A note of appreciation for Mariners Player Development
They would be so boned without it.
It’s easy to focus on what the Mariners do not have. Because there are many, many things they lack. And you can look at it from a variety of angles.
They don’t have a competitive ownership group. They’re the only team to never win a pennant. They’ve yet to come anywhere close to maximizing a contention window as good as any in 30 years.
It’s a contention window that exists solely because of the thing they do best—player development.
It feels weird suggest player development is an area the Mariners excel at for two reasons.
For one, they’ve been bad at it for as long as anyone can remember. And second, crushing it in the world of player development is the thing elite organizations consistently do well.
The Dodgers, the Braves, the Astros—those are teams that do player development well.
The Mariners, though? Well, yeah. Actually. It’s crazy.
This post goes out to my brother Conner, who’s raised the point on the golf course a handful of times recently. Specifically, he says, for people who very much don’t like the Jerry Dipoto administration—think about how much worse it could be.
And it could be a lot worse. It could be better, too. Of course.
It’d be great if the Mariners were competitive in free agency or even if this group were better at constructing a roster with the limited funds available, yes.
But the Seattle Mariners without elite player development would look something like the Colorado Rockies.
Take a quick gander—here are who Fangraphs likes to be the 10 most valuable Mariners in 2025.
Julio RodrÃguez — 6.2 fWAR — Purely homegrown leaguewide superstar
Cal Raleigh — 5.3 fWAR — Drafted and developed franchise cornerstone
Logan Gilbert — 3.5 fWAR — Spent draft capital on potential ace, made it reality
George Kirby — 3.1 fWAR — Spent draft capital on potential ace, made it reality
J.P. Crawford — 3.1 fWAR — A one-time post-hype prospect acquired in rebuild trade, Mariners have gotten good outcome and helped find swing
Luis Castillo — 2.8 fWAR — Acquired for prospects the Mariners largely don’t miss
Randy Arozarena — 2.7 fWAR — Acquired for prospects the Mariners don’t miss (at least not yet)
VÃctor Robles — 2.3 fWAR — Mariners took a flier on a post-hype prospect, their coaching unlocked something
Bryce Miller — 2.1 fWAR — Fourth-round pick in the draft, quick mover and immediate contributor, one of the most interesting pitchers to watch in all of baseball in 2025
Bryan Woo — 1.8 fWAR — Sixth-round pick, quick mover and immediate contributor, one of the most interesting pitchers to watch in all of baseball in 2025
Obviously, if your overall organizational philosophy—albeit, likely for non-baseball reasons—is to limit yourself almost exclusively to drafting, developing and trading then it shouldn’t be too surprising when your Opening Day roster’s best players come almost exclusively through those means.
And yet, I say again, can you imagine if they were bad at that stuff? Woof.
They should be aiming for more and we should expect more but this is a team that, while not a division favorite, can’t be firmly put below either of their primary competitors for the West—Texas and Houston.
Player Development drives all they do. And with a little bit besides that, they may even do more.
But it’d be reasonable to bet any reinforcements for the contention window come from, whether trade or Major League promotion, the elite farm system their amateur scouts helped plant and the player development group’s hands capably mold.
It’s a farm system The Athletic’s Keith Law has as the very best in the game.
For some context, here are his top farm systems going back to 2018 and what they did in the years thereafter.
2018 — Atlanta Braves
The darlings of draft-and-development stans. They won the NL East every year since then besides last year. Their homegrown stars were the core of their title-winning team in 2021.
2019 — San Diego Padres
They made the playoffs in 2020 for the first time since 2006. They went to the NLCS in 2022 and were ousted by the Dodgers in the NLDS in 2024—credited by LA for being the best team they played on their way to the title.
2020 — Tampa Bay Rays
They won the American League pennant in 2020 thanks to some of that homegrown talent. They won the AL East that year and the year following, too. They haven’t made the playoffs since 2021 because, uhhh, errr—
2021 — Tampa Bay Rays again
: /
2022 — Los Angeles Dodgers
The class of baseball. While there are some names folks would recognize here—Bobby Miller, Andy Pages, James Outman—there aren’t any stars who’d go on to be major contributors to their 2024 title-winning team. Wildly, six of the top 10 prospects in the system that landed them here are no longer with the organization.
2023 — Los Angeles Dodgers again
Much is the same here, again with catcher Diego Cartaya as their #1 prospect. He was DFA’d a couple months ago. No huge contributors to the second title team.
2024 — Baltimore Orioles
Good for them. They win 101 games and the American League East in 2023 even before reaching the pinnacle of their supposed prospect value sowing. They’re in a funky spot. The Corbin Burnes trade didn’t yield them the level of success they probably wanted…but they should be anteing up instead of shying away from playing to win.
After that, again, it’s the M’s in 2025.
The accomplishment doesn’t mean much—er, the accomplishment doesn’t mean anything on its own but you can tell it’s the mark of a quality organization. Or close to it.
It’s a credit to the Seattle Mariners and, in my view, Andy McKay in particular. Though he’s now officially an Assistant General Manager (and VP, good for Andy), he came into the organization at the beginning of Dipoto’s tenure as the Director of Player Development and remains, to my understanding, heavily involved in what goes on in that department.
You want to chop it up with someone who knows ball? That’s Andy. In my time at the M’s, I had quite a few chances to have him talk my ear off about Mariners prospects, player development and baseball in general and it rocked every time. (Though not catching a cowlick nor having him switch out of a sweater is, sincerely, one of my bigger regrets at the org.)
You talk to him and you find yourself downright inspired hearing his perspective on the organization and his vision for what he and his colleagues want to do with it.
There’s some super random La Crosse, Wisconsin bias at play again—McKay managed my hometown’s team for five seasons, getting his number retired by the Northwoods League’s La Crosse Loggers—but Dipoto’s forward-thinking hiring of McKay was great at the time and only improves as the years go by and more and more innovative coaches flow through McKay’s farm system.
He is, of course, big on culture. When he came to the Mariners, McKay was determined to create a Mariners Way of doing things and he’s made a lot of progress, progress that started with stuff like a laminated handbook on how the Mariners do things that goes out to every player and coach in the org.
He knows it isn’t everything, though. I liked how he described where the organization is now in his interview last month with Brock & Salk.
When you talk about setting a standard for your organization, what does that mean and how hard is it to achieve? Oh, it's very hard to achieve.
….any high end group [whether it’s college or pros], most of us are trying to do pretty similar things. And the magic is in who can actually do it and who can pull off their vision and bring it to life.
And, you know, we we we feel pretty good about the standards we've created and our in our efforts to meet them. And it's a it's a bit of a mixed bag.
We've certainly had some success. We've created some stability. We've created a level of success and a consistency to it that we're proud of. And I think we should be.
At the same time, we haven't done what we need to be doing. We really haven't met the ultimate standard that we set for ourselves, which was being a perennial postseason team and bringing a World Series championship to our fans in Seattle because our fans deserve that.
Both things can be true. In some ways, we've met the standard and we and we we moved our base camp much higher, closer to it. But at the end of the day, we we haven't got the job done that our that our fans deserve. And that's why we still have so much work to do.
There’s work to do, yeah. And if the sample above on top-ranked systems is predictive, they should be able to do some things as an organization they haven’t done in a long time—maybe ever.
Before wrapping up this post, a long one and the first in a bit, I have two “Yeah but—“ points.
Overall, it’s all such a positive. It is the best part of the organization and it isn’t close.
Buuuuuut
Player Development isn’t enough on its own
It will get you far, really far. It will probably get you further than this era of Mariners Baseball has gone thus far. But will it get you all the way? I’m not so sure.
The Braves pair it with a top 10 payroll and that helped get them their title. The Padres needed to spend to get the teams they’ve had over the last few years. They aren’t the modern day Pads without Manny Machado.
Orioles fans probably feel a lot like Mariners fans on the spending front.
Then you have the Rays and the Dodgers—or, well, the Rays and the Rays with Money. Speaks for itself.
The Mariners can win the division with their current philosophy and the present level of success therein. They may have a shot at winning 100 games. Can they be one of those elite top 3-4 clubs who are competing for championships across multiple years? Without a top 10 payroll? It’ll be tough.
How does this feel as a player?
As I mentioned, none of this happens without culture. It’s a culture that revolves around buying into an ultimate goal, focusing on the process to achieve that and going out and executing—pitch to pitch, game to game, month to month, year to year.
When you’re deep in it, and I’m sure this is true of any good program, from whatever sport at whatever level—they make it sound like a damn religion. They’re all-in for each other and the goals they’re trying to achieve individually and as a collective.
You’re drafted by the Mariners. You bounce across the continent living and breathing controlling the strike zone. You go from mid-rounder to top 100 prospect. You go from top 100 prospect to Major Leaguer and Major Leaguer to All-Star. All while doing everything they ask and more. They want you to lead a pitching staff? You do it. Play through a busted hand as you anchor a playoff lineup? Yeah.
But when you ask for some help from outside the organization, that’s too much.
You ask those at the very top to be in at the level they’ve asked you to be in? Not a chance. They may even grind you down and let you hit free agency with as many miles on the knees or elbows as they can get.
It has to hurt.
Or, you’re one of these guys in the system now. You’ve bought in. You’re part of an organization that’s clearly good at this.
And your biggest contribution toward the ultimate goal of bringing a title to Seattle may be, after signing up for all this as young as 16 or even earlier, getting shipped to Chicago or Cincinnati or Tampa.
It’s part of the game, yeah.
But it’s an especially big part when you depend on these young men to buy into everything you’re doing only for them to no longer be part of it when the outside world’s perceived value of them outpaces the view of the only organization they’ve ever known.
Again, it’s good the Mariners are good at this. And they are so good at this. Whether it’s enough or not, we’ll see.
You can’t help for root for these dudes. They give us a lot of dudes to root for.
Here’s to the best days being ahead of us all.
Go M’s.