a decent clip, but nowhere near the level he showed before the trade.
Most of those plate appearances came in August, when Ward still had a regular role. In September, his usage changed, and he was shifted into more of a bench role with only the occasional start.
The contrast with Baltimore was stark. Ward produced 2.7 bWAR with the Orioles, then finished at -0.9 bWAR in Seattle, which left him at 1.7 bWAR for the season. That matched his lowest season total since 2023, when he also posted 1.7 bWAR.
The bottom line is hard to miss. Ward’s 23 wRC+ tells the story on its own, and from August 4 - his first day with the Mariners - through the end of the season, only one hitter in baseball, Nasim Nuñez, finished with a lower wRC+.
His mark? A stunning 3.
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