The slow-motion car crash that is the 2026 Seattle Mariners’ season is finally coming to an end this week. The team was finally, mercifully, eliminated from playoff contention Thursday night, and a season that began with World Series aspirations ended with a humiliating faceplant.
As a Mariners fan for nearly 4 decades, I should have known better than to hope. The team made it within two wins of its first-ever World Series appearance last year and aggressively made moves to improve in the offseason. On paper, the team was expected to run away and hide with the American League West Division. Sure, they scuffled out of the gate, but the team still entered the All-Star break leading the division. They scuffled more after the break but were only a few games back and in the thick of the Wild Card chase at the trade deadline. Instead of living up to the hope of what the team could be on paper, they chose to leap straight into the dumpster to close out the season.
What went wrong with this team? The bigger challenge is finding anything that went right.
No one could expect Cal Raleigh to repeat his historic 2025 performance. No one saw him turning into one of the worst players in baseball overnight.
Brendan Donovan was acquired as an on-base threat at the top of the order to set the table for the rest of the team. Instead, the number of days he spent on the disabled list with a litany of injuries rivaled his number of at-bats.
The team’s pitching staff went from one of the best in baseball to the bottom 10, without any significant personnel changes.
The team’s defense fell from among the best in baseball to among the worst, without significant personnel changes.
The team tried to improve its woeful platoon bat production at the trade deadline, but jettisoned failed experiment Rob Refsneder for on-base machine Taylor Ward. As soon as he was swapped from Orioles orange and black into Mariners grey and blue, Ward fell off a cliff, managing to put up the worst WAR numbers through 100 at-bats in team history, worse somehow than the player he replaced.
Manager Dan Wilson, who got the job as a team icon after Scott Servais was fired in 2024, has made far more questionable bullpen decisions than he has answers for what went wrong. The same repeated answer night after night quickly turned into a Reddit meme: “Tough one tonight.”
The good news for Mariners fans? They’re suffering as an end, at least until next year.
The bad news?
There is no quick or obvious way for the team to claw its way out of this mess.
Wilson is almost certain to be gone the instant the season ends. Team President Jerry Dipoto avoided responsibility for the team’s underachievement in 2024 by tossing Servais over the side. Will he be so lucky again, after missing the playoffs for the ninth time in his 11 seasons leading the Mariners?
This was supposed to be the prime of the Mariners’ competitive window. The Rangers were struggling despite spending big money to compete; the Astros were aging, and the farm system was running thin. The Athletics were floundering through their time in Sacramento, and the Angels were a perpetual dumpster fire.
Now though? The Astros have reloaded and could win the division again. The Rangers passed the Mariners in the standings. The A’s move into a new ballpark and a bigger market soon, and the Angels are being sold to a new ownership group.
A window that seemed wide open and full of potential just a year ago is in danger of rapidly closing.
The Mariners have promoted almost all their significant minor league talent except for starter Ryan Sloane. They have no up-and-coming position players. Anointed future shortstop Colt Emerson struggled mightily in his first big league experience before being lost to injury. Lazaro Montes will likely be needed to replace Randy Arozarena, the team’s only offensive bright spot this season. Arozarena is a free agent at season’s end and is almost certainly headed for greener pastures. Whether Montes is ready for that role is an open question, but the Mariners may have no choice but to find out.
The Mariners window may be further squandered if there is a significant work stoppage for baseball next season. Players and owners are far apart on a new collective bargaining agreement, and the odds are high that a lockout or strike will occur before the 2027 season. If there is no baseball next year, it will be another year ticking away for the team’s vaunted pitching staff, another year off the prime of Raleigh and Julio Rodriguez. For Mariners fans, “wait until next year” could turn into “wait until the year after next year” if there is a stoppage.
They’ll have to keep hoping against hope that doesn’t turn it from “wait until next year” into infinity.
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