The Mariners’ winter looked smart in February. By September, it looked flimsy.
ESPN’s grades tell the whole story. Seattle got an A-minus after the offseason, then an F once the season was over.
That swing wasn’t just about results. It was a verdict on how the roster was built: good enough when everything lined up, fragile when it didn’t.
On paper, the moves made sense. The Mariners signed Josh Naylor to a five-year contract, giving first base a long-term answer.
They traded for Brendan Donovan, a switch-hitting, versatile infielder with strong on-base skills who could move around the diamond. They also added left-handed reliever Jose A.
Ferrer and brought in Rob Refsnyder to handle left-handed pitching.
Jorge Polanco and Eugenio Suárez were gone, but ESPN viewed Polanco as the only major contributor missing from the 2025 roster. The bigger idea was continuity. Seattle was bringing back an AL West champion, keeping most of the group that won 90 games and came within one win of the World Series, and pairing that core with one of MLB’s most celebrated pitching rotations.
That was enough to earn the benefit of the doubt in February. It also came with some obvious questions.
ESPN still pointed to the backup-catching situation and the lack of a proven sixth starter after Logan Evans suffered a season-ending injury. Those issues were easy to treat as minor concerns because the top of the roster looked so strong.
Then the season happened.
ESPN reported that Seattle was 47-44 and leading the AL West after beating Toronto on July 5. At that point, FanGraphs gave the Mariners a 63 percent chance to win the division and an 85 percent chance to make the postseason.
They had a +27 run differential then. After that, they finished with a -90 mark.
The collapse was brutal. Only the Athletics, Rockies and Reds allowed more runs during that stretch.
The rotation that was supposed to hold everything together ranked in the bottom five in ERA after July 5. The offense finished 28th in runs.
The defense was 26th in defensive runs saved. Andrés Muñoz was tied for the major-league lead with 10 blown saves.
That kind of failure doesn’t come from one bad break. It comes when the pieces stop covering for each other.
Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez never delivered the long, star-level surge Seattle was counting on. The supporting cast couldn’t make up the difference.
The pitching couldn’t rescue the lineup. The defense kept making life harder.
One weakness fed the next until the whole thing caved in.
That’s the difference between the two grades. The A-minus was about transactions. The F was about structure.
And that’s the real problem. Seattle didn’t build a bad roster from scratch.
It built a talented one and assumed continuity would be enough. The Mariners kept the core together, added a few sensible pieces and expected their best players and elite rotation to carry the rest.
That can produce a contender. It doesn’t create much margin for error.
None of that means every move was wrong. Naylor was a worthy investment.
Donovan was a logical addition. But Seattle treated those moves like the final step, when the roster still needed more insulation.
That’s why writing off 2026 as a one-year fluke would miss the point. Sure, the rotation should be better next season.
Raleigh and Rodríguez should be more productive. Injured players should come back healthy, and the young talent should be further along.
But the Mariners still need more than hope that the best-case version of everyone shows up.
They need offense beyond the stars. They need more redundancy.
They need depth that can survive a bad month, a lost arm, or a slump from a cornerstone player. A bullpen that falls apart after losing its setup man isn’t a strong bullpen.
Seattle doesn’t need another A-minus offseason grade. It needs a roster that can absorb damage and still look like a contender.
In Other News...
Mariners Fans Need To Confront One Big Lazaro Montes Concern
Lazaro Montes has already given Mariners fans a reason to dream, mostly because of the kind of power that can change the feel of a game in one swing. The highly regarded position player prospect has made a name for himself with big-time pop, including the longest home run at T-Mobile Park in the Statcast era, and that kind of raw strength is exactly why his rise in the system has drawn so much attention.
The question hanging over Montes is whether the rest of his profile will catch up enough to let that power play consistently at the next level. His contact issues, especially against fastballs and left-handed pitching, have kept him from fully unlocking that ceiling so far, even as he continues to show real promise. Still, the expectation is that hell be part of Seattles roster next season, which means the Mariners may soon find out just how much room there is for growth. [Read more 🡒]
Mariners Just Got Another Brutal Reminder Of What This Season Became
A season that once looked like it might carry the Mariners back into October instead became another long lesson in how quickly expectations can slip away. Seattles promising start faded under the weight of too little offense, shaky defense and late-game failures, the same issues that kept showing up as the standings tightened and the margins got smaller.
ESPNs David Schoenfield reflected that frustration in a harsh assessment of the clubs year, and it landed as just another reminder of where things stand in Seattle. The scrutiny is not only on the roster, either, with Dan Wilson expected to be replaced and Jerry Dipoto still carrying the burden of having reached the playoffs only twice in 11 seasons as president of baseball operations. [Read more 🡒]
Logan Gilberts Frustration Says Everything About Seattles Lost Season
Logan Gilbert has become one of the steady reference points in Seattle, so when he started talking about the Mariners 2026 slide, it carried the kind of weight that comes with tenure. After a 7-0 loss to the Astros and the end of the clubs Wild Card hopes, the Mariners are left clinging to a slim mathematical path in the AL West while trying to make sense of a season that never really found a clean rhythm.
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 🡒]