The Mariners’ push to rebuild their clubhouse culture is running headfirst into a calendar problem, and Jerry Dipoto helped create it by waiting.
Seattle’s offseason priority is simple enough on paper: get back into playoff contention. The hard part is everything that follows.
The organization already started by clearing out several coaches and Dan Wilson, a familiar move for a team trying to change direction. But the timing raised eyebrows, especially since the shakeup came only days after the regular season ended.
For some, the real question is why the change didn’t come sooner. There’s a school of thought that if Wilson had been removed earlier in the year, much like his predecessor Scott Servais, the Mariners might have had enough runway to chase down an anemic AL West. Dipoto explained why he didn’t go that route.
“Making in-season change is difficult... I’ve only done that once in my entire career.
Obviously at midseason, we did something that we’ve really not done, which is upset the apple cart. Letting go of (assistant hitting coach) Bobby Magallanes was step one.
We had been trying to find ways to create more urgency with the team on the field than we were seeing day to day,”
That hesitation makes sense in a vacuum. Nobody around the team seemed eager to admit the problem was real, and plenty of people appeared to be hoping the season would somehow correct itself. But by waiting until the end, Dipoto may have made the next step even harder.
The looming labor stoppage is set to squeeze the Mariners’ reset even further. The CBA negotiations already look messy, with the two sides still far apart on the biggest issue, a salary cap. A shortened season feels like the likely result.
And there’s another catch: until a new agreement is ratified, players and team personnel won’t be allowed to communicate. That includes coaches. So even if Seattle makes hires, those people won’t be able to begin building relationships with the roster until the labor situation is resolved.
MLB has been through this kind of delay before. During the 2022 CBA negotiations, it took until March 10th to end the lockout, which pushed Spring Training back to March 17th and Opening Day to April 8th. This time around, the issues are even more contentious, so the schedule could get squeezed even tighter.
None of this is a surprise. The possibility of a stoppage has been discussed all year, and Dipoto knew time would be short.
He simply bet that the roster he built for 2026 could hold together long enough to limit how much he had to change. That gamble failed.
Now the Mariners are stuck trying to overhaul their culture in an offseason that may not offer nearly enough of it. Even in a normal winter, that’s a tough assignment.
In a condensed one, it borders on impossible. Still, that’s the job in Seattle if the Mariners want to get back to being American League contenders.
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