50 in 50: Mariners’ Self-Inflicted 2026 Disaster Most Disappointing in Team History
There have been many bad seasons in Mariners history, far more in fact than there have been good years. It took Seattle 15 seasons to have a winning record, after all, and this is the team that won 116 games in a season and didn’t make the World Series. The Mariners, of course, have never made the World Series, the only team in baseball with that dishonorable feat on its name.
The 50-year history of the Mariners has been defined, more than that of any sporting club this side of the Buffalo Sabres, by unceasing failure. And yet the game has cultivated an unyielding nostalgia in Rain City for days that did not end in glory.
And yet out of all the seasons the team of failure has played, 2026 found a way to be the most singularly disappointing. What happened was laughably preventable and cartoonishly immense, at once utterly unforeseen and perfectly predictable, and until baseball starts again - an unknown date courtesy of the coming labor war - it will be all that the M’s can think about.
Last year, the Mariners came closer than ever to their first world series berth, only stayed by a former Astro’s gut-punching home run to send the Blue Jays to the Fall Classic. One rival, it seemed, was replaced by another, and a not insignificant portion of the Emerald City found themselves rooting for the hegemonic Dodgers’ eventual repeat.
When the 2026 season began, the message from the clubhouse and the organization was clear: World Series or bust. The Mariners set out for a mandate, to take their place in the sun, to become baseball’s next dynasty. More resonant with the long-beleaguered fans was the simple idea of finally going to the mountaintop.
Hindsight is 20/26: Re-Grading the Mariners’ Offseason Moves
The MLB regular season is heading into a sprint to the finish. There are roughly four weeks left until the playoff picture is set. The Seattle Mariners still have a chance to be in the dance, though those hopes are fading with each loss, including a series-opening defeat at the hands of the lowly Athletics on Thursday.
The Mariners certainly made moves over the offseason to try and capitalize on their trip to the ALCS last year. But fans definitely felt like they could’ve done even more, and the results on the field only have provided more evidence for that argument.
Let’s revisit some of the biggest moves the Mariners made last offseason and see how things played out. Certainly, the benefit of hindsight makes this a little unfair. Some moves that aren’t exactly looking like “A-plus” moves now felt like it back then, in the moment.
Trade Revisited: Brendan Donovan a Costly Miss for Mariners Thus Far
Heading into the 2026 season, the Seattle Mariners were the odds-on favorite to represent the American League in the World Series. The Mariners have drastically underperformed those expectations, however, limping to the final month of the season barely clinging to playoff life.
Many fans want to clean house. Since ownership can’t be fired, Jerry Dipoto and Dan Wilson are on the chopping block. While nobody believes Wilson will survive the offseason, Dipoto deserves to keep his job, and Seattle fans should hope he sticks around for the long haul.
One of Dipoto’s big offseason swings might be viewed as a failure by the average fan, as Brendan Donovan has had an injury-plagued season and, like the entire team, has performed below expectations.
Hindsight is 20-20, but let’s revisit the offseason blockbuster to see who came out on top almost a season later
Leo Rivas Walks Off Cubs, Gives M’s Homestand Jolt
It’s the kind of thing that engenders legitimate hope in a team so downtrodden, but it’s the kind of thing fringe Mariners role players have done for decades in ultimately sour-ending seasons.
Regardless of the view from 30,000 feet, it was a magical moment for those celebrating within a three-foot radius of Leo Rivas in the bottom of the 10th on Friday night.
The game had been a back-and-forth affair between the M’s and Cubs, two teams with high expectations going into 2026 but only one of whom had performed up to snuff. At times, Seattle looked like the team they had constructed on paper, with Brendan Donovan and Cal Raleigh both producing runs. At others, the Cubs ambushed mistake pitches from multiple Mariners pitchers, and it had gone to extras before Seattle triumphed 6-5.
Emerson Hancock recovered from early struggles to put together almost six innings.
During the first half of the season, Mariners starting pitching had the sixth best ERA, fifth best StatCast expected ERA (xERA [1]), best fielding independent pitching (FIP [2]) and third best expected FIP (xFIP [3]) of any rotation in baseball.
In the second half, however, Seattle’s starters have had the seventh worst ERA, fourth worst FIP, and ninth worst xFIP. Their xERA ranking of 10th best since the break is small consolation with their struggles spanning all the non-StatCast metrics. They went from a league-best 11.0 starting pitcher FanGraphs WAR (fWAR) pre-break to a second-to-last 0.5 fWAR post-break.
Analysis: Where Mariners’ Farm System Ranks and What Comes Next
As the Mariners attempt to claw their way back into playoff contention, it can be easy to focus on the letdowns of the major league club. The organization has plenty of other reasons to be optimistic, with a talent-rich farm system that would be the envy of most teams.
When Seattle traded Luis Castillo to the Chicago White Sox, it was initially billed as a salary dump and a way to reduce the logjam of starters in the rotation. The Mariners acquired Seranthony Domínguez, who slots in as a middle-relief option. Seattle also received prospect Boston Smith, who has been mashing with six home runs in his first 11 games. The catcher adds to an already impressive minor league system.
Mariners Survive Brewers, Gain Ground in Wild Card Race
Seattle came limping into Milwaukee after getting pummeled 22-0 the night before, looking to exorcise some demons against the Brewers on Wednesday night. Facing former top prospect Dustin May, the Mariners got the bats going early, plating four runs in the first inning before ultimately winning 7-5.
Current Cy Young candidate Logan Gilbert, emboldened by an early lead, battled through five innings before being pulled in the sixth. Likely two batters too late.
As has been the case all season, Dan Wilson made another questionable decision that nearly cost his team the game. But his players persevered, allowing Seattle to gain considerable ground in the wild-card race.
Did Seattle have a great offensive performance? Absolutely. Were they simultaneously incredibly lucky? Unequivocally. That’s a luxury not often enjoyed by this team as it tries to turn its season around.
Mariners Strike Back vs. Astros, Remain Barely Breathing in AL Playoff Chase
A cloud of horror hung above the Houston air as the Mariners began their game on Saturday. The team was fresh off a gut-wrenching 10-inning loss where the difference depended on two squibbers that fell away from the Mariners defense before Christian Walker torched an Andrés Muñoz cookie into Galveston.
And yet they came back from the brink on Saturday, with a lockdown start from Emerson Hancock and a lively offense in the unfriendly confines of Daikin Park, winning 10-5 on the heels of what, more than all the others, could be described as “the worst loss of the year”.
“I think we all kind of felt like that was a great ball game last night, and it was more indicative of who we are as a team,” said M’s manager Dan Wilson on Saturday, even in spite of Friday’s loss. “And so, I think in some ways, it felt like, yes, we didn’t get the result that we wanted, but we played the way we wanted.”
The Mariners played the way they wanted to on Saturday, and this time, they got just the result they needed.
The Mariners offense went to task with runners on, scoring 10 runs despite just one homer.
Seattle’s offense has depended on the home run for years, and since the start of 2025, around half of all their runs have been scored that way. When Saturday’s game began, the team had a .718 OPS with runners in scoring position since the start of 2025, the seventh-worst in baseball.
Despite their aforementioned bullpen disaster, the team’s performance with runners in scoring position on Friday was commendable, as they went 4-for-12 and scored all seven runs without hitting a home run. That trend continued against the admittedly subpar Astros pitchers on Saturday; the Mariners scored 10 runs while going 7-for-17 with runners on second or third.
Mariners' Bullpen Blows Another Lead as Houston Walks it Off in Extras
The Seattle Mariners came limping into Houston having won only one of their last six games. After digging themselves into a three-run deficit early, Dan Wilson’s squad came storming back in the eighth to send the opening game of a critical series to extra innings.
But despite taking a 7-5 lead in the 10th, the bad luck continued, as Houston orchestrated a back-breaking comeback of its own, further putting the AL West division out of reach as a three-run home run by Christian Walker vaulted the Astros to an 8-7 win.
It wasn’t all bad news, as the final result might suggest. Starter George Kirby pitched better than the box score might indicate, and the M’s offense seemingly woke up from a season-long slumber.
A top-30 prospect also made his debut for the team. Brock Rodden debuted at shortstop and looked like a major leaguer already, sparking questions about why he wasn’t brought up earlier given the recent controversy surrounding Colt Emerson’s secret wrist injury.
Unfortunately, the backend of the bullpen surprisingly fell apart with the bats waking up, blowing a two-run lead in the 10th and showing once again that another bullpen acquisition was needed at the trade deadline in what has become quite the missed opportunity for Jerry Dipoto.
Seattle continues to slip further and further from playoff contention, and its players will need to execute to get this squad back on track with time running out to crawl back into the race.
Mariners Offense Continues Slumber, Wastes Strong Logan Gilbert Start against Rays
The cathartic excitement of 45 seconds prior meant nothing as a 39,468-strong crowd saw Josh Naylor take the final pitch of the game for strike three, capping off a 2-1 loss and the Mariners’ 11th defeat in their past 16 games. Those fans booed relentlessly, their patience broken by the continued ineptitude of the offense.
Logan Gilbert had hurled well for Seattle, going deep into the seventh inning, but thanks to the lack of batting, it didn’t matter. The M’s barely avoided the third shutout in four games, and though they managed a run at the very end, it was still just the fifth run since the trade deadline: a stark reminder that the struggles the team had were due to the shortcomings of the stars.
Seattle went scoreless for most of the game, helpless against Rays pitching.
Where Gilbert was effective, Rays starter Drew Rasmussen was brilliant. Or perhaps the Mariners offense was once again lethargic; in truth, it was probably both.
Looking for any way to wake up the sluggish bats, Mariners manager Dan Wilson shook up the lineup. Taylor Ward led off the game with Cole Young batting second and Julio Rodríguez batting fifth. It didn’t work. Ward - whose struggles at T-Mobile Park continued in his fourth game with the M’s - went 0-4 with two strikeouts, while Young’s one hit didn’t come with anyone on base.
Seattle’s chances were relatively few and far between. Rodríguez knocked a one-out single and stole second before Naylor walked to put two men on. Brendan Donovan struck out and Cal Raleigh walked in turn to load the bases, but with Colt Emerson at the plate, Rasmussen knew what to do.
Is it Time to Give Mariners’ Top Prospect Colt Emerson a Break?
Shortstop Colt Emerson began the 2026 season with the Triple-A Tacoma Rainiers and the assumption was his stay with the last stop on the farm would be brief. That rang true when he made his MLB debut on May 17, following the injury to Brendan Donovan. He was hitting .255 with seven homers, an .816 OPS and 104 wRC+ in 38 games for the Rainiers at that point.
Emerson started off hot for Seattle, instantly legitimizing his promotion, posting an .838 OPS and six homers in his first 26 games with the big league club. Unfortunately, since Father’s Day in mid-June, it has been tough sledding for the 20-year-old rookie. He’s certainly showing his youth, with just one player in all MLB (Konnor Griffin) younger than him.
Since June 24, Emerson is batting .148 with a .433 OPS and 30 wRC+. Among the 313 batters with at least 150 plate appearances this season, his 34.1% strikeout rate ranks 309th. The Ohio native looks overmatched and overwhelmed at the plate.
Bullpen Rises to Occasion as Mariners Snap Five-Game Skid, Take Series Finale From Rays
Finally putting an end to their losing ways, the Seattle Mariners’ offense showed up early and the bullpen delivered a brilliant performance in a resounding 8-2 rout of the Tampa Bay Rays, salvaging the series finale to avoid the sweep going into the All-Star break.
The Mariners needed to use seven pitchers to secure the win due to a scary first inning injury to starter Emerson Hancock that resulted in him exiting the contest an inning later. The offense picked the ‘pen up, however, plating seven runs by the fourth inning, and eight runs overall.
It was a rare complete team performance by Seattle, and manager Dan Wilson hopes to get some key players back from injury coming out of the break while building off his team’s lights-out execution as the season marches towards the playoffs.
“Talk about a team effort from top to bottom today,” Wilson said afterward.
Mariners Squander Comeback Effort in Extras, Fall in 6-5 Walk-Off Heartbreaker to Marlins
The Seattle Mariners flew into south Florida as victors of five of their last six games, riding a wave of momentum back to the top of the AL West standings. Ready to build on their back-to-back series wins, Seattle was primed to go on a winning streak heading into the All-Star break this upcoming weekend.
The upstart Marlins had other plans, however, walking off their American League opponent in the bottom of the 10th inning to steal the series opener.
Hurler Bryan Woo continued to struggle on the road, allowing 10 baserunners and three runs across just five innings.The Marlins raced ahead to a 4-0 lead as the Mariners failed to score until the fifth. Seattle had the bases loaded in the fourth inning and came away with no runs, continuing a trend where the team seemingly forgets how to hit until the fifth inning or later.
Seattle rallied to a 5-4 lead in the eighth, but it proved insufficient as they were walked off two innings later, sealing another frustrating loss for a team intent on playing below their potential.
Four Runs Still Out of Reach as Mariners Fall 4-3 to Guardians
The Seattle Mariners continue to eye franchise history - for the wrong reasons - as they tied the team record with 13 games in a row while scoring three or fewer runs in a 4-3 loss to the Cleveland Guardians on Saturday. Holding onto a half-game lead in the middling American League West, the Mariners need to decide if they want to build on last year's success or drift sheepishly back into mediocrity.
Even the most optimistic Seattle fans know the phrase “Same old Mariners.” It encompasses the feelings of a downtrodden fanbase that has only made the playoffs six times in their 50 years of existence. Despite having the greatest season in team history last year by reaching Game 7 of the American League Championship Series, most fans are already ready to chalk it up as a fluke given their team’s struggles this year.
The roster is not devoid of talent; quite the opposite actually. FanGraphs Playoff Odds still gives the M’s an 80.3% chance of making the postseason. The lineup still needs to wake up though, as this roster has shown that it cannot sleepwalk its way to winning the division.
The trade deadline is approaching. Changes need to be made. What can this SoDo squad do to get back on track?
Mariners Win Series in Houston, Set Sail for Uncharted Waters with Raleigh Out
After their 8-3 victory against the Astros on Thursday, the Mariners are 7-1 with a +26 run differential against that team in 2026. They’re also 15-22 with a -7 run differential against every other team.
Thursday was something of a fulcrum for Seattle. It was the day the M’s officially sent Cal Raleigh to the 10-day IL, though this was an obvious development after his exit from Wednesday’s game with clear discomfort on the same oblique he had tweaked earlier. Mitch Garver caught Luis Castillo in the latter’s final full start for some time as the piggyback plan goes into effect the next time through the rotation. The cloud of these changes hung over the game’s activities, which saw the M’s take the bad Astros pitchers to task once more.
Brendan Donovan and Mitch Garver stood out on both sides of the ball on the day Cal Raleigh went to the IL.
There were two individual performances in particular that echoed Raleigh’s absence in a way. Garver, obviously, moved into the primary catching role upon his addition to the IL, while for Brendan Donovan, his performance was a lesson in the virtues of caution around early injuries.
Jacks Full of Threes: Raley Clubs Seven RBIs, M’s Bash White Sox 12-8
Things go a lot more easily for a baseball team when they hit three home runs to score three or more men each. Good offense over nine innings can more than smooth out a bad inning on the other side, though the Mariners’ 12-8 win on Friday night against the White Sox took a while to get to the coasting stage.
In a sense, it wasn’t nearly as close as the score said; most of the high-end relievers were able to rest as Chicago scored three runs in the final two innings to turn a giant lead into a respectable one.
But in another sense (it was a one-run game until the seventh), the game was closer than its final score. M’s starter Emerson Hancock slipped quite a bit in the third inning and gave up five runs on the night, but recovered enough to go six innings and preserve the bullpen. Seattle’s first chance with the bases loaded didn’t produce anything else, but they broke the gates later on.
The big hero of the night was the still-mashing Luke Raley, who upped his season line to .258/.314/.567 with eight homers and 23 RBIs.
Luke Raley began the barrage with the first grand slam of his career.
The Mariners gave White Sox starter Sean Burke a couple of easy innings on Friday, falling in seven pitches in the first and 11 in the fourth. But crucially, they also put tons of traffic on the bags in the second and third, and though the second was underwhelming, things came together in the following frame.
Crawford Completes Comeback with Walk-Off Single, Mariners Best Astros 8-7
“J.P.! J.P.! J.P.!” rang out the chorus of 43,294 happy, exhausted spectators on Saturday night. Perhaps some of the Central Washington students among them (who had a special discount for the game and got some CWU-themed jerseys) were planning on continuing the night on Lower Queen Anne or Capitol Hill; the older and wiser CWU alums in the crowd were probably set to take their modes of transportation home so as to get some shuteye. All of them shared in the electricity of the evening’s end.
Mariners shortstop J.P. Crawford hadn’t been part of much of the first two weeks of the season for Seattle, nursing a shoulder injury sustained in Spring Training, and the first five games of his season saw him hit a paltry .118 over 26 plate appearances.
“I was going crazy not being able to play,” Crawford told Mariners TV’s Ryan Rowland-Smith after the game.
The Mariners shortstop had put together a 1-3 game with two walks during Seattle’s skid-breaking win on Friday, hitting leadoff with Brendan Donovan out of the lineup with an illness. But Saturday night saw him punch through a pair of massive bases-loaded singles to bookend the team’s biggest comeback of the young year.
Mariners Trajectory Rapidly Approaches Inflection Point with Fifth Straight Loss
Despite an impressively bad two-decade playoff drought to begin the millennium, the Mariners haven’t been in the habit of fully burying themselves three weeks into the year, usually waiting until May to let everything fall apart in their down years, missing the mark in September during their good years, and crashing into the last wall like George Russell in Singapore in their great years.
But inexplicably yet unsurprisingly, the proverbial team bus looks like it’s being steered by a tumbleweed through a baker’s dozen games in 2026. The team’s stellar pitching has carried them to four wins, but a combination of atrocious defense and somehow worse hitting dropped their ninth game of the year (and fifth in a row) on Wednesday afternoon.
Seattle suffered their third (kind of fourth) shutout of the season, barely avoiding getting no-hit by MacKenzie Gore and co.
The Mariners offense, team-wide, has been having the kind of performance where 105 mile an hour groundouts to short are hopeful signs because the team is usually hitting 75 mile an hour groundouts to first.
Familiar Culprits Waste Kirby Complete Game as M’s Drop Fourth Straight
The Mariners fielded their first full top-depth lineup of the 2026 season on Tuesday, but it didn’t lead to much production on the offensive side of the ball. The defense - this time, even standout defender Cole Young, though through positioning and not bad glovework per se - continued giving away runs to the Mariners’ opponents on the way to a one-run loss thanks to said baffled bats.
Kirby worked very efficiently early in the game, but yet more hibernating hitters and letdowns on defense gave him his first career loss to Texas.
Brendan Donovan hit a home run on the very first pitch of the game. Cal Raleigh had an excellent two-out piece of hitting against a top-edge fastball, driving it into center for an RBI single. That was the only hit with runners in scoring position, bringing the team’s RISP slash line down to .216/.327/.371.
But with a guy on the mound with a career 1.04 ERA against the Texas Rangers, those two runs still gave them a shot.
Bats Go from Quiet to Silent, Mariners Drop Third Straight to Open Texas Series
Sometimes, when a good team is in a rut of bad performance, it only takes one good break to open the floodgates and turn things around.
But when the M’s put up eight against the Guardians, or walked off the Yankees, or stole a theretofore scoreless match in extras from the Angels - or when Cal Raleigh launched one halfway into the upper deck on Monday night in Arlington, Texas - it was less like the great floodgates opening and releasing an overpowering torrent and more like little droplets of water gathering on the collection surface of a solar desalination plant: the tiny pellet of hydration was followed by yet more aridity.
Cal Raleigh finally found his stroke in his first at-bat of the game, torching a middle-middle Jacob DeGrom fastball 418 feet to right field.
What’s that old saying about the darkest time of the night? Well, the sun only shone for one at-bat in the top of the first and then quickly went away again (what’s the inverse of an eclipse?), but at least Cal Raleigh got himself into the .500s in OPS (talk about scarce droplets of water!) by the end of the night.
Sluggish Mariners Start Hitting Late, Drop Series to Yankees
Things won’t usually go well when you are scoreless for 16 straight innings and score one run in the span of 23 innings. Seattle dealt with quite a lot of those stretches in 2025, and even with a bolstered offense for the new year, it looks like that issue won’t go away, even if it’s the heart of the lineup in the doghouse this time.
Seattle made it interesting in the late innings, but too many mistakes on all sides of the ball gave Cole Young, one of the M’s riding a hot streak, the unfortunate task of being the final out.
George Kirby deals through five but gets some dear punishment from Paul Goldschmidt after walking two in the sixth.
If “Furious George” had forgotten how much he hates walks before Wednesday’s action, his second start of the season surely reminded him. All three batters Kirby walked came around to score, starting in the first inning as Cody Bellinger walked and stole second before Ben Rice scorched a double down the right field line for New York’s first run.
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