The Seattle Mariners’ offense has reached the point where even the names attached to it are under the microscope.
After Thursday’s 11-0 loss to the Detroit Tigers, Seattle was left with its 11th shutout of the season, which ties the club for the most in MLB. That already gives the Mariners five more shutouts than they had all of last season. Only one team in baseball has scored fewer runs overall, and that’s the backdrop for a 56-60 record that keeps dragging the season deeper into the mud.
The latest loss wasn’t solely on the bats. The pitching, along with Victor Robles, gave up 11 runs, and the Mariners did lose the series to Detroit. But two shutout losses in three days is hard to ignore, especially when the lineup keeps looking stuck in place.
That’s why the scrutiny is no longer limited to manager Dan Wilson. Injuries and an underwhelming trade deadline have played their part, but the bigger issue keeps circling back to an offense that hasn’t found a way to breathe. And at this stage, that means Edgar Martinez should not be viewed as untouchable.
The move to fire assistant hitting coach Bobby Magallanes was supposed to jolt the lineup. Instead, it has only underscored how deep the problem runs.
Before Magallanes was let go, Seattle averaged 4.0 runs per game with a .687 OPS over 103 games. Since then, the Mariners have averaged 3.3 runs per game with a .681 OPS in 13 games.
The numbers say the offense was bad with Magallanes and somehow even worse without him.
Relative to last season, Seattle has taken major hits across the board: the seventh-biggest drop in batting average, the sixth-biggest drop in on-base percentage and the fourth-biggest drop in slugging percentage. That’s not a slump. That’s a collapse.
There are some areas where the Mariners’ approach has clearly deteriorated. Their out-of-zone swing rate has climbed by 3.3%.
Even more alarming has been what’s happened against fastballs, where the drop-off has been dramatic. In 2025, Seattle posted a +25 Run Value against fastballs, good for seventh in MLB.
In 2026, that number has flipped to -42, which ranks 28th. That’s a 67-point swing in the wrong direction, and with fastballs making up 55 percent of the pitches Mariners hitters have seen, it means they’ve been overmatched more than half the time.
Cal Raleigh has been the worst offender in that area. After producing a +28 Run Value against fastballs in his 60-homer season last year, he has fallen to -17 this season. Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci broke down issues with Raleigh’s setup and swing in a two-minute video, and that leaves a blunt question hanging over the coaching staff: either Martinez and Kevin Seitzer haven’t identified the same problems, or they have and haven’t been able to fix them.
That’s the heart of the matter now. Martinez, Seattle’s senior director of hitting strategy, and Seitzer, the hitting coach, can point to the right mindset and useful routines from 2025. But 2026 has been a different test, and the results have been ugly almost every day.
Seitzer has already been fired by the Atlanta Braves after a similar offensive fall from 2023 to 2024, so there is precedent there. Martinez is a different case entirely. As a Mariners Hall of Famer and one of the best hitters ever, he carries a status that makes any discussion of his job much more complicated.
Still, the results are the results. And for a Mariners offense that keeps sinking further, the organization has to at least ask whether the current setup is working.
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