Play the Kids, Seattle
I am no longer asking.
This piece was written and published shortly before the news that Seattle had made a change in both captaincy and head coach, with Heinrich Klaasen stepping aside and Matthew Mott being relieved of duties. It has been lightly edited to reflect this development.
After hitting a respectable if slow-burning 44 off 36 in a loss to LA on Sunday, Aaron Jones missed Seattle’s game against San Francisco Wednesday night. He was replaced with 36 year old Sujit Nayak, who has a whopping 9 T20 innings in his entire career including Wednesday. Sujit scored 15 off 21 with one boundary and then got out hitting such a perfectly catchable pop fly that Matt Short celebrated before it even hit the peak of its arc through the air. Seattle was bowled out for 24 runs over the ensuing 28 balls, and they remain winless halfway through their 2025 Major League Cricket season.
Question - what value did Sujit bring that trumped the benefit of playing Ali Sheikh?
Seattle might be the worst domestic team in T20 cricket at present, just ahead of last year’s St. Kitts & Nevis Patriots and this year’s Multan Sultans. The only other team in ICC-sanctioned T20 competition that has yet to win a game in its league this season is Essex in the Vitality Blast, and they are getting routinely obliterated. The thought of Seattle and Essex playing each other crossed my mind doing that research and I felt like a sicko, not least of all because I think Seattle would lose that game, too.
The big difference between Essex and Seattle is that Essex is steering into the skid and fielded not one but three players under the age of 21 in their last T20, a 47 run loss to Kent last week. Seattle has fielded two players under the age of 25 all season: Waqar Salamkheil and Gerald Coetzee. The Orcas have not fielded a player under the age of 23 in the XI, with 22 year old Ali Sheikh seeing the field exclusively as a substitute fielder, 21 year old Ayan Desai and 20 year old U23 draft pick Rahul Jariwala yet to see the field at all.
Halfway through a winless season, Seattle has nothing to lose except five games they are probably going to lose either way. There is no justification outside of injury or illness to avoid putting these players on the field, and Ali Sheikh has been on the field while Desai and Jariwala have been taking warm-ups and, at least from the outside looking in, appear to be healthy. Nothing says these players have to be better than the ones they’re replacing, but they have the opportunity to learn and improve because they are years away from their primes, and Seattle is at least a full year away from being relevant in Major League Cricket’s championship race (or more if the league expands to eight teams for 2026 as the momentum suggests).
I have talked about this before with the LA Knight Riders, but selling worn down, out of form, and (in Shimron Hetmyer’s case) visibly pissed off veterans won’t go very far if the wins aren’t piling up. American fans will buy into youth and a vision for a future, and Seattle has the tools, personnel, and even marketing apparatus to start that process now. The on-field selection owes it to the people putting in the work off the field to make the Orcas feel like a true American sports team to put forward something that gives people a compelling reason to watch. Now that Matthew Mott and Heinrich Klaasen have stepped aside in leadership roles, there is all the more impetus for change. Let the Orca Pod get a glimpse of what their future holds.
It’s time, Seattle. Play the kids. This is what you brought them in for. Start tonight against New York. I’m not asking.
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MLC Power Rankings - Week 2
Jun 23
GRAND PRAIRIE, TX - The second week of MLC produced some colorful plots within games and a lot more questions than answers for at least four of the six teams that took the field in Grand Prairie over the weekend after wrapping up an overall successful Oakland leg for the league. The 2025 season will hit its halfway mark this week, and the league has a c…
I have had to shuffle some pieces around because I’ve been hit with flashes of mad inspiration and the best of intentions seemingly every time I turn on a game, but I’ll have more on the Unicorns next week, and I’m aiming to write about each team at least once before the season ends. Stay tuned!
You make a really good point here! If Seattle can't give their fans commanding performances, they might as well show them some interesting experiments.