A disappointing season by the Seattle Mariners deserves answers, and fans and reporters got some this week from president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto, general manager Justin Hollander and president John Stanton.
Seattle Mariners GM addresses 3 players who had down years in 2026
Here’s what struck me.
• It’s a small thing, but I appreciated that Justin Hollander started his interview by apologizing to the fans.
I understand, we are all angry. I’m angry. You are crazy. You want more than words; you want action. But after seeing many arrogant dismissals of concerns from people in Seattle and outside the city, I personally appreciated seeing a general manager seem more contrite.
Hollander stopped by the Seattle Sports studios on Tuesday for an interview with Brock and Salk and began with this: “You deserve an in-person explanation. Our fans do, the listeners do. I feel terrible for the way this happened. Apologies to everyone who watched the way we played all year. To you guys who had to talk about it, to our fans, to Rick Rizzs. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go for Rick last year.”
He also answered some excellent questions from Brock and Salk (Why wasn’t something done sooner with manager Dan Wilson? Why was the defense so bad and how do you rate it? Why have veteran free agent right-handed bats been a black hole?), and I recommend you listen to the full interview.
While I agree that an apology is a starting point and that tone is important from baseball executives, it doesn’t solve the problems. Finding answers to these problems is the goal this offseason.
• Effort and responsibility were major themes, but what would correction look like?
We’ve been talking about it all year. Was it on a player? On a manager? And why was nothing done?
“I never believe in the idea that there’s a single responsible cop walking around the clubhouse,” Hollander said. “I think there’s a perception on our team that Cal (Raleigh) is the leader, he should play 135 games a year, he should change hitting, he should hit 40 to 60 home runs and he should have all the tough conversations between players in our clubhouse…I don’t think that works. I think there’s a culture that exists on teams where there are no good cops or bad cops, there are just norms.”
I loved the last line. Because that’s true for every elite team I’ve covered. I’d say that’s true for the team across the lake right now, and it’s a huge (and underrated) part of their championship run. There are leaders on every team who can have conversations or step in front of a microphone to take responsibility when necessary. There are coaches who have tough love and clearly express these standards. But there is a universal understanding of the standard, the method and the objective. To me, this is what culture means in competitive sport.
My co-host Michael Bumpus shared a brief behind-the-scenes story over the summer to highlight this: A Seahawks player did something – skip a rep, or maybe call a play… I don’t remember the offense very well, but it went mostly unnoticed – and a team leader gave him a quick and simple reminder: “We don’t do that here.” »
There are some tough players on this Mariners team. Friendly players. Fun players. Talented players. This is not a clubhouse full of toxicity. But it was also a clubhouse that, from the outside, appeared to lack buy-in, accountability and relentless effort. Organizing that in baseball is a completely different beast, but Dipoto and Hollander (and those lead players) should spend a good portion of the offseason figuring out how to do it. No team has won a World Series without it.
• The Mariners will have to get uncomfortable.
This is not something that was said directly by Dipoto or Hollander. But listening to Stanton’s interview with KING 5 and reading his Q&A with the Seattle Times, I was struck by how difficult the path to competing in MLB is.
Part of the reason is that this team isn’t operating on the budget of the Dodgers, Mets or Yankees. When Stanton balks at the idea of giving a huge 10-year contract to a superstar who won’t be a usable starter in the final seasons of his contract, you can understand the business decision. Whether you agree is another story – I’ve always been a fan of making bold moves to get wins now, especially for a team that has never touched a World Series – but I understand the reality that much of the league faces when it comes to massive betting. This is why the project-development-commerce approach has been used for years by this front office.
What’s difficult, however, are the limitations that large market teams don’t have. The Mariners have a good group of local talent, and this is an important step. But how do you round the edges or add a centerpiece that sits on top of them? The gap between 76 wins this year and 86 next year could theoretically be closed with better seasons from its core players (they’ll likely make the playoffs if they get Cal Raleigh’s version of Aug. 16-Sept. 26). But getting 90 wins? 93 victories? That’s a smaller difference compared to 86 or 88 wins, but it takes a lot more to get there.
It’s been 23 years since the Mariners surpassed the 90-win mark, and it’s a stretch that includes the best offensive season from a catcher we’ve ever seen and the best consecutive season from a rotation this team has ever had. This alone was not enough.
So they have two choices: They can make themselves uncomfortable by spending more, or they can make themselves uncomfortable by trading away cheap young talent. They clearly need to do at least one.
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