This could be the team

Your Seattle Mariners look like the best club in the American League.

When I was a kid, the ballpark was like it was this past weekend basically every night.

Saturday especially—an actual full house. Even if you wanted to move into better seats, you couldn’t, because you could barely spot a gap of open seats.

A pair here, a trio there. But were they open before? Keep an eye on those.

Obviously, it was a special event, and one of those events the Mariners do better than anyone. They always have.

Whether the on-field operation is good or terrible, you can always count on the people around the baseball people and players to put on a first-rate show befitting of the legends they honor.

They’re so good you can’t help but daydream think “Man, if they could figure out the on-field side of things, this really could be a world-class operation.”

And then the Mariners went out and played one of my favorite Mariners games I’ve ever been to.

Something’s different. This team’s different.

It’s good.

It may not feel like it after getting mowed down by Dean Kremer and Trevor Rogers the last two nights but the 2025 Seattle Mariners can kick your teeth in.

Rays starter Adrian Houser got karma-heavy feel for that on Sunday with four first-inning earnies after sporting an Oklahoma City Thunder jersey for BP on Friday.

Saturday though, the Mariners landed one roundhouse kick and kept on twirling.

When Cal’s three-run homer went out—because, for this team, of course it went out—I almost fainted. Prooobably should get that checked out but, yeah, I leapt up exuberant, head got a little light and almost lost the legs there. Kind of fitting it physically felt like floating.

Then Julio. Nobody’d even sat down yet and he ripped a first-pitch line drive off the dark green wall left of Edgar’s like he was getting the Kraken a line change with some dump-and-chase hockey.

It was one of the best baseball things I’ve ever experienced in my life.

I wanted to finish and publish this post, despite it being a few days late now, because I want that in the record.

I should have finished it on Saturday night but I had too much fun Saturday night because how could you not? Then old-fashioned procrastination got the better of me and here we are.

That night will remain, forever, as one of the great Mariners games of the Dipoto era. It was a signature evening in a special season.

A big part of it was Ichiro, yes, because otherwise it’d mostly be a fun summer Saturday win over the Tampa Bay Rays. But it was how it all tied together, all these themes swirling and intermingling.

Ichiro won the 116 games, Rookie of the Year and MVP in 2001. He never went to the playoffs as a Mariner again.

The most prominent highlight in the ceremony and the weekend in general was Ichi setting the single-season hit record in 2004.

The 2004 Mariners lost 99 games.

He knew what he was talking about when he looked to his left to the guys along the home dugout rail and told them to “seize the moment.”

The message to the current club from the legend being honored is something of a hallmark of these events, but it’s never been to a team like this in a situation like it’s in.

They’re where they are in large part because in that dugout you have more than a couple guys who could likely see themselves honored like this, at least as Mariners Hall of Famers.

Hell, does anyone else ever wear #29 again? #44?

Then those guys go out and play like the beloved stars of this era they are.

The one or two beloved stars only get you so far though. You can make the Hall of Fame without a mention of October on your plaque. Because you can’t get there on your own.

You can have Ichiro—but you gotta have John Olerud. Carlos Guillen. David Bell.

This team has those guys. Some approximations are closer than others, sure, but it’s a lineup as complete as Seattle fans have seen since those early-aughts glory days.

I’ll go so far as to say this: the 2025 Mariners as they stand now are the most complete team in the American League.

The state of AL is a core piece of context here. I feel insane looking at outlets’ latest power rankings and oddly taking issue because…who are the Mariners supposed to fear?

There are good teams, yes. But no great ones. And even a couple playing some of their worst ball at a bad time to be doing so.

The Mariners have the juice.

Josh Naylor is the straw that stirs the drink.

I can’t stop saying that. I love the saying, I love Josh Naylor and no player has ever fit the phrase more than him.

He’s not the firebrand he was a couple years ago but you can tell the white-hot competitiveness still burns inside him. Almost in a Lloyd Braun kind of way but, hey, whatever works my dude.

As we see with Dylan Moore still on the roster despite a Monstar stealing his baseball ability, the Mariners could’ve stood to upgrade their bench, but the regular starting lineup is absurd.

Geno will have his year-carrying hot streaks. He bats fifth.

Randy Arozarena batting lead off is so luxurious. A 22-year-old with a 10 percent walk rate and the ability to hit a ball 456 feet bats ninth? Downright decadent.

Cole Young walked four times on Saturday night, teeing up opportunity after opportunity for the top of the lineup.

There’s a reason FanGraphs has the Mariners’ odds of hosting a parade come November higher than any other team in the league. They’re 95 percent to make the playoffs and the division is basically 50/50.

You’d have to give me better odds than that were I to wager money on the Astros, who took another injury hit with Josh Hader.

It’s probably getting greedy to do it now, but there are more teams to catch. A division win would be great, yes, but considerably less great if it preceded a three-game series rife with opportunity for “most complete roster” to matter very little.

And if you get through that, you head into the next series without your rotation lined up or bullpen rested.

The Mariners have the opportunity to finish as one of the best teams in the American League and they’re good enough to do it.

Whether they do or not—please do it—this team has the potential to be the Seattle Mariners team we all remember. Is that the pennant? The title?

I don’t know what it’d have to look like, and that’s the fun part. For all but one outcome, it ends with heartbreak. Heartbreak and “success,” however we definite it for this club, are not mutually exclusive.

But right now, it’s fun to imagine that one outcome. It’s fun to imagine this specific group doing things no Mariners club has ever done before.

Now more than ever—it isn’t hard to imagine, either.

Go M’s.