During the debut season of an automated balls and strikes system that many called a jettisoning of the “human element” of baseball and amidst a fever pitch of AI discourse, the Seattle Mariners 2026 season was a gut punch reminder that we are all still deeply mortal. This year’s story of baseball in Seattle is one centered around humanity; its triumphs (too few), and devastations (many), and the myriad foibles along the way.
Fresh off their deepest playoff run in franchise history, the Mariners were statistical darlings and rootable favorites at the onset of the off-season. They retained the vast majority of their relatively young American League West-winning core, including signing Josh Naylor (acquired at the 2025 trade deadline) to a five-year deal, traded for third baseman(ish) Brendan Donovan, acquired some new bullpen arms, addressed their lack of right-handed bats by signing Rob Refsnyder, and threw money at top shortstop prospect Colt Emerson. It wasn’t perfect. No off-season ever is. But it was a strong showing and the numbers backed it up; ZiPS, FanGraphs’ model, projected the team to go 88-74, winning the division tidily, while PECOTA, Baseball Prospectus’ projection system, gave them a 93.6 win aggregated projection and the highest playoff odds of any team in the American League.
Instead, it was a disaster, even on the scale of a franchise that has trafficked in disasters for the better part of half a century. The vaunted starting pitching struggled, the bullpen utterly collapsed, the offense was anemic, and the defense was historically catastrophic. There were injuries and IL stints galore, and some notable injuries that should have prompted sooner IL stints. It was messy. Like the type of messy that makes for compelling reality TV, complete with petty beef, dramatic firings and unnecessarily-prolonged storylines. Unfortunately, while that type of mess is great for Bravo, it doesn’t translate into watchable baseball.
So what happened? To paraphrase Friday Night Lights’ Coach Taylor, “Baseball players are all vulnerable. And they will all, at some time, fall.” And for whatever reason, the Mariners all fell this season (aside from Randy Arozarena). You can expect regression and injuries to various degrees every year, but this collapse was genuinely baffling; no amount of Statcast scrolling or mechanical analysis could answer for the near-totality of disaster. Was it karmic rebalancing after the Etsy Witch spell(s) last year? Is this franchise genuinely cursed? As the season wore on, I fondled my tinfoil hat more and more. So shiny, so crinkly, so full of answers.
The best theory I could settle on was a combination of hubris and naïveté. Last year, the Mariners played the maximum number of games they possibly could have without making the World Series, taking both their ALDS and ALCS match-ups to the brink with five games and seven respectively. Two of those games went to extra innings, including a legendary 15 inning battle in Game 5 of the ALDS against the Detroit Tigers. By the time they walked off the field in Toronto, the M’s had played 116 innings of playoff baseball. It was electric, transcendent, and utterly draining, I was exhausted and all I did was watch the team. For context, when the Yankees played in the World Series in 2024, they played 129 playoff innings. The World Series-winning Red Sox played 135 in 2018. When the Colorado Rockies made their first—and so far only—World Series appearance, they only played 101 innings all postseason. The Mariners had literally never been there before and that, combined with the (very rational!) decision to essentially bring that entire team back again this year, bit them squarely in the ass. I’ve heard their play described as “sleepy,” “uninspired” and “sloppy,” all of which could be ascribed to both a sleep-deprived individual or a collection of professional athletes, deeply devoted to routine, who had their shortest offseason ever.
An MLB season, on its simplest level, will always be a grind. That’s 162 games—almost double an NBA or NHL season and comically far beyond the MLS’ 34 regular season games or the NFL’s 17. It’s day in, day out work and preparation, with a handful of off-days scattered about. Many of the players are, of course, compensated handsomely for that time, but it doesn’t change the toll this takes on the body. Ichiro Suzuki and Jamie Moyer, both of whom played into their 40s, are the exception and not the rule. Seattle also had the second-most players represented in the World Baseball Classic this year, which is played in early March and further truncated the offseason. Just this past Monday, the Mariners announced that both Cal Raleigh and Josh Naylor had undergone surgery for injuries that nagged them throughout the season.
And none of that captures the mental or emotional weight heaped upon their shoulders. To carry a fanbase’s expectations is one thing, but to tote a whole region’s hope is another thing altogether. Eight outs away from their first World Series appearance, off-season darlings, the eyes of local and national media fixed on them; the burden was heavy and through some combination of physical, mental and emotional pressure, the Mariners simply collapsed this year before they could even stand fully upright.
It’s not illogical to think a better season is on the horizon. The front office performed the ceremonial Purging of Personnel immediately after the final game, and the players will certainly have ample time to rest and recover this winter. We’ll see.
There’s always next year (eventually). Unless we die. Which is also extremely human. Go Mariners.
