AquaSox season ends with whimper in Spokane
Published 9:25 am Monday, September 7, 2026
Nearly a year after the Everett AquaSox ended their 2025 season with a championship trophy presentation on their home field, the Seattle Mariners’ High-A affiliate unceremoniously ended its 2026 campaign nearly 300 miles from home on Sunday.
With a 10-4 loss to the Spokane Indians, the AquaSox (67-65 overall, 34-32 second-half) finished just barely above .500 — ironically, seven games better than last season (60-72), when they went 37-29 to win the first half but 23-43 to finish dead-last in the second before defeating the Eugene Emeralds in four games for the title.
Everett remained alive in the second-half race entering this week, at least mathematically, but the Vancouver Canadians ultimately clinched the spot and will face Eugene in the Northwest League Championship Series this week.
“Everything we can do is just one day at a time,” AquaSox manager Ryan Scott said after Everett’s home finale, an 8-4 loss to the Emeralds on Aug. 30. “We can’t make up every game that we’re behind in one day, so the more we can just focus on one day at a time, we’re going to hopefully be able to try to get ourselves in a situation. At this point, we need a little bit of help, but all we can do is really control what we can control, and then the cards will fall where they will.”
The AquaSox took care of what they could control, winning the first three games against Spokane, but the Canadians clinched their spot on Sept. 2. Everett closed the season with two losses in its final three games.
On Sunday, they fell behind early. While infielder Brandon Eike hit an RBI double in the top of the first, Indians infielder Ethan Hedges hit an RBI double of his own in the bottom of the frame before infielder Wilder Dalis smacked a go-ahead, two-run homer right after. An RBI single from infielder Kelvin Hidalgo later in the inning pushed the lead to 4-1.
Spokane hit two more home runs off AquaSox starter Walter Ford, who allowed 13 hits and nine earned runs in 3 2/3 innings to finish the season with a 0-13 record and a 7.92 ERA. Eike and designated hitter Luke Stevenson each went 3-for-4 with an RBI, but the rest of the team combined for just three hits on the afternoon.
While 2026 did not end in hardware for Everett, it marked a year of promising development for multiple Mariners prospects. Despite his promotion to Double-A on July 20, infielder Felnin Celesten ended as the league leader in OPS (.943) and batting average (.314) among qualified players. In fact, the entire top five Northwest League players in OPS were AquaSox: outfielder Carlos Jimenez (.926), Stevenson (.893), Eike (.892) and outfielder Jonny Farmelo (.863).
Eike finished as the league home run leader with 24, which marked just one example of his substantial improvement at the plate compared to last season, when he hit 11 long balls and finished with a .640 OPS.
On the pitching side, Colton Shaw had the best ERA (4.43) among the six qualified pitchers, and he finished with the fifth-most strikeouts (121). The entire staff allowed the fewest walks (425) not just in the Northwest League, but among all the High-A teams. The only team in the minor leagues with fewer was Arkansas (409), Seattle’s Double-A affiliate.
Everett scored the most runs in the league (799), but allowed the third-most (637), and they ultimately could not produce enough results down the stretch to give themselves a shot at a title defense.
The AquaSox will return to Everett Memorial Stadium for the 2027 season on April 2.
