A former Mariners blogfather now helps shape their roster

We often get to know players on paper before we actually get to put eyes on them. We follow prospects by the bits and pieces of information about them that we hear from the minor leagues, the numbers we see on their player pages and daily reports.

In the case of the Seattle Mariners, there is a key front office member many fans got to know first on paper – or screen, to be specific: senior director of player personnel Dave Cameron.

Cameron’s own unique path to the front offices of two organizations started with the baseball blogs in the early 2000s, first writing for Baseball Prospectus and then with co-founding the popular USS Mariner blog in 2002. Along with Lookout Landing, which was founded around the same time by Jeff Sullivan, himself now a senior analyst with the Tampa Bay Rays, USS Mariner helped introduce a generation of Mariners fans to the new numbers that were starting to have an impact on the game.

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The two blogs featured brilliant writing by both Cameron and Sullivan breaking down games, players, moves and trends in the game, sparking good discussions in the comment threads. For many, self included, they provided an introduction and foundational education to where baseball was going with the analytics that are now commonplace in the game. Their writing also had impact on a teen from Covington: future Mariners assistant general manager Joel Firman.

“Just being a rabid Mariners fan and every single day reading the kind of analytical spin of what was going on via those two guys,” Firman said, “that put it in such a relatable, funny way for a 16-year-old.”

It was a kind of writing that encouraged Firman to come back to daily.

“There’s what feels like the traditional way of watching and observing the game, and then there’s this very unapproachable thing, the numbers and advanced metrics and all these things,” Firman said. “And to have someone who is watching the game every night in real time, like not in a spreadsheet, watching the game and giving observations that are then tied to what the advanced metrics are saying and stuff that just makes the whole thing a lot more approachable. That it no longer was a spreadsheet, there was someone breaking it down every night from the data-driven standpoint. And Dave would do game recaps every night, pitch by pitch, at-bat by at-bat for a while. And that was a really easy way to get onboarded onto how to think about the game analytically.”

A different application

Not only did Firman say Cameron’s writing helped him think about the game more objectively, but it was definitely his introduction to modern sabermetrics and ultimately spurred aspirations of doing what he does today. There was just one question he was left with at the time.

“I was just a teen, but it was confusing to me why someone like Dave or Jeff was not a part of an organization,” he remembered.

Then Cameron was hired from a role as managing editor of FanGraphs to be a senior analyst in research and development for the San Diego Padres in 2018.

“Learning that Dave caught on with the Padres was awesome. And then when we (the Mariners) had a chance to interview him for a consultant thing, I was like, what a dream come true,” Firman continued. “I think it took too long for him to get into the game just given what he provides. He’s a really, really special dude. Unbelievable person, too.”

Cameron was hired originally by Seattle in 2022 as a consultant and promoted the next year to his current position, and in day in, day out contributions to the Mariners, Firman sees a strong link in what Cameron does now to what he was doing when he wrote for USS Mariner.

“It’s a lot of that same thing,” Firman said. “He helps hold us accountable to objective truths about the game through examples and storytelling every day. That skill, I think, is his soft skill that provides an immense amount of value.”

There is another side of Cameron’s upbringing in the blog world that, according to Firman, has been instrumental in player procurement.

“Through an incredible 10,000 hours type, he just has a better feel for the pro player pool. And not just the player pool, but the player market,” Firman said. “Just an encyclopedia of trades and free agent deals, and if you need someone to contextualize what are the norms of the major league player market and player pool right now, he is better than anyone I’ve ever met at that. And it makes sense because it was born through just like decades of reps of writing about every single trade. So he’s just built this database that just cannot be replicated, which is pretty amazing.”

Problem solver

That player and market knowledge has been put into action daily, with Cameron instrumental in finding many players who aren’t the bigger names but can help as immediate depth or perhaps have an otherwise unrecognized skill the Mariners can can further develop.

It was a relationship, however, that may have paid off in spades recently for the Mariners. Cameron appears to have initiated something that perhaps kickstarted the conclusion of what had been an offseason-long wait for the completion of the Brendan Donovan trade with the St. Louis Cardinals, while at the same time fulfilling what the old USS Mariner and Lookout Landing crews would consider a dream trade. With the Rays a surprise third party in the trade, taking Ben Williamson from Seattle, one had to wonder: Was there any former blogfather involvement?

“Jeff Sullivan and I are still really good friends, we talk pretty regularly,” Cameron said with a laugh before acknowledging the Mariners and Cardinals seemed deadlocked trying to coming to an agreement on a Donovan trade. “I couldn’t exactly see the path forward. And I remember reaching out to Jeff and I was just like, you guys have to be Ben Williamson fans, right? Like, you built an entire team out of Ben Williamsons, of like these interesting, great defenders with good makeup who can play all over the field. This is what you guys do.

“And he’s like, yeah, of course we love Ben Williamson. But I’m like, OK, well, if you could have your boss call my boss and tell him you guys like Ben Williamson, that would be great. And so (Rays president of baseball operations Erik Neander) called (Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto) and was like, hey, we’ve heard you guys are struggling with St. Louis. Maybe we can help with Ben Williamson. And that I think helped grease the skids a little bit. So it was definitely Jerry and Erik and (Cardinals president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom) doing the deal. I did put the bug in Jeff’s ear like, hey, man, this is your kind of player. You should tell us that.”

“Dream come true”

It is not hard to see Cameron has a deep appreciation for where he is now. The fan in him is still there, and there have indeed been goosebump moments.

“I was in Toronto for Game 6 and 7 (of the 2025 American League Championship Series). Heartbreaking at the end, but what a cool ride, right?” Cameron said. “To be able to sit there with Jerry and (Mariners general manager Justin Hollander) and Joel Firman and David Hesslink, and just like so many of the people in our front office who I consider not just co-workers but friends. Just to be able to go on this ride with them, to watch a team (that) for most of my childhood was not very good. Like when in the mid-90s when we were finally like, OK, we’re actually going to compete for a playoff run. We were not probably not going to win the World Series, but we might get to the playoffs once. It turned Seattle into a baseball town and then had another dry run for a little while.

“To be able to watch a city that I grew up in, an organization that I grew up rooting for, all those childhood memories? The Geno grand slam, I was there for that. It’s incredible to see Seattle just having this pent-up demand for a good baseball team for so long. To be able to see it in person come to pass is a childhood dream come true.”

And what comes next? Likely something he would have loved to write at USS Mariner.

“This is the best Mariner team I’ve ever seen,” Cameron said. “And I’ve been watching for 41 years. We’ve never had a team this good, in my opinion. Doesn’t mean we’re going to have the same success we had last year, but I think we have one of the best lineups in baseball. We have one of the best rotations in baseball. We have one of the best bullpens in baseball. We have one of the best farm systems in baseball. There’s not a lot of areas where you look at and you’re like, OK, we’re going to need to go acquire ‘X.’

“I look at this team and we’re not going to put the pressure on Cal (Raleigh) to hit 60 home runs, but he’s an incredible player. I think Julio (Rodríguez) has more in front of him. I think (Victor Robles, Dominic Canzone and Luke Raley), some of these guys could have better seasons than they’ve had before. I think our starting rotation was not at full strength last year, right? There’s ways in which this team could be better than the team that was one game away from the World Series last year. That’s really exciting.”

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