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Buster OlneyOct 18, 2025, 07:00 AM<\/p>\n
Close<\/a>Senior writer ESPN Magazine\/ESPN.com SEATTLE — Mariners<\/a> Manager Dan Wilson made major changes to his lineup, in an attempt to reverse the momentum Seattle has lost in the American League Championship Series against the Toronto Blue Jays<\/a>.<\/p>\n Julio Rodriguez<\/a>, who has batted third in the Mariners’ lineup recently, was moved to the leadoff spot, and Josh Naylor<\/a> was bumped upward into the cleanup spot, with Randy Arozarena<\/a> – who had batted first in the first four games of this series – shifted down to the fifth spot.<\/p>\n Editor’s Picks<\/p>\n 2 Related<\/p>\n The Mariners won Games 1 and 2 of this series, but Toronto took Games 3 and 4 to tie the series; the road team has won every game in this best-of-seven series.<\/p>\n The Seattle lineup changes seem to be an attempt to give the Mariners’ best current hitters at the top of the lineup and perhaps give them an extra plate appearance at game’s end, at a time when Toronto’s potent lineup has exploded. The Blue Jays compiled 7 home runs and 21 runs in Game 3 and 4.<\/p>\n Naylor has been the Mariners’ best hitter in this series, with six hits in 14 at-bats (.429), including a couple of home runs. Rodriguez has four hits and four walks against the Jays, for a .471 on-base percentage. He batted in the leadoff spot in 15 games during the regular season – and struggled in that small sample size, hitting .194 with a .265 on-base percentage.<\/p>\n The Mariners released their revamped lineup to the media minutes after Manager Dan Wilson held his press availability; in that session, Wilson did not inform the reporters about the changes or explain his thinking behind the choices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buster OlneyOct 18, 2025, 07:00 AM CloseSenior writer ESPN Magazine\/ESPN.com Analyst\/reporter ESPN television Author of “The Last Night…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-220997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nAnalyst\/reporter ESPN television
\nAuthor of “The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty”<\/p>\n