Not making an aggressive trade can be every bit as risky as making one
The challenge is—who are the 2026 Mariners?
What would you give to be able to go back in time, to the biggest Mariners game in franchise history, and have it go the other way? What if you could make Dan go to Muñoz, a version of Muñoz still at the peak of his powers?
Or, what if the Mariners had another leverage reliever there, another dude on the level of Muñoz and Brash—maybe better. For sure better than Eduard Bazardo, who’s good enough in his own right but not a closer-level talent.
What would you give up to go back and have that magical season continue but even one win longer? For Seattle to see its first World Series games?
To have the Mariners get their crack at vaunted Dodgers, thought to be invincible but proven otherwise by the Jays team the M’s could have and should have beaten?
That is what Mariners fans and the Mariners themselves should be thinking about this time of year—as much or more than which prospects or players are untouchable.
The smart move in today’s game is the safe move, we’re led to believe.
It’s good to win, yes, but you can’t risk the future at the expense of the present.
I won’t go so far as to say this is the wrong way to look at things but it’s certainly not the only way to do it.
You can’t forego maximizing the present, not making the most of any single year in a contention window for an organization with very few of ‘em—because you’re banking on an unknowable future.
Every year is worth so much.
The Mariners don’t have this core forever. They already had and lost the best season their best player will ever have.
Here’s a short passage I wrote back in 2023, when the Mariners traded Paul Sewald for a package headlined by Dominic Canzone and Ryan Bliss.
You know the state of your team right now, both its talent level now and down the stretch, and its place in the standings—plus the competitive health of the teams still trying to win games.
That is known data. The predictive ability of the data is up for debate, but it is up-to-the-day data you know you have.
The 2023 Mariners came up a game short of the playoffs as Canzone, now a valued contributor, was largely benched for the campaign’s final homestand. Sewald was integral in the Diamondbacks run through the National League side of the bracket before faltering a bit in the club’s first World Series appearance since 2001.
They probably don’t think too much about Dominic Canzone or Ryan Bliss and the duo’s probably delivered at least 50th percentile outcomes to date.
That’s a trade I don’t need to harp on any more than I already have—plus, that’s not really the level of trade nor non-trade I’m talking about anyway.
The Mariners just received an up-close look at what I’d still call the early returns on a big trade that happened four years ago—that being acquiring Luis Castillo for Noelvi Marte and Edwin Arroyo, among others.
Marte and Arroyo were both consensus Top 100 guys at the time, the former slotting in at #11 on MLB Pipeline’s pre-2022 top 100 list.
They’ve combined for a 79 wRC+ and -0.6 fWAR so far in their young careers.
Luis Castillo has a good chance to be a Mariners Hall of Famer.
The M’s will almost certainly not move one of their two top pitching prospects, Ryan Sloan and Kade Anderson—the latter was just tabbed the best prospect in baseball by Keith Law.
I’m not saying they should but are people aware of the bust rate for even the very best pitching prospect?
There was a time, during the 2019 teardown, when the Mariners were drooling over the possibility of landing Forrest Whitley for James Paxton. They ended up getting Justus Sheffield and it did not matter at all.
Sixto Sanchez’s name was thrown around a bit as well.
Trading prospects is risky, but holding them sure as hell can be, too.
The biggest challenge for the Mariners, though: the “known data” I referred to above? It’s not so great. But it’s not all bad.
Saying we have no idea who the 2o26 Mariners are would be the optimistic take. Their identity is paradoxically the very absence of one.
They’ve played below their talent level the entire year and they’re led by a manager who’s established he’s, tactically, not so hot at getting the most out of his group of guys.
But still, the talent is there.
And so is the division.
Last year’s Mariners needed to rip of 15 of 16 to take it and the #2 seed.
Though, were already five games over .500 when that happened, and were nine over before the four-game losing streak that led to the supposed rock bottom preceding the winning stretch.
The Mariners have been a second-half team for a good bit now and whether that’s predictive or not, I don’t know, but one thing’s clear: this club needs a jolt.
Would tinkering suffice? Perhaps—if some rando comes and posts a 140 wRC+ over a couple months, combined with others getting healthy and/or getting going in general.
This team feels like it needs more, though. This season feels like it needs something seismic to put them on the path to the pennant.
And now, after last year, any season that doesn’t end in a trip to the Fall Classic is a failure.
For a contention window that opened five years ago, how many more can you bank on?
You don’t want to cut your window short early with excessive risk but the Mariners have shown they are willing to make the big moves.
Luis in 2022. Randy Arozarena in 2024. Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suárez last year.
They’ve gone big but have they…gone for it? That’s up for debate.
Eventually, this whole endeavor—should you clear what is a low threshold in the modern game—shifts from winning as many games as possible in a sixth-month slog to…winning a baseball tournament one short series at a time.
When they get there—and the Mariners have to get there—you don’t want to look back and wish you’d gone bigger. You don’t want the move you didn’t make to be the weak link that ends your season, especially when the season is as special as these Mariners playoff runs can be.
It’s easy to play it safe, to avoid the potential furor you’d encounter for *gasp* giving up too much for a great player.
Nobody will rip you because you didn’t give up one of your best prospects for Jhoan Duran last year or Mason Miller this year.
But you will always know what was on the table and what wasn’t.
You don’t want to look back and wish you’d gone bigger when there was a path there to take.
Sometimes the safe decision can be the one that costs you everything—costs you the best chance you ever had.
Nothing is given. No window is guaranteed to stay open.
With this core, the Mariners have to make the most of every single season. They owe it to us—and they owe it to themselves.
Go M’s.