Ed Sheeran faced pitches from a pitching machine at roughly 70 miles per hour in the Seattle Mariners' batting cages and hit all three balls, drawing genuine surprise from the All-Star center fielder feeding him tosses.

The session took place on 1 August 2026, during Sheeran's Loop Tour stop in Seattle. Julio Rodríguez — known across baseball as J-Rod — brought the singer into the Mariners' clubhouse after a Mariners win, where the two discussed music production before heading to the cages, according to MLB.com. There, Sheeran took swings off a batting tee and then faced soft-toss pitches from Rodríguez himself, alongside balls from a simulated pitching machine.

He made contact on every swing. Three balls, three hits. Rodríguez's reaction, captured on video and posted across the Mariners' social media accounts, was blunt: "I'm surprised, though — I'm surprised." (Billboard)

The Mariners shared footage of the cage session on their official TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and X accounts. The Instagram reel racked up roughly 22,000 likes and 272 comments (Mariners on Instagram). The club's post on X carried the caption: "Ed Sheeran's preshow routine looked a little different this past weekend ⚾" (MLB.com).

Yahoo Entertainment noted that Sheeran was, to some surprise, genuinely skilled with the bat (Yahoo Entertainment). Not a phrase anyone expected to read about a man whose instrument is an acoustic guitar.

After batting practice, the two swapped gifts. Rodríguez signed a baseball bat for Sheeran. Sheeran handed over suite tickets to his Seattle concert and promised to send Rodríguez a custom guitar (Billboard; MLB.com).

Sheeran's Loop Tour launched on 16 January in Auckland, New Zealand, in support of his eighth studio album, Play, released in September 2025. The album debuted at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 — the chart that ranks the most-consumed albums in the United States each week, combining physical sales, digital sales, and streaming equivalent album units, the measure that converts plays into album sales. Its lead single, "Azizam," reached the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100, the weekly singles chart tracking radio airplay, sales, and streaming activity (Billboard).

For a singer whose live show revolves around a loop pedal and a single acoustic guitar, a batting cage is about as far from the stage as it gets. That Rodríguez — a player who once signed a $209.3 million contract extension with the Mariners — was caught off guard says something about how rarely a musician walks into a cage and makes clean contact three times running.