The Seattle Mariners entered the 2026 season with expectations. After finishing just one win short of the team’s first World Series appearance last year, the 2026 team, on paper, appeared even stronger.
But Mariners fans know better than to rely on hype and hope.
True to form, the Mariners have crashed out in multiple ways over the first month and a half of the new season.
Fans have seen Cal Raleigh revert from an MVP candidate who hit 60 home runs to one of the worst everyday players in baseball. One night after he snapped a 0-for-38 stretch, Raleigh landed on the disabled list while sporting a .161 average and a strikeout rate 5% higher than last year.
New acquisition Brendan Donovan, slated to be the team’s leadoff hitter and best threat to get on base regularly, has instead spent most of the season on the bench while either being sick or hurt.
The team’s bullpen is a MASH unit, with new injuries cropping up among the team’s high-leverage arms every week.
When confronted with a late-game pinch-hitting decision or pitching change in the early stretch of the season, manager Dan Wilson has managed to make the wrong choice nearly every time.
After an injury-plagued 2025 campaign, outfielder Luke Raley has bounced back strong, leading the team in home runs and OPS+. However, he rarely finishes games, as Wilson pulls him practically every time a left-handed pitcher takes the mound. Platooning is a common practice in Major League Baseball, and Raley does struggle against left-handed pitching. The issue is, his platoon mate, Rob Refsnyder, struggles against ALL pitching. In 61 plate appearances, Refsnyder is batting just .132, and appears to have hit a brick wall at the age of 35.
Even more inexplicably, Refsnyder is also used to platoon with the team’s other left-handed designated hitter/outfielder, Dom Canzone, who, while not having a season quite at the same level as Rayley, is also off to a strong start.
Online, Mariners fans have taken to blaming the team’s analytics department for Refsnyder’s overuse (or presence on the roster at all). Still, analytics don’t dictate using a worse player over a better player at every opportunity. In fact, they preach the opposite. Blindly inserting a player because they are right-handed, and theoretically hit left-handed pitching better, no matter the skill gap, is an old-school mentality, one that Wilson appears to be completely locked into.
Wilson also repeats the same mistake with veteran outfielder Connor Joe, who was called up to the major league team when outfielder Victor Robles went on the disabled list after just 13 at-bats. When Refsnyder gets used for either Canzone or Raley, Joe usually quickly follows him into the game for the other. Joe is a neat story, and put up some good numbers in spring training, but if a team with world series hopes is giving him significant playing time, that’s not a good sign.
There is some good news for the Mariners, even with their slow start. No one else is running away with the American League West. The Athletics are currently leading the division, just two games ahead of the third-place Mariners. Meanwhile, the Mariners have been taking a boot to the Houston Astros, who, after years of dominating the division, appear to finally be running out of steam, with the Mariners beating them 9 out of the last 10 times the teams have met.
Meanwhile, Julio Rodriguez is shaking off his usual rusty start and leaving “April Julio” in the dust as he begins to heat up. Cole Young has had a solid start to his second season and appears to have locked down the second base job for the foreseeable future. The team got starting pitcher Bryce Miller back from the disabled list and will go with a 6-man rotation while Miller and veteran Luis Castillo continue to fight for the fifth spot. The team is oozing with high upside starters in the upper minor leagues and has plenty of prospects left to trade.
Infielder Colt Emerson received a major league contract extension before he had even played in a game, showing that the big league team clearly believes in him while keeping him stashed at AAA Tacoma. Should shortstop JP Crawford get hurt again or Donovan go down for an extended period, Emerson will likely get the call for his major league debut.
Even though the Mariners have scuffled so far, they still have a clear path to revisiting last season’s success. They have to hope Raleigh returns to last season’s form after some recovery time on the injured list, that they can find a right-handed designated hitter who can hit their weight, and hope that a patchwork bullpen holds things together.
So, while the Mariners have not lived up to the preseason hype so far, there is still plenty of reason to hope for a turnaround over the rest of the season.
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