A most Mariners offseason continues unabated

Roki Sasaki is out and Donovan Solano is in as another dreary offseason rolls on.

Pitchers and catchers report to Peoria four weeks from yesterday. We’ll get video of guys throwing bullpens the next day. Four weeks from this morning.

And thank God because I’m ready for this offseason to be over. Normally that’d be because hope springs eternal, and it still does, but right now this is the worst version of a multi-year run of subpar offseasons and I’m ready for basically anything else.

The week began in part with news that not only were the Mariners officially out on Roki Sasaki, but never competitively in.

The whole Sasaki saga was the perfect encapsulation of life as a Mariners fan in the 2020s. Just right on point.

Mariners fans had no business even remotely-realistically hoping for their team to land the second-best free agent on the market, the guy who could unlock the type of offseason we’ve been waiting for since, I don’t know, Cliff Lee?

There was no reporting linking the Seattle to Sasaki. None. The Mariners said they would try their best to land him and you could make a good case the team would be a a logical fit but other than that, nada.

The thing with guys like this, they want to win. If you want them, you have to show you want to win, too. The Mariners haven’t done that. They’ve done the opposite.

They’ve done and do a lot well. A lot that’d help Sasaki. But they haven’t shown they want to compete.

And still, Mariners fans held out hope. Hell, around these parts, the Mariners not trying and Sasaki serving as a changemaker on that front was part of the team’s potential pitch.

We don’t know if the Mariners were afforded the opportunity to make much of a pitch, though. Reporters for Seattle’s paper of record hadn’t heard of any meeting, nor had any national reporters. Maybe it happened. Probably not, but if it had, it didn’t matter because they’re out, per Passan.

Right up until that tweet though, there was hope. As Monday morning developed and other teams were explicitly ruled out one at a time, folks—reasonable folks! reasonable folks I wanted to agree with!—pondered the possibility the Mariners’ ability to sign Donovan Solano under the cover of complete radio silence signaled the M’s, as wishcast, were right in the mix on Sasaki but kept word of it inside the building.

They were not in the mix. No sir.

If the Solano signing signaled anything, it was probably not good. Not that Solano himself is certifiably Not Good, just that he’s a continuation of what we’ve seen and come to expect.

Like, I know. I know. He’s been solid.

From the beginning of the shortened 2020 season to now, Solano has posted a .289/.352/.407 line for a 112 wRC+ across 1610 PAs. There have been 193 players with at least 1500 plate appearances since 2020 and the now-37 year old has been a better hitter than 115 of them.

Matt Chapman had a 113 wRC+ over that span; Cal Raleigh had a 111. You can squint and see the vision. He isn’t a good defender and doesn’t run well but he hits solidly okay. Sure.

I don’t mean to be a appeal-to-authority simpleton but this is also a guy who didn’t have a Major League deal at the beginning of last year. The $3.5 million guaranteed in 2025 represents like 20 percent of his career earnings. There’s a reason he costs what he costs and, yeah, if he produces like he has over the last couple years, there may be a smidge of surplus value to scoop up.

We can be honest, though. Even going back to that generous starting…now! split of 2020-on, he’s posted 4.8 fWAR total over the last half-decade. He’s a player who can fill a role so long as it isn’t a very big one.

I liked this take from Lookout Landing’s Anders Jorstad.

Yeah, if he’s thee guy at any position, that’s bad. Can he be the caddie in a platoon with Luke Raley at first? Sure. It’s nothing special but sure. It is what it is and nothing more.

Speaking of first base, with the Mets out on Pete Alonso—or posturing as much as they can to convey the sentiment—I’ve seen chatter hoping the Mariners would finally be the team to land one of these dudes on a pillow contract.

Yet again, that’s a very reasonable take. I also would like the Mariners to sign Pete Alonso or Alex Bregman on a short-term high-AAV deal and reap the rewards should they continue to play like Diamond-level MLB The Show dudes. I just don’t have the energy or emotion to hold out for it anymore.

I was there before Marcus Semien’s six-win season in Toronto and had a whole-ass write-up on all the flashing green lights before Matt Chapman’s 5.5 fWAR campaign last year.

Doing stuff like that just isn’t who the Mariners are. Others, like Nathan Bishop on The Light Bat, will express that with more furor than I have right now but the Mariners have shown us what they are and will be.

They’re cheap, first and foremost. They have the worst possible approach for the moment and no desire nor drive to be one of the premier organizations in Major League Baseball. It’d be nice if something like that, even for a short period of time, happened by chance but it isn’t what they’re going for.

They are, if a flagbearer of any type, one for all that ails the sport. Hell, if someone did a PHD thesis or even a podcast on the Mariners as a model for the ills of this 2025 brand of Made in America capitalism, I’d be first in line for it.

So yeah, let’s just play some baseball. Let’s play some fake baseball. Hell, let’s play some catch and you send me the iPhone video shot through a chainlink fence.

Because that’s better than slogging through these Mariners offseasons, never representing this city more perfectly than with these dark winters.

Maybe things change, maybe this one time they make the perfect move or series of moves late and it’s just what they need and it turns out they built their first division winner in 24 years.

I’m not banking on a move that’d do something like that coming between now and spring training.

So let’s get to it. Let’s do the one or two other menial moves and get to popping mitts down in Peoria.