The Mariners announced their Opening Day roster this afternoon, and reliever Matt Festa made the big league club. Seattle had a vacancy on the 40-man roster, so no additional move was necessary.
Festa is in line for his first MLB work in three years. He suited up with Seattle from 2018-19, tossing 30 2/3 innings of 4.70 ERA ball. The former 7th-round pick only punched out 17.7% of opponents on a below-average 9.2% swinging strike rate. Seattle outrighted Festa off their 40-man roster during the 2019-20 offseason, and he underwent Tommy John surgery not long after.
The 29-year-old returned from the surgery midway through last season, working 21 1/3 innings over 19 outings with Triple-A Tacoma. Festa posted a 2.95 ERA while striking out an excellent 36% of batters faced and only issuing walks at a 3.5% clip. After also impressing the organization in Spring Training, he’ll return to the big league club.
Seattle lost Casey Sadler for the season and will be without Ken Giles to start the year. Paul Sewald, Drew Steckenrider and Diego Castillo look as if they’ll assume the highest-leverage innings, while Festa will step into the middle innings mix. He still has a minor league option year remaining, so the M’s can bounce him between Seattle and Tacoma this season even though he’s back on the 40-man roster.
There’s no I in Fiesta.
Gonna be a party tonight.
I like Matt Festa this time around. I believe he will be just right in certain relief roles.
The M’s know what they are doing.
Go Mariners!
Baseball is back and I love it.
Except the league decided to have the Mariners start the season at Twinns for the 1st 4 games so the 1st game is postponed because of weather. The bad thing is they cant start at home in their field with a roof.
We had a rotten experience similar to this back a decade or two ago in Cleveland.
Ice and more ice, and it ruined first-off a promising beginning and then the whole dang season for the Mariners.
But, some days are diamonds, some days are stones. Seasons, too.
It is the mark of a great team when they don’t let a bad start ruin everything.
Go Mariners!
On top.ofnthe fact it was a rare 79 degree day in Seattle today and it would have been absolutely perfect for opening day ….
dude’s a really good RP. great to see him back.
Festa-Vus did for the rest of us.
At a recent Mariners Q&A from Peoria I asked Corey Brock of the Athletic to choose one ‘under the radar’ player who stood out at this yrs Camp. His answer was Matt Festa. He said he was literally blowing people away!
There is not enough said about this particular Mariners regime’s ability to identify and develop RP’s. Some people have said the loss of Casey Sadler will have a big impact on this years BP. I say to those people- “people, you haven’t been paying attention to the sheer depth of quality arms in our Org.”
Matt Festa will probably see some middle relief work- it’s going to be hard for him to get any kind of High Leverage inn’s with arms like Andrés Muñoz, Yohan Ramirez, Castillo, Sewald and Steckenrider. We’ll also see Ken Giles (w his career 2.45 FIP and 12.3 SO9) soon. I really like our BP. There’s no reason this BP can’t be a strength of this team for the next 2-3 yrs. I can’t wait to see them show their stuff in the postseason.
When ayrbhoy speaks I listen.
Amen!
Giles is no given. That guy is perpetually injured.
Our BP is definitely a strength of the team, it was just a few years ago we had one of the worst in the league. Really hard to project future strength though, no area is as volatile in MLB as the bullpen.