This story was excerpted from Daniel Kramer’s Mariners Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
SEATTLE -- The mind-blown emoji has become synonymous with Alex Mayer’s social media account, given how the Mariners’ senior manager of baseball communications has found such distinctive ways to resonate with fans who have an appreciation for the game’s statistical side.
Mayer has become a must-follow on X -- formerly known as Twitter -- for the celebratory stat he posts after each Mariners victory, which he began at the outset of last season.
Titled “The Mayer Game-Winning Stat,” these posts spread like wildfire, with engagements topping 100,000 for the most quirky stats that he’s able to uncover from the bowels of Baseball-Reference.
“My dad sees them all the time and sends them to me,” said Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh, who doesn’t use X. “He does a heck of a job finding some of that crazy stuff.”
Same for president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto, who’s not on X but does play Immaculate Grid on Baseball-Reference with Mayer -- every single day.
“I play with other people who I feel very confident that I'm going to roll every day,” Dipoto said. “But Alex is legit. ... He can marvel like a kid on Christmas morning at the simplest thing. He just loves it.”
Mayer’s public profile continues to grow, as he’s now been a regular, mid-innings guest on the ROOT Sports’ broadcasts with stats-specific content applied to that given game. That segment came together through encouragement from lead broadcaster Aaron Goldsmith -- pushing Mayer to challenge himself and ROOT’s production staff to afford him the opportunity.
Mayer has also been brought on for a weekly segment on 710 Seattle Sports, the club’s flagship radio station, where he dishes out what's on his meandering mind within the Mariners’ numbers that week.
What Mayer executes so well is the ability to make the numbers digestible -- basically, your grandma will be as impressed as the general manager or star slugger.
“One of our main duties is to connect the fanbase to the team indirectly -- through interviews, through media opportunities, marketing, social media, all that stuff,” Mayer said. “But I think with the way my brain works, the quirkiness and the numbers, I found a cool and a more interpersonal way of connecting the fans with the team in a different way than a brand account sometimes does.”
Mayer, 30, joined the Mariners in 2021 in a coordinator role, four years after graduating from Iowa State University. But he’s had a paid subscription to the Baseball-Reference Play Index -- a tool used for customizable queries going back to 1871 -- since he was only 15 years old.
“If I weren’t doing this for a job, I would still be doing aspects of my job,” Mayer said. “Like, I could be working in insurance ... and I would still be looking stuff up on my personal laptop, whether it was to put it out into the atmosphere on Twitter or just telling my dad and brothers in our groupchat.”
That familial bond is just as central to Mayer’s story.
His brothers, Josh and Jeremy, fueled his competitive spirit. He describes his mother, Jackie, as “the kindest soul,” whose impact shows in how her son treats people. His father, Larry, has been a beat writer covering the NFL’s Chicago Bears since 1992, before Mayer was even born.
Being immersed in the Bears’ locker room environment at a young age -- including with the team that reached Super Bowl XLI -- also had an enormous impact on how Mayer handles the other components of his job to this day. Because as much as he’s publicly recognized for stats, the media-relations component of his role is just as instrumental, and where he arguably thrives even more.
“He's always about the players first,” Raleigh said, “making sure that we do what we need and we have everything. He helps out with us a ton and comes up with some pretty cool stats along the way.”
Added pitching coach Pete Woodworth, who’s become one of Mayer’s best friends: “It helps that he knows everybody's birthday and everything about their childhood and every notable achievement they've had in their past. Nothing leaves his brain.”
What no one outside the clubhouse sees is Mayer’s ability to have difficult conversations -- with players when encouraging them to fulfill media requests after tough losses, and with media when requests can’t be fulfilled.
“I have a huge respect for beat writers and the grind they go through,” Mayer said, citing his father, “because that’s what put food on our table.”
Mayer’s presence with the Mariners has grown greatly beyond PR, too. So far this season, he’s been solicited by other departments within the organization -- including baseball operations, ballpark operations, business analytics and high performance -- to assist in specific projects that leverage his skill set.
And that profile will probably only continue to grow.
“His enthusiasm for it and his ability to make you feel great about yourself no matter what you're doing, just awesome,” Dipoto said. “He's nice to people. He cares about people. He always wants to do the right thing, make you feel like you're the most important person in a conversation, whoever you are.”