Day Twenty One: Kendrys Morales

After 14 days of quarantine I decided to pick a great Mariner to discuss. One week later I have not selected a similar player. In fact, I have selected the first in a sub-series of tremendously disappointing Mariners who have one spectacular thing in common: They were very good prior to being Mariners and they were very good after they left. Before I talk about this specific bummer of a player, let's talk about this uncanny phenomenon.

For whatever reason, perhaps it is the famous "marine layer" or the dimensions of Safeco Field or the catering in the locker-room, or just the general malaise that comes from donning the shameful garb of the Seattle Mariners, there is a grand tradition of excellent hitters arriving in the Seattle of the 21st century (this is a Safeco Field specific conundrum. It really wasn't an issue in the Dome), and just regressing like hell for the duration of their time here. Then, when they appear to be essentially finished as major league players, they leave the team and go on to become Hall of Famers or World Series champions. It is a special layer to the sadly puzzling history of the team. It should be obvious to anyone familiar with the Mariners that the most egregious member of this fraternity now has 3,000 hits and the other marque member is the man we are discussing today: everyone's favorite five o'clock shadow, Kendrys Morales.

The Mariners of the 21st century have had an incredibly difficult time filling the designated hitter position with anything other than below replacement hitters (until Cruz obv, but fuck that dude too). This is more pronounced because the previous designated hitter has an award named after him, but it is still true that almost anyone who has played DH for the M's post Edgar has been genuinely awful. Jose Vidro, Carl Everett, Jack Cust, and Kendrys Morales. Morales is probably best known for hitting a home run and then breaking his fucking leg touching home plate prior to becoming a Mariner. He was a very strong bat with a swing first mentality who was a part of some pretty impressive Angels lineups in the late 00's. When he arrived in Seattle he was a decent player. And he put up pretty inoffensive numbers that first year in 2013. Then in 2014 Morales became one of the worst hitters in baseball. He was so bad that he was released by the Mariners and then the Twins, who had just signed him off waivers, traded him back to the Mariners. It was, and still is, one of the strangest transactions in a history of very weird trades. Only the Mariners could pull off something like that. Needless to say, when his contract expired at the end of the 2014 season things didn't look to good for him getting on with another club.

But Billy Beane had decided to sign Billy Butler in one of those inexplicably bad Billy Beane signings that litter his golden track record (see Brett Lawrie) and the defending American League champion Kansas City Royals were without a DH. Might as well give old Kendrys Morales a try! He's basically retired anyways! And wouldn't you have guessed it. Kendrys Morales had an excellent regular season playing inspired baseball with a great lineup and ended up being a huge cog in the Royals' eventual World Series championship that year. There's no real sour grapes for me because I am convinced that the 2015 Royals World Series championship is the closest I will ever come to feeling what a Mariners championship would be like. They were a great stand-in for many fanbases hopes and dreams that year (especially because of the 2014 let-down). So even in that moment I was super happy for Kendrys Morales, just as I have always been very happy for Adrian Beltre. Both of them are excellent guys who put together great careers, with their undeniably worst seasons in the bigs wearing a Mariners uniform. What a life! What a dream! What a team!

Sincerely though, Kendrys Morales in 2014 was so bad. And Kendrys Morales in 2015 hit 3 goddamn homeruns in the division series against the Houston Astros. Go figure!