Stefen Romero beat out former Mariners All-Stars Ichiro Suzuki and Mike Cameron to win the 50th anniversary competition.
SEATTLE — The Seattle Mariners suffered another disappointing loss with a 2-1 result against the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday at T-Mobile Park.
The loss was the first of a three-game series, which coincided with the Mariners' 50th anniversary celebration, which will feature several of the top players in the organization making their way back to the Pacific Northwest to be recognized.
Seattle will honor the 50 best players in franchise history at 5:30 p.m. PT on Saturday, before the second game of the series against Tampa Bay.
Before the Mariners got to that point, they kicked off festivities with an alumni home run derby.
Much of the crowd that was on-hand for Seattle's disappointing loss remained in the ballpark to watch the derby. And the defeat didn't seem to put a damper on the event.
Current Mariners center fielder Julio Rodriguez, who accounted for the only run for the team in Friday's loss with a ninth-inning, solo home run, DJ'd the event.
As for the derby itself, the participants included Bucky Jacobsen, Stefen Romero, current team broadcaster and former pitcher Ryan Rowland-Smith, Ryon Healy, current bullpen coach Austin Nola, multi-time Gold-Glover Mike Cameron and National Baseball Hall of Famer Ichiro Suzuki.
The derby consisted of a first round with all competitors. The top two finishers in the initial round went one-on-one in the championship round.
Each batter got a traditional round, where each homer counted for one point, and a jackpot round, where each homer counted for two.
In the first round, Jacobsen had four (two traditional, one jackpot), Romero had nine (five traditional, two jackpot), Rowland-Smith had three (one traditional, one jackpot), Healy had four (four traditional, no jackpot), Nola had nine (three traditional, three jackpot), Cameron had two (two traditional, no jackpot) and Suzuki had eight (six traditional, one jackpot).
Suzuki came just one hit shy of making it to the championship round after one of his potential jackpot homers came a foot shy of clearing the wall in right field.
"I hit it, I thought I got it, so I was a little bit relieved," Suzuki said via interpreter Allen Turner after the derby Friday at T-Mobile Park. "So I kind of let my guard down, and then it didn't go. Kind of curvy there."
With Suzuki coming just shy of 10 points, the championship round consisted of Nola and Romero.
Nola went first, and totaled 11 points: nine traditional and one jackpot. Romero went second and won the event with 12 homers, all traditional.
Romero, who was playing in front of his children, took home a championship trident and belt for the win.
Romero was originally picked by Seattle in the 12th round of the 2010 MLB Draft out of Oregon State. He made his major league debut in 2014. He played in 94 games with the M's from 2014-16.
After his brief stint with Seattle, Romero spent the 2017-21 seasons in Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball with the Orix Buffaloes and Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. He was last with a major league organization in 2022 when he spent time with the Los Angeles Dodgers' Triple-A affiliate, the Oklahoma City Dodgers.
Romero has spent his post-playing career doing some private coaching, and has stayed relatively sharp on hitting mechanics as a result and has a batting cage at home, which likely helped him against his competitors.
But that doesn't mean that Romero didn't feel the exhaustion.
"You get out of breath," Romero said after the derby Friday. "So think about it like a (15 degree) incline on a ... steady jog for 10 minutes. After you're done with that, that's exactly what it feels like. ... So I was trying to catch my breath. My body's not used to that kind of intensity."
In between his first round and the championship, Romero took some swings in the batting cages inside the team's clubhouse, which seemed to help him come out prepared. Once he and his pitcher, a coach for his sons' travel ball team, hit a groove — they opted to keep going rather than take the allowed timeout.
The way the current team played Friday didn't make the day's events a perfect combination. But there may not be a time where Romero, or other former Mariners, get to interact and take part in events like this again. And this weekend's experience has been one that Romero expressed appreciation for.
"That 50th anniversary, there's still two more days of events," Romero said. "You kind of feel that energy. Everyone's here at (11 p.m.). I don't even know what time it is. Everyone stayed behind. Tomorrow, it's going to be even bigger."
