The Seattle Mariners’ midseason shakeup was supposed to at least nudge the offense in the right direction. Instead, it’s gotten worse.
When Bobby Magallanes was let go in late July, the move put a half-season of offensive frustration on a coach who was essentially a third-string option, while keeping Edgar Martinez and Kevin Seitzer in their roles. It looked like a partial answer, a way to show accountability without truly resetting the operation. The results since then have only sharpened the problem.
With Magallanes: a .687 OPS and 4.0 runs per game. Without him: a .678 OPS and 3.8 runs per game.
Those numbers came into focus after Jon Morosi of MLB Network called out Seattle’s broader offensive failures in an X post on Monday. Digging a little deeper makes the picture even uglier.
The Mariners’ xwOBA after the firing sits at .304, which is actually lower than the .318 mark before it. Whatever the plan was, it hasn’t produced anything close to a turnaround.
The bigger issue is that one coaching change was never going to cover up everything dragging this lineup down. Cal Raleigh, Brendan Donovan and Julio Rodríguez have all dealt with injuries, and Rodríguez hasn’t looked the same since his concussion in early July.
Raleigh’s regression has been a major storyline, as has Josh Naylor’s. Without Randy Arozarena and Dominic Canzone, this group would be even harder to watch.
Still, the Magallanes move left a clear question hanging over the rest of the staff: if he was the mechanical specialist between Raleigh and Seitzer, why wasn’t he the one who found the adjustment that finally got Raleigh going? Since August 21, Raleigh has posted a 1.338 OPS. But it took another month after Magallanes was fired for Martinez, Seitzer and the rest of the staff to identify the fix.
That delay matters because Raleigh’s issue wasn’t exactly hidden. He’d been struggling all season, and the reason for the adjustment - catching up to fastballs - had been an open secret. The longer the staff waited, the more it looked like they were hoping the problem would sort itself out.
Fastballs remain the clearest sign of how badly this offense has been handled. If Seitzer is supposed to be the day-to-day approach guy, then Seattle’s inability to hit velocity lands squarely on his plate.
Mariners hitters are tied for the worst Run Value against fastballs in MLB at minus-53, and opposing pitchers have taken full advantage, throwing them about 60 percent fastballs in August and September. Even with that level of exposure, Seattle is still only 24th in the league in Run Value against fastballs since the start of August.
Dan Wilson doesn’t get to escape that mess, either. A manager in his spot would ideally be pressing his coaches to solve a problem this severe before it buried the season.
Either that didn’t happen, or it didn’t happen well enough. Both possibilities fit the broader pattern around Wilson and accountability.
There’s also a fair argument that the Mariners were never as strong offensively as the preseason projection suggested. Some of the regression was always there waiting. But a team that entered the year with a top-10 offense on paper cannot simply shrug off becoming MLB’s worst lineup and pretend it was inevitable.
More changes appear likely. Martinez may have some protection because of who he is, but Wilson has looked vulnerable for some time. And if Seattle really wants a lesson in how to respond to disappointment, it can look at the Atlanta Braves, whose offense has rebounded after they moved on from Seitzer following a letdown in 2024.
If the Mariners start making real changes, it will mean they finally stopped pretending one firing could fix a deeper problem. It will mean they looked in the mirror and then broke it.
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