The Mariners don’t need another winter built around a cheap bet on power.
That’s the trap Seattle keeps stepping into: a hitter with a little pop, a recognizable skill, and just enough recent decline to make the deal feel safe. The logic is easy to sell.
The results usually aren’t. And after too many versions of the same experiment, the biggest free-agent mistake the Mariners must avoid this winter is the bargain-bin bat with obvious limits.
This isn’t about dismissing home runs, platoons or roster depth. Every contender needs all of them.
The problem is when those traits get mistaken for stability. Seattle has leaned on that distinction for years, and the lineup has paid for it.
Mitch Garver came in with a solid résumé and a two-year, $24 million deal after helping Texas win a World Series. On paper, it looked sensible enough: an experienced hitter with patience and power who could steady the DH spot.
In practice, it fell apart fast. He hit .172 with a .627 OPS in his first season in Seattle, lost the DH job and wound up as a backup catcher.
Rowdy Tellez was the cheaper version of the same idea. The Mariners gave him a $1.5 million shot, hoping his left-handed power could make up for the rest of the offensive package.
He did hit 11 home runs, but a .249 OBP made those blasts hard to justify. By June, he had been DFA’d.
Rob Refsnyder was the latest reminder that a bargain doesn’t have to be especially cheap to still be a mistake. Seattle guaranteed him $6.25 million on a one-year deal because of what he had done against left-handed pitching.
That was the whole pitch. It sounded clean.
It didn’t hold up.
Refsnyder hit .140 with a .465 OPS in 53 games. Even the niche skill the Mariners were buying vanished, as he posted a .458 OPS against lefties before going on the IL with knee trouble. The club released him on August 4, and another short-term plan ended before the season did.
That one stings because Refsnyder wasn’t brought in to rediscover anything. He was supposed to do one job.
The pattern goes back further than that. In 2023, Seattle signed AJ Pollock to a one-year, $7 million deal for a carefully defined platoon role.
Tommy La Stella was another low-cost veteran patch. Neither made it to the end of the summer.
Individually, none of those moves were outrageous. Collectively, they tell the same story: the Mariners keep building an offense through transactions that make sense on their own but leave the lineup short when you stack them together.
A contender can survive one reclamation project. It cannot keep depending on three or four of them to become players they no longer are.
Seattle’s commitment to avoiding long-term risk has created a different problem. The club ends up with a lineup that has to be reassembled every winter and, at times, patched again during the season.
Short deals preserve flexibility, sure. They also create churn.
If the hitter works, he gets more expensive or leaves. If he doesn’t, the Mariners are right back in the market hunting for another temporary fix.
The rotation has had stability. The offense hasn’t.
Teoscar Hernández is the example that keeps this conversation from becoming too tidy. He struck out 211 times while hitting 26 home runs for Seattle in 2023. Then he left for the Dodgers and put together a career-high 33 homers with an .840 OPS during their 2024 championship season.
That doesn’t mean Hernández was a broken hitter Seattle somehow failed to unlock. It means a talented player can look different in a different setting, and that should make the organization think about more than just the name on the contract.
Fit matters. The offensive environment matters.
So does the team’s ability to help established hitters adjust.
The answer isn’t a blacklist of hitters the Mariners should never sign. It’s a better standard for the kind of bat they keep bringing in. Seattle needs to stop chasing players whose value disappears the moment their one carrying tool or preferred matchup disappears.
What makes more sense is prioritizing hitters who control the strike zone and make enough contact to survive when the power dips. Josh Naylor is the kind of example that points in that direction.
Even with a bad shoulder and a wrist that needed surgery, he hit .261/.317/.350. And yes, the Mariners need more than 10 home runs from him.
What they really need is a meaningful commitment to a hitter who is more than a platoon piece, a rebound candidate or a bridge to the next guy. Flexibility only matters if a team actually uses it to build something better.
Seattle has spent years protecting itself from the wrong contract. Now it has to protect itself from another incomplete lineup. If it doesn’t, 2026 could happen all over again.
In Other News...
Cal Raleigh's Historic Season Says Everything About MLB's Schedule Debate
Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association are deep in talks on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, and one of the biggest items on the table is whether the regular season should be trimmed from 162 games to 154. There are also proposals floating around that would let higher-seeded playoff teams choose their opponents, part of a broader push to reshape how the postseason works and how much the schedule should matter.
For the Mariners, the debate hits close to home because Cal Raleighs 2025 power surge became one of the clearest examples of what a full season can produce. His run through the summer turned into a centerpiece of baseballs schedule conversation, with the kind of historic pacing that makes every missed game feel significant and every proposal to shorten the grind worth a second look. [Read more 🡒]
Mariners Face A Roster Reset With Four Key Free Agents Looming
The Mariners are heading into the next league year with a familiar kind of winter uncertainty, only this time the questions extend well beyond one offseason tune-up. Four players are set to reach free agency in 2026, giving Seattle a looming list of decisions around Randy Arozarena, J.P. Crawford, Taylor Ward and Hoby Milner as the front office starts to think about how much of the current core it can realistically keep together.
The picture gets even more interesting because the roster math is not limited to those four names. Victor Robles is likely to be moved off his team option, which would send him into the market, while Andres Munoz remains on track to stay in place. For a club trying to balance present-day competitiveness with future flexibility, the coming months could bring a broader reset than the standard year-end shuffle. [Read more 🡒]
Mariners Manager Search Suddenly Carries A Tough Offseason Clock
The Mariners offseason has already taken on a different shape with Dan Wilson gone and a managerial search now front and center, but the timing makes the job a little trickier than usual. Whoever takes over will inherit a roster that includes key players working back from post-season surgery, a group the new skipper will need to get to know quickly while also laying the groundwork for next year.
What makes the calendar feel even tighter is the possibility of an MLB lockout after the leagues current labor deal expires on Dec. 1, which could limit direct contact with players on the 40-man roster. For Seattle, that means the next manager may have a narrow window to build rapport, establish trust and start shaping the clubhouse before the offseason becomes far less flexible than it already is. [Read more 🡒]