{"id":476879,"date":"2026-02-19T01:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T01:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/476879\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T01:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T01:24:09","slug":"mariners-mitch-garver-agree-to-minor-league-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/476879\/","title":{"rendered":"Mariners, Mitch Garver Agree To Minor League Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Mariners and catcher Mitch Garver<\/a> have agreed to a minor league deal, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN<\/a>. The ISE Baseball client will arrive in camp tomorrow to undergo his physical, reports Daniel Kramer of MLB.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Garver, 35, returns to the club he has spent the past two years with. The Mariners signed him to a $24MM deal for the 2024 and 2025 seasons. At that time, Garver had the reputation of being injury prone but one of the league\u2019s best offensive catchers when on the field. From 2018 to 2023, he only played 428 games over those six seasons but slashed .254\/.343\/.488 for a 126 wRC+. Among primary catchers with at least 40 plate appearances in that span, only Adley Rutschman<\/a> and Will Smith<\/a> barely outperformed him, with Rutschman having a 129 wRC+ and Smith 128.<\/p>\n

The Mariners were hoping Garver could add a potent bat to the lineup via the designated hitter spot while also serving as Cal Raleigh<\/a>\u2019s backup behind the plate. It didn\u2019t really work out they had hoped. Over the past two years, Garver stepped to the plate 720 times for Seattle. He hit 24 home runs and drew walks at an 11.5% clip but struck out in 29.6% of his plate appearances, leading to a .187\/.290\/.341 batting line and 88 wRC+.<\/p>\n

That production wasn\u2019t disastrous, as catchers are usually about 10% below league average on the whole. For a backup catcher to be in that range isn\u2019t too shabby in a vacuum but the Mariners don\u2019t usually spend on free agent bats and were surely hoping for more, especially since his defense isn\u2019t especially well rated. At the time of the Garver deal, that was actually the biggest guarantee given to a free agent hitter in the tenure of Jerry Dipoto, who started leading the front office in September of 2015. The recent signing of Josh Naylor<\/a> has since broken that record.<\/p>\n

Despite the underwhelming return on that investment, there\u2019s little harm in trying again with this pact. Garver isn\u2019t even guaranteed a roster spot at this point and presumably wouldn\u2019t make a huge salary if he does eventually get a spot.<\/p>\n

The M\u2019s have Raleigh signed for years to come but the backup gig is somewhat open. The Mariners traded Harry Ford<\/a> to the Nationals as part of the trade which brought reliever Jose A. Ferrer<\/a> to Seattle. Andrew Knizner<\/a> was signed to a one-year deal worth $1MM in December but doesn\u2019t have the same ceiling as Garver. Jhonny Pereda<\/a> is also on the 40-man roster but he has just 50 big league games under his belt and can still be optioned to the minors.<\/p>\n

With Pereda likely ticketed for Triple-A, Garver will try to push Knizner for the backup job. If Garver doesn\u2019t get it, the Mariners would presumably like him to head to Triple-A as non-roster depth, but he would have some say in the matter.<\/p>\n

Garver is an Article XX(b) free agent, which means a player with six years of service time who finished the previous season on an MLB roster. Those players who sign minor league deals at least 10 days before Opening Day have a trio of opt-out dates under the collective bargaining agreement: five days before Opening Day, May 1, and June 1. If the M\u2019s don\u2019t commit to Garver as camp is winding down, he could look for better opportunities elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Steven Bisig, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Mariners and catcher Mitch Garver have agreed to a minor league deal, reports Jeff Passan of ESPN.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[94134,363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-476879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mitch-garver","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476879","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=476879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}