signing a $92.5 million, five-year contract<\/a>, Naylor credited Seattle\u2019s clubhouse Labrador retriever, Tucker, for helping win him over. <\/p>\n\u201cWhen I found out we had Tucker, he put me over the edge, man,\u201d Naylor said with a toothy grin. \u201cI love that little guy.\u201d <\/p>\n
Naylor loves Seattle, and vice versa. <\/p>\n
The 28-year-old free agent spent 54 games with the Mariners after being acquired from the Arizona Diamondbacks ahead of the 2025 trade deadline and hit .299 with nine home runs, 33 RBIs and 19 stolen bases. Naylor endeared himself to the Seattle faithful with hard-nosed play, as well as for giving away pairs of his cleats to kids. <\/p>\n
\u201cI always tell players, or even little kids I work with in the offseason sometimes, like, play for the little kid inside of you,\u201d Naylor said. \u201cAlways remind that kid that it\u2019s just a game, and you\u2019re here to have fun, and you\u2019re here to play hard, and you\u2019re here to compete.\u201d <\/p>\n
Seattle reached Game 7 of the American League Championship Series before losing to Toronto and falling one win shy of its first World Series. After a stellar postseason in which hit .340 with three home runs, five RBIs and two stolen bases, Naylor felt he had unfinished business in Seattle. <\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to come back to give this fanbase and this city and my teammates and their families a World Series in the next five years,\u201d Naylor said, \u201cor, multiple World Series or multiple pennants.\u201d <\/p>\n
President of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto is confident Naylor can be a key cog in winning the first World Series for a franchise that started play in 1977. He described it as a \u201cno-brainer\u201d to bring Naylor back. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis was about as simple a decision as we could make organizationally,\u201d Naylor said. \u201cAfter acquiring Josh midseason at the trade deadline, the way he fit into our clubhouse, the community, the way the fan base embraced him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Naylor didn\u2019t feel compelled to test the open market. He felt confident in the Mariners\u2019 core \u2014 and not facing Seattle\u2019s starting pitchers for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n
Instead, Naylor will have the good fortune of hitting behind Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodr\u00edguez, who finished second and sixth in MVP voting. <\/p>\n
Sticking in Seattle means a good deal for Naylor, who became a father for the first time this year. With a handful of family members on hand for Tuesday\u2019s news conference, Naylor, whose younger brother, Bo, is a Cleveland catcher, discussed his desire to settle down in the Emerald City. <\/p>\n
\u201cI really would love to spend the rest of my career here and raise a family here,\u201d Naylor said, \u201cand have my family come to Seattle more often and watch baseball games and hopefully win a World Series here.\u201d <\/p>\n
Naylor\u2019s greatest motivator is to win, which has been the case more often than not across his seven-year big league career. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis isn\u2019t done, in my opinion,\u201d Naylor said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a lot more to do and it\u2019s exciting for not only them, but for me and the whole city. The teammates that we have here, it\u2019s going to be an awesome offseason in my opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEATTLE (AP) \u2014 Whether it was teammates, coaches, kitchen crew or clubhouse managers, Josh Naylor felt abundantly comfortable…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1558,1993,156117,29027,51875,152186,363,2008,77465,1839,481,156118,99,24324,2003,2002],"class_list":{"0":"post-300012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cal-raleigh","10":"tag-jerry-dipoto","11":"tag-josh-naylor","12":"tag-julio-rodrguez","13":"tag-local-news-for-apple","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-mlb-baseball","16":"tag-mlb-world-series","17":"tag-seattle","18":"tag-seattle-mariners","19":"tag-seattle-redhawks","20":"tag-sports","21":"tag-sports-transactions","22":"tag-wa-state-wire","23":"tag-washington"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}