After rough go with Mariners, Jarred Kelenic says he’s found comfort in Atlanta

SEATTLE – At one end of the T-Mobile Park visitors’ dugout, Jarred Kelenic turned a corner, flashed a jovial smile and exaggerated a playful strut as he walked toward a dozen or so local media types waiting for him at the other end of the bench.

“You guys miss me around here?” he asked.

Almost three years ago — on May 13, 2021 — Kelenic arrived in the other dugout at T-Mobile Park to play in his first big-league game for the Mariners. Back then, he carried a can’t-miss label as one of baseball’s top-10 prospects and, with it, outsized expectations that he would ultimately never realize in Seattle.

Why Kelenic never found his footing with the Mariners, and what prompted his offseason trade to the Atlanta Braves, can be debated, and neither Kelenic nor Mariners manager Scott Servais were much interested in having that discussion Monday, a few hours before the Mariners and Braves were to begin a three-game series.

“You know,” Servais said, “things happen in baseball. You build relationships, equity with players, and then when it doesn’t work out the way you’re hoping, it’s disappointing. But it happens with a lot of guys. They get traded once or twice and then all of a sudden something clicks for them. …

“Jarred’s got a lot of baseball ahead of him,” Servais added. “I’m sure he’ll do fine. My focus is on winning these games and getting him out. That’s it.”

Kelenic was 21 when he first came up three years ago. The Mariners put him in the leadoff spot in his first MLB game, hoping he could provide a spark for a slumping offense.

It didn’t play out that way — didn’t play out the way anyone had hoped — and Kelenic was demoted after just three weeks. He was young and high-strung, and by his own admission he didn’t handle failure well.

“A lot of emotional roller coasters,” he said in the Braves dugout Monday afternoon. “I mean, everybody saw it.”

The Mariners were motivated, in part, to trade Kelenic to Atlanta last winter to save money on the contracts of Marco Gonzales and Evan White, who were also included in the five-play deal. (The two pitchers the Mariners got back from Atlanta, Jackson Kowar and Cole Phillips, have both undergone Tommy John elbow surgery since the trade.)

There’s little doubt that Kelenic’s infamous water-cooler kick last July — resulting in a broken foot and a seven-week stint on the injured list — played a role in the organization’s decision to move on from him.

“It feels like just yesterday I was sitting over there crying in front of you guys, talking about when I broke my foot,” Kelenic said. “I feel like ever since then, I’ve grown so much just as a person and a player — really, for the better.”

Kelenic, now 24, says he’s in a good place. He described himself as more relaxed now, and that showed in his hot start with Atlanta, when he had 10 hits in his first 18 at-bats of the season. He’s cooled off considerably over the past three weeks; he’s striking out at a career-high rate (33.8%) and still looking for his first home run of the season.

But he was still hitting .306 after going 1-for-3 in Monday’s game. He was in the lineup in left field, batting ninth against his old club.

“I feel like a lot of the negative things that happened I really learned from — they turned out to be really positive things in my life,” he said. “So I wouldn’t say that there’s anything that I regret. There’s things I would do differently, obviously, looking back on it. But I’m not someone to really dwell on the past too much. Just constantly move forward.”

Haggerty gets start in LF

The Mariners’ new left fielder Monday is a familiar figure.

Switch-hitting utility player Sam Haggerty was formally recalled from Triple-A Tacoma on Monday morning and immediately installed in the lineup against Braves left-hander Max Fried.

“We like ‘Hags’ against the lefties — he’s had a pretty good track record of getting on base and creating havoc,” Servais said. “So, you’ll see him in left field against left-handed pitching.”

Haggerty, 29, has appeared in 183 games for the Mariners since 2020. He hit .253 with a .705 OPS in 52 games last season, and he has 32 steals (in 35 attempts) in the majors.

The Mariners demoted 21-year-old rookie Jonatan Clase to make room for Haggerty. Clase made his MLB debut on April 15 and appeared in nine games for the Mariners, hitting .222 with a double and two steals in 27 at-bats.