He Ain't Heavy (Hittin'), He's My Brother: A Look at Mariners Siblings
It's Sibling Day! And while it is, actually, fair that older siblings get all the attention (we are better; it's science), we're going to give the younger siblings a little attention today, as a treat.
Baseball is a family affair for many major leaguers. While multi-generational baseball talent is a prominent feature in the game, so are same-generation brothers. There have been many famous brothers in the game from the Alous and DiMaggios to the Giambis and Cansecos. The Mariners have even snagged a number of baseball brothers like Mike Maddux and Joey Cora.
Today, to celebrate Sibling Day, we're going to take a look at a few Mariners brothers who also played in the Mariners organization.
Craig Griffey
Born 18 months after his famous older brother, Craig also grew up in the world of baseball and tagged along in whatever city their dad was playing. But from the beginning, Craig never seemed to want to be a baseball players; football was his game.
He did play Little League, however, and his favorite position was catcher. He stopped playing baseball when he was 13 because he wanted to concentrate on his first love, football, and preferred to run track in the spring. He played both sports in high school, and walked on to the Ohio State football team as a freshman.
Craig did not play his first year at Ohio State due to academic ineligibility from his senior year in high school (something his brother also struggled with). When he was accepted to college, he dedicated himself to school. His sophomore year, he played 10 games at defensive back and was praised by coaches for his athletic ability and speed; his 4.43 second 40-yard dash time was always mentioned.
In the spring of 1991 he suffered a stress fracture in his back. On top of more academic struggles, he saw that his football career was being forced to end. The Mariners reached out to Ken Griffey, Sr., then in his final major league season with the Mariners, and asked if Craig was interested in playing baseball.
Senior was as surprised as anyone (except Craig's mother, who knew all) when Craig was he was interested and would retire from football if he was drafted. So, in the 42nd round of the June draft, the Mariners selected Craig Griffey.
Craig got more attention than the typical 42nd round draft pick. Farm director Jim Beattie said of him, "He's a good athlete and obviously has some good genes." Hitting coach Gene Clines said, "He definitely has the Griffey swing. He's got a long ways to go, but there is no doubt that he has a shot. All he needs to do is play."
He began his professional baseball career for the Mariners rookie league team in Tempe, AZ. In 1992, he moved up to Class-A Bellingham, where his brother had begun his professional career. Craig's Northwest debut brought press coverage with it, but the quotes from coaches were less optimistic than they were the year before. Craig had said that he didn’t mind being compared to his dad or his brother, but I imagine reading quotes from your coaches in the newspapers that you didn’t have the Griffey baseball instincts or talent must have been difficult.
In 1993 Craig moved up to full-season A, playing in Riverside, CA and Appleton, WI. Through three seasons, he’d hit a total of 6 home runs, but had stolen 45 bases. He made another jump to AA in 1994. Although he slashed only .220/.294/.294, he did steal 20 bases. At the major league level, manager Lou Piniella was looking for more speed and so the Mariners added him to the 40-man roster during the offseason.
By this point, however, Craig was getting a little tired of the grind of minor league life. He began thinking that he’d like to give football another try. The Mariners reached out to the Seahawks and asked if they’d give the younger Griffey a tryout. They obliged and had Craig join a workout. Although the Seahawks declined to share any information about how it went, Craig admitted that he was rusty and “was hoping to do a lot better.” He also realized he was much closer to making it in baseball than football.
He played the next two seasons at the AA level, then played 3 games for AAA Tacoma in 1997 before the Mariners demoted him back to AA. It was his 7th season of minor league baseball. He was valuable to the team because of his speed, but he couldn’t hit quite well enough to make use of the speed. After playing 35 games in AA, he asked for his release.
On the day the Mariners granted the release, his older brother broke out the ole “I can make fun of my brother, but YOU can’t!”. He told reporters during batting practice that now he was asking for a trade because he wanted to play with his brother. After a quick visit to Lou Piniella’s office, he said he was only joking. But the elder Griffey brother did take issue with the way the Mariners reporters were writing about his brother, particularly a Seattle Post-Intelligencer item that called out Craig’s “lack of bat prowess.”
“Everyone has different styles,” he said, admonishing the writers not to compare Craig to him. “My brother is not a home run hitter.”
Although the Griffey brothers never got to fulfill their dream of playing together in Seattle’s outfield, they did get a moment together during a spring game in Scottsdale in 1994. During a split-squad game against the San Francisco Giants, Craig played in left and Ken in center.
It was the first time they played together in a game since Little League. “He was pitching and I was catching,” Craig said of that game. “I remember one of his pitches hitting my foot.”
Ken hit a home run, his 7th of the spring to break the club spring record held by Ken Phelps. Craig had a single and double, and showed up his brother in the outfield by making a diving catch.
Later that year, Ken told Sports Illustrated that his relationship with his brother wasn’t dependent on them playing baseball together. “I tell him, ‘When baseball is over, I still have you and you still have me.’ That’s all that matters.”
Shawn Buhner
Shawn Buhner was born a couple weeks after his oldest brother, Jay, turned 8 (Jay and Shawn also have a middle brother named Ted). Shawn followed in Jay’s footsteps, playing baseball at Clear Creek High School in League City, TX just outside of Houston. By this time, Jay was an established major leaguer and was mentioned in every article as Shawn’s brother. At Clear Creek, Shawn won a state baseball title his senior year, 1991. He was drafted in the 64th round of the amateur draft by the Los Angeles Dodgers, but opted for college instead.
He began at McLennan College in Waco, TX, then transferred to Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, ID. He played first base and the outfield generally, but he was limited at Lewis-Clark to first base and designated hitter due to knee problems. His first season in Idaho, during which he hit .284 and drove in 39 runs, was good enough for the Mariners to draft him in the 29th round of the 1994 amateur draft.
The Mariners suddenly found themselves with two sets of brothers in the organization. Whereas Craig Griffey was the polar opposite of his famous brother, Shawn Buhner could do nothing but draw comparisons to Jay. Jay himself said after his brother was drafted, “he has good power and a strong arm.” Roger Jonewaard, the Mariners Director of Player Personnel, said Shawn “looked exactly like Jay.”
Shawn initially reported to the Mariner’s training facility in Peoria, AZ. From there, he joined the Bellingham Baby M’s when the short-season league began play in late June. He put up solid numbers in Bellingham, slashing .288/.347/.444 including 4 home runs and 16 walks in 53 games. That fall he was assigned to play on the Mariners Arizona Instructional League team along with Craig Griffey.
From there, Shawn began his ascendance through the Mariners minor league system. In 1995 he played for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers. In 1996 and 1997 he played with Lancaster in the Cal League. His season was cut short in 1996 due to a broken foot and he reached AA in 1998 with Orlando Rays.
In 1999, he was assigned to the AAA Tacoma Rainiers. Although he was only one step away from the major leagues, he was frustrated that he wasn’t getting much playing time. He’d mainly been used as first baseman in the organization, but in Tacoma, he played several games at third base. An error by Shawn at third base began a disastrous 9th inning for Tacoma, allowing the Nashville Sounds to come from behind and win on July 4th. Shawn was slashing .240/.298/.315 and felt he wasn’t going to get any better without playing time, certainly, but also that that may have been his limit.
A few days later, the Rainiers announced that Shawn had retired. Jay was disappointed his brother retired, but supported his decision because that's what brothers should do.
(Here's a link to a picture of them together:)
Alamy Limited
Justin Seager
After the 90s brother acts of the Griffeys and Buhners, the Mariners took a breather from drafting siblings. Then, a couple years after Kyle Seager debuted, they drafted his younger brother, Justin.
Like Craig Griffey and Shawn Buhner before him, Justin was brought into an organization that knew him primarily as his older brother’s younger brother. But Justin had another indignity thrown upon him; his younger brother, Corey, was also a pretty good baseball player and had been drafted the year before by the Los Angeles Dodgers. That’s right Justin is the middle child in the Seager family.
Justin followed older brother Kyle’s footsteps, but not too closely. Kyle attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, but Justin mixed it up and attended the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Yeah, take that, Kyle.
Justin was drafted the earliest of the Mariners siblings, in the 12 round of the 2013 draft. He visited the team after the draft, along with the other fresh Mariners prospects, but he had the advantage of a big brother to show him around the place, which Kyle did happily. Like the Buhner brothers before them, everyone commented that Kyle and Justin looked alike, although, as Ryan Divish, then with the News Tribune, noted, Justin “is about three or four inches taller.”
By the time Justin Seager was on the scene, the Mariners had moved their short-A affiliate from Bellingham to Everett. Justin opened his professional career there with the Aqua Sox (Kyle started in the Arizona Rookie League) and was named to the 2013 Northwest League All-Star Team. He split his time between playing third base and first base in Everett, but as he moved up the system, he primarily became a first baseman.
He began to climb the minor league ranks with stops at the Clinton LumberKings for full-season A in 2014, then on to Bakersfield for High-A in 2015. The next year, he reached AA. The youngest Seager brother was, at the same time, rocketing up the Top Prospects lists and made his major league debut with the Dodgers in 2015. Even Kyle, an established major leaguer, was overshadowed in the wider baseball world by Corey.
If there was any sibling resentment or envy, it never showed in the press. Kyle said in 2014 of Corey, “I don’t think there’s a rivalry with my brother. I’m pretty excited for him. He’s worked really hard.”
He added there was a fun benefit to all three of them being professional baseball players. “This off-season, I got to workout with both my brothers, which was pretty great.”
Justin played 14 games for AA Arkansas in 2017. He was slashing .214/.267/.357 in his second shot at AA. Comparisons to his brothers aside, he must have realized that it wasn’t going to happen for him and he called it a day on his baseball career.
Even though he was out of baseball, he still got to have some fun with his brothers.
At a Mariners-Dodgers game in 2020, he made a $20 bet with both brothers. Whoever said the word “avocado” first in a joint press conference would win the money. The result? A very sibling moment:
Happy Sibling Day to the Mariners siblings! And to all the readers who have realized in adulthood that their siblings might actually be okay.
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