Big changes are looming for the Seattle Mariners, and ESPN didn’t exactly sugarcoat why.
David Schoenfield handed Seattle an F for the season, with the club’s collapse standing out even more because of where it was just a little over two months ago. On July 5, FanGraphs had the Mariners with an 85% chance to reach the postseason. Now they’re staring at a finish at game 162.
That plunge hits harder when you remember they were one year removed from a run to Game 7 of last year’s ALCS against the Toronto Blue Jays.
Schoenfield pointed to a rough season from Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodriguez, but said the problems went much deeper than that. “The problems were across the board, however: 28th in runs scored, poor defense (26th in defensive runs saved), and closer Andres Munoz is tied for the MLB lead with 10 blown saves,” Schoenfield wrote.
He also made a pointed jab at the organization’s leadership situation. “Dan Wilson is certainly out as manager, and president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto has now made the playoffs just twice in his 11 seasons running the team. If only the Mariners had won 54% of their games,” he added.
That line was a clear callback to Dipoto’s much-mocked 2023 remark, when he said the team’s long-term aim was to win 54% of its regular season games. He was trying to frame a .540 winning percentage as the standard for a healthy, successful club, but the comment landed badly with fans and has followed him ever since.
Given the way this season has unraveled, Mariners fans are still taking plenty of heat from that quote - and from the result on the field.
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By September, though, the grade had plunged to an F, a harsh reflection of how quickly the season unraveled on multiple fronts. The Mariners pitching slipped, the offense disappeared, and even the defense stopped being a reliable backbone, exposing a roster that may have been talented but was not nearly deep enough to withstand a long stretch of trouble. [Read more 🡒]
Logan Gilberts Frustration Says Everything About Seattles Lost Season
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Gilbert pointed to the obvious fault lines, from pitching consistency to bullpen performance to an offense that has not given the staff much margin for error. For a team that entered the year expecting more, the frustration is less about one bad night than the accumulation of them, and the bigger question now is whether Seattle can use the final stretch to show any of the reliability it has lacked for most of the summer. [Read more 🡒]