The Mariners spent too much of 2026 trying to coax a flawed roster into becoming something it wasn’t. The result was a 76-86 season, and now Jerry Dipoto and the front office have an offseason that can’t be solved by shuffling the same parts and hoping for a different outcome.
Start with the defense, because Seattle’s glove work was more damaging than merely underwhelming. The Mariners finished last in the majors with -53 Outs Above Average and -52 Fielding Run Value, numbers that point to a team that kept making ordinary situations worse for its pitchers.
The issues weren’t hard to spot, either. The roster lacked range, dependable positioning and the kind of athleticism that cleans up mistakes instead of stacking them.
That creates a real challenge for the infield picture, especially with Colt Emerson in the mix. Seattle has to figure out where he belongs long term, then build around that answer.
The same goes for the other young players: they need defined defensive homes, not endless movement. Flexibility only matters if somebody actually gets good somewhere.
The Mariners also need outside help from players who can impact both sides of the game. At minimum, that means one everyday two-way addition and a bench player whose glove really matters. “Versatile” can’t keep being code for someone who carries several gloves and still fields poorly with all of them.
Fixing the defense would help every pitcher on the staff without asking for a new pitch or a mechanical overhaul. That makes it Seattle’s clearest path to immediate improvement.
Offense, though, is the bigger problem. The Mariners hit .233, 29th in the majors, with a .693 OPS in 2026.
That is nowhere close to enough for a team that wants to think of itself as a contender. Yes, Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodríguez and Josh Naylor can be better.
Those are fair expectations. They are not offseason additions.
Seattle needs outside offense at multiple spots, and three upgrades doesn’t sound like too much for a team that won 76 games. One of those moves has to be an established impact bat, the kind of hitter who changes the way opposing pitchers attack the lineup.
The other additions can be more specialized, but they still need to bring something real - contact, on-base ability, platoon balance. The Mariners need adults in the room.
Brendan Donovan could fit that description, but there’s no guarantee he’ll be able to hold up for a full season after playing only 39 games this year. Seattle already knows how dangerous it is to rely on one point of failure.
That same lesson applies to the bench. The Mariners have repeatedly chased narrow skills and called it roster construction, only to end up with players who couldn’t do enough once the one thing they were hired to do stopped working.
In 2025, that group included Donovan Solano, Rowdy Tellez and even Leody Taveras. Solano was supposed to help against left-handed pitching.
Tellez brought cheap power. Taveras offered speed, center-field experience and a former top-prospect pedigree.
The returns were rough. Solano hit .639 OPS and only three home runs in 69 games.
Tellez hit 11 homers, but his .249 on-base percentage made him far too one-dimensional. Taveras managed just a .174 average and a .470 OPS before the experiment ended after 28 games.
The same pattern showed up again in 2026 with Rob Refsnyder, signed for his track record against lefties and supposed to give Seattle a useful right-handed bat. Instead, knee issues and poor production left him at .140/.211/.254 with a .465 OPS.
Taylor Ward belongs in a separate bucket because Seattle acquired him at the deadline to help the everyday lineup, not merely fill a bench role. That made his collapse even more damaging. In 32 games for the Mariners, Ward hit .125 without a home run.
One veteran miss happens. Five across two seasons points to a roster-building problem.
Seattle keeps betting on one attractive trait - platoon splits, power, speed, defensive versatility, a past season that still looks shiny on paper - and acting like those fragments will somehow assemble into a functional bench. They don’t.
Once the selling point disappears, the Mariners are left with a player who can’t help enough anywhere else.
That has to change. Seattle needs reserves with broader floors, not just names and neat little scouting labels. Sometimes the job is simply to find competent major leaguers who stay useful when the original plan goes sideways.
Pitching comes fourth on the list only because the rotation still carries more believable talent than the rest of the roster. Even so, the second half took a bite out of that group’s reputation. Seattle’s rotation was among baseball’s worst units by adjusted ERA and FIP during August, and the club’s old formula - pitch well, catch the ball and scrape together enough runs - fell apart when all three parts failed together.
The Mariners do need more than one dependable bullpen arm, along with better middle-relief depth and a hard look at every starter. But pitching should be reinforced, not treated as the whole offseason project. The deeper issue was building a roster that demanded near-perfection from its arms while offering too little offense and too little defense behind them.
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Dipoto has acknowledged how difficult it is to make meaningful changes in the middle of a season, and the calendar does not offer much relief. With the looming MLB labor stoppage expected to limit communication between team personnel and players, Seattle is staring at a compressed offseason and the possibility of a shortened 2024 season if Collective Bargaining Agreement talks drag on. For a team trying to reset while staying competitive, the timing could hardly be less forgiving. [Read more 🡒]