MATT'S MUSINGS

The Mariners are back, and it’s fine

Matt Baide | Aug 03, 20230

The Seattle Mariners are back, and no, not in the playoff hunt.

It appears after last season of breaking the two-decade playoff drought, the Mariners are back to the team they were before last season: mediocre.

Mariners’ fans came into the season with a lot of optimism, and for good reason. With breaking the playoff drought, they actually won a playoff series, defeating the Blue Jays in the opening round series in Toronto to earn a place in the MLB Divisional Series against the Houston Astros. The Astros swept the Mariners, concluding the series with an 18-inning marathon that ended 1-0 for Houston, which eventually went on to win the World Series.

The Mariners made some moves last offseason, bringing in Teoscar Hernandez from the Toronto Blue Jays and Kolten Wong from the Milwaukee Brewers. They joined a team with the pitching rotation of Luis Castillo, George Kirby, Logan Gilbert, Robbie Ray and Marco Gonzales.

On the podcast “Washington East to West Sports” on YouTube, I predicted the Mariners would win 92 games, would finish second in the AL West and make the playoffs. My mantra for baseball is I don’t care about where teams are at until August, because there are so many games, 162, and it’s really difficult to tell how good teams are until you get to the back half of the season.

The Mariners are 55-52 and fourth in the AL West behind the Rangers, Astros and Angels. They traded away Paul Sewald and AJ Pollock on Monday, and appear to be interested in trading Hernandez and Ty France, which would indicate that this team is likely selling some assets in order to prepare for the 2024 Seattle Mariners.

If you are on social media, whether it’s Reddit, Facebook or Twitter (I’m not calling it X, Elon), you will likely see Mariners fans calling this season over.

I am not going to go that far, considering the Mariners are only 3½ games back of the final wild card spot right now. It will be a difficult climb to gain one of the wild card spots, with the AL East looking great with all five teams above .500 and in the playoff hunt, with the Rays and Blue Jays occupying two of the three wild card spots and the Houston Astros in the other spot.

I don’t think the season is over, but it doesn’t look good, but that is fine. It feels like the fan base had expectations of this team this year that were much higher than were attainable, perhaps even including myself with my 92-win prediction.

There is a lot of talk about what to do with manager Scott Servais and general manager Jerry Dipoto. Dipoto has been the Mariners’ GM for the last eight years, seven of those under the current ownership group. A lot of talk online is about how the Mariners did not spend money in free agency to acquire enough bats to help the pitchers win games. John Stanton and the ownership group is to blame for this, but that does not mean Dipoto does not deserve blame as well as Servais, who is supposed to be putting players in the correct position to win games.

If this season ends in no playoffs, I’m all for letting go of Dipoto and Servais during or after next season. While they were a piece of the puzzle that helped break the playoff drought, I would enjoy rooting for a postseason team more than once every 20 years. I am fine with calling this season a one-off for now, but if this continues, I believe it is time to switch it up and see whether someone else can bring more playoff baseball to Seattle.

My brother on the podcast likes to say that the process is more important than the results, that if the process for putting together a good baseball team is there, then the results will come. I do not agree with this, because if the results are what you are looking for, then the process ultimately matters to get the end results, therefore if the results are not what you want, then the process was flawed, whether you believe it was the correct process or not.

Will letting go Servais and Dipoto get the Mariners results? Maybe. But if the process only gets you one playoff appearance in more than 20 years, it’s time to change your process to try and get better results.