PEORIA, Ariz. — Evan White likes to look at the hidden blessings of the two-year ordeal that brought his promising Mariners’ career to a screeching halt. Like being able to be there for the birth of his son, Kade, last August. It’s a healthy way to process a miserable stretch of health issues.
But the reality is that from a baseball standpoint, it’s been nothing short of an ongoing nightmare. The upward trajectory of the early portion of White’s career — first-round Mariners’ draft pick in 2017, signed to a six-year contract in November of 2019, the M’s opening-day first baseman in 2020 and ’21, Gold Glove winner as a rookie — exploded into impending disaster on May 13, 2021, a mere 38 games into the Mariners’ season.
Diving for a ball in Minnesota, White suffered a left hip flexor strain. It didn’t appear to be a particularly serious injury, but he hasn’t been back in a major league game since. White has barely played in the minors, in fact, as the hip injury morphed into two surgeries and a series of setbacks that left him extremely frustrated — and has transformed White’s status from a centerpiece of the Mariners’ rebuild to a guy battling to regain a spot on their depth chart.
