The Mariners are officially headed for their first losing season since 2020, and the number that really stings is the 82 losses they’ve piled up already. That’s their most since 2019, and with current projections pointing toward even more damage, the season has gone far enough to make one old trade-deadline debate look a lot clearer in hindsight: Seattle was right not to chase Tarik Skubal.
That idea had real traction before the Aug. 3 deadline. ESPN’s Jeff Passan was among those suggesting the Mariners should go after the left-hander, and it wasn’t hard to see why.
Skubal was viewed as the kind of elite arm who could change the feel of a rotation and maybe drag a whole team along with it, even as a short-term rental. When the Dodgers landed him, the package they sent to the Tigers only fueled the noise that Seattle had let a huge opportunity slip away.
But the Mariners’ collapse has made the argument look different now. Seattle was 51-50 after a series-opening win over the Reds in late July, and since then they’ve gone 19-32. Even if you drop Skubal’s three wins with the Dodgers into the Mariners’ ledger, they’d still be sitting at 73-79, four games behind the Astros in the division and four back of the final AL wild card spot with 10 games left.
And that’s before you even get to the rest of the mess. The Dodgers’ bullpen helped secure three more wins in games Skubal started but didn’t personally finish with the victory, yet those were tight one-run contests. Given that Seattle’s bullpen ranks dead last in team ERA since the beginning of August, it’s fair to wonder how much help Skubal would have actually gotten if those games had played out in a Mariners uniform.
The rotation hasn’t exactly been a lifeline either. Over the same stretch, Seattle ranks 24th in team ERA.
Add in an offense that’s third-worst in runs scored per game and a defense that sits last in Fielding Run Value, and the picture gets pretty bleak. Even a pitcher with Skubal’s résumé - the two-time reigning AL Cy Young winner - only takes the mound once every five days.
There’s also the price tag. The Dodgers had to part with two top-100 prospects to get him from the Tigers. Seattle could have topped that, but the kind of package it would have taken almost certainly would have meant names like Lazaro Montes and Felnin Celesten, which would have been painful then and would look even worse now.
And for Skubal himself, Seattle would have offered little reward beyond the uniform change. A move to the Mariners would have meant no chance to boost his free-agent case in the playoffs.
There are plenty of Mariners fans who want the front office to swing bigger, more like the Dodgers or Yankees. That impulse is easy to understand. But with this season sitting where it is, a bold move for Skubal would have been a costly miss, not a rescue.
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