Mariners final Wild Card round playoff roster released

Oct 7, 2022 - 4:10 PM

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The Seattle Mariners released their official playoff roster for the AL Wild Card round this morning. It features 12 pitchers and 14 position players.

This doesn’t differ too dramatically from my projection from earlier this week, with essentially the only change being an additional pitcher in place of the injured Jesse Winker. The M’s had a few options to play with, including bringing up OF Cade Marlowe for his quasi-big league debut. Marlowe instead is on the taxi squad for the M’s, which is a matter of convenience more than certainty. Players can still be recalled from elsewhere, however given the challenges of travel and customs, this is likely it barring multiple injuries for the Wild Card round.

Though the M’s had been considering 10-11 pitchers, it seems they opted for maximizing their bullpen in lieu of bringing up position players they had less confidence in. That means spots for Penn Murfee and Matt Festa who were both certainly question marks. Chris Flexen and Marco Gonzales both make the taxi squad, however unsurprisingly they are not on the active roster having been leaned on heavily in recent days to set the club up for maximum success in this best-of-three.

As a reminder, the team can only adjust this roster between series’. The lone exception is in the event of mid-series injury, in which case they can remove a player from the roster and add another eligible option, however the injured player would then be ineligible for the following series (e.g. injury in the Wild Card round means they cannot be on the ALDS roster). This is to disincentivize phantom injuries for the purpose of cycling in fresh bullpen arms, for instance.