How new Mariners coach Kevin Seitzer plans to help hitters at T-Mobile Park

PEORIA, Ariz. – Since the start of spring training, Kevin Seitzer has been setting his alarm clock for 4 a.m. each day.

Most of the time, he doesn’t need it.

“I’ve been waking up between 2:30 and 3, ready to get after it,” said the new Seattle Mariners hitting coach, who’s usually in bed by 8 most evenings. “I’m just so fired up coming in here. I’ve got so much energy right now.”

If that sounds like the sort of enthusiasm you’d expect from a wide-eyed teenage prospect in his first major-league camp, consider that Seitzer is a grizzled 62-year-old with three decades of big-league experience as a player and coach.

He’s seen it all in baseball.

After spending the past decade as the hitting coach for the Atlanta Braves, Seitzer has been rejuvenated entering his first season with the Mariners.

More than anything, Seitzer said he has had an instant connection with Mariners icon Edgar Martinez, the team’s senior director of hitting strategy. He described his budding relationship with Martinez as akin to discovering a twin brother he never knew existed.

“It’s like, holy cow, this is one of the best things I could have ever imagined,” Seitzer said. “It’s absolutely mind-boggling how similar we are.

“I mean, I would say close to 100% identical as far as what we think, what we believe, how the hitters need to approach their at-bats, the way the swing works – the whole thing. It’s just perfect for me. It’s just an absolute perfect situation.”

In his 12-year major-league career from 1986-1997, Seitzer was a two-time All-Star with 1,557 career hits and a .295 batting average, playing mostly with the Kansas City Royals and Milwaukee Brewers.

From across the field, he had long admired Martinez and his sweet right-handed swing.

It’s a mutual respect from Martinez, the Mariners’ 62-year-old Hall of Fame designated hitter.

“It’s been great,” Martinez said of working alongside Seitzer. “He’s very well prepared; he’s a hard worker, a smart guy. There’s a reason why he’s been coaching for a long time. You have to have a personality that allows you to build relationships consistently with players, and he does a really good job.”

Seitzer and assistant hitting coach Bobby Magallanes – who followed Seitzer from Atlanta – are the eighth and ninth people the Mariners have hired in various roles as hitting coaches since 2021. The Mariners have explored nearly every elixir to cure their bats’ blues.

The organization is now leaning into the “old school” methods that Martinez and Seitzer have championed.

As it pertains to the team’s hitting strategy, Seitzer and Martinez are aligned on how they want Mariners hitters to think about Seattle’s T-Mobile Park, MLB’s most daunting ballpark for hitters.

“You have to embrace where you play (your home games),” Seitzer said. “When it is the way it is, we’ve just got to focus more on low line drives – just making solid contact and not worrying about balls that we crush that should be homers that get caught. There’s nothing we can do about it. But as long as we’re squaring balls up, having good at-bats and putting the fat part of the bat on the ball consistently, that’s all you can do.”

Late last season, after Martinez joined Dan Wilson’s coaching staff, there was a distinct shift in the Mariners’ hitting strategy – and the results followed.

Over the previous two seasons, the Mariners had been the most extreme pull-happy offense in MLB.

Last August, Martinez began to emphasize on an all-fields approach, and the Mariners wound up ranked as MLB’s No. 3 offense over the final 34 games as measured by the metric wRC+ (at 125, where the league average is 100) and No. 1 in the American League in runs scored (5.1 per game).

Small sample size? Certainly.

But Mariners hitters are encouraged that they’ve turned a corner. And this spring, Seitzer has been relaying the same simplistic message Martinez started last summer.

The challenges of hitting at T-Mobile Park were a key talking point for Seitzer when he reached out for get-to-know-you conversations with Mariners hitters this offseason.

“We’re gonna have to grind out at-bats,” he said. “We’re gonna have to do the little things and we’re gonna have to play situational baseball, and the guys have been tremendous about (understanding) that.”

In Atlanta, Seitzer won a World Series ring in 2021 and he was named Baseball America’s MLB Coach of the Year in 2023 after the Braves tied the MLB record for homers in a season (307). Seitzer has been credited for helping Atlanta star Ronald Acuña Jr. with an important swing adjustment early in the slugger’s career.

In Mariners star Julio Rodriguez, Seitzer sees similar potential.

“It has been awesome,” Seitzer said of getting to know Rodriguez. “The talks we’ve had, and the things that he’s focused on – what he wants to do and be. I mean, that may be one of the prettiest right-handed swings I’ve ever seen. The talent level is through the roof. And I told him, ‘For me, you’re just scratching the surface of your potential right now; you’ve got so much more in the tank.’

“He could be Ronald Acuña. He has that type of talent. It’s just a matter of keeping him where he needs to be from a mental standpoint of not getting too down, not getting frustrated, not getting too big (with his swing), not trying to do too much and change who he is.

“And that’s what Edgar and I are focusing on with him.”