This isn’t good enough

What we’ve seen from the M’s this season—and in recent ones—is unacceptable. They need to figure it out.

The 2024 Mariners are on pace to win 86 games. It’d be their lowest finishing total in a full season since 2019. Again setting aside the pandemic season, it’d be tied with 2016 for the second-lowest win total of Jerry Dipoto’s tenure leading the club.

They lead American League West at the All-Star Break for the first time in 21 years.

It’s natural for there to be mixed feelings, for some to ask whether or not the first “half” of the season was a success or not.

I’m going to be as clear as I can here: this is not good enough.

I’m not sure it’s close.

The Mariners are smack in the middle of a contention window, one they circled a long time ago. I know I’ve brought this up a multitude of times now but it’s important.

The Mariners told their fans, their employees, their players, their coaching staff, everyone—that once they turned the corner from their step back, they would round into shape around their young core, supplement it outside talent, and compete for a World Series.

The 2024 Mariners, as currently constructed, are not a World Series contender. Obviously, that can change.

Will it? Comments from Jerry Dipoto today to Seattle Sports don’t leave me feeling all that confident.

“As we’ve always been, we are open to doing something that has the potential to be dynamic. Again, I don’t know if that’s going to be available as we push into the deadline. Right now, it’s not. And this is as late as we’ve ever gone into a trade deadline where I can honestly say it’s not.”

I like Jerry Dipoto. I’m a big Jerry Dipoto guy if anyone could say they are one. Talking shop with Jerry in the 30 minutes before and after I hit “record” on The Wheelhouse was some of the coolest shit in my entire professional career.

Still, the radio quote reminds me of the first ever article I wrote on Dipoto, for LL after he was hired in 2015. There’s a lot there, some good and some bad, but here’s the gist of it.

The job isn't to sort out what's in your control and what it isn't, it's to identify as many things as possible that can be in your control, and then make them be in your control. Be proactive. You are not at the whims of your circumstances.

Almost a decade later, a chunk of it spent inside the walls at Edgar & Dave, I have more sympathy. There are constraints to any job, sure. And there are jobs across the league easier than this one.

Still, the success of all them is measured the same way. At least to us fans, the entire reason for the sport.

So I’ll say this more to the organization as a whole as opposed to just Jerry: We don’t care. Figure it out.

This franchise cannot throw up its hands and say “Welp, nothing we can do now, we’re going to stay the course, see how it goes and hope things turn out a little better next year. Or the year after. Or the year after that. Whenever it works out.”

The Mariners obviously lead the division, so the opportunity is there. But the quality of play is so far short of what we should be seeing day-in and day-out.

So change it. Figure it out.

Like hey, I don’t love giving up a king’s ransom to get a flawed player either. But that’s why you don’t dick around and cheap out four offseasons running.

As I write this, I’m listening to Ryan Divish’s weekly Wednesday segment with Jason Puckett and am disgusted at the idea of Ryan’s forecast coming to fruition:

“We’ll see. I’m kind of curious to see what they can do and what they can’t. I don’t think it’ll be huge names, I think it’ll be peripheral names and how you fit ‘em—whether it’s a backup catcher, maybe another outfielder.”

I can’t do Dominic Canzone again. I can’t do Jake Lamb and Curt Casali and Travis Janikowski and Jonathan Villar. I can’t do Abraham effing Toro.

It’s not acceptable.

I plan to dive into past deadlines a little more in future posts but if the last three years have told us anything, it’s to do more. Seize the opportunity. You’re right there on the cusp.

In 2021 and 2023, it was a win short of playing in October. In 2022, it was a more incalculable—but narrower—gap between where they ended up and something so much bigger.

We can’t keep doing this.

T-Mobile Park turns 25 years old this year. Area taxpayers are into the ballpark for more than half a billion dollars and the building has hosted a total of ten playoff games.

The last time the T-Mo saw a Mariners playoff win was a week after the beginning of the War in Afghanistan—the longest war in the military history of the United States.

The Mariners don’t have a slog like that left. They have 64 games remaining on the schedule.

They probably need to win close about 38 of them.

And even then, that’s not success. Getting only as far as you made it two years ago—which is no guarantee even with a division win given they all but eliminated their chances at a bye—is not what we’re looking for.

This publication isn’t even two years old and I’ve written the same thing over and over and over again.

We want greatness.

This isn’t good enough. “Good” isn’t good enough.

It’s hot in Seattle now but baseball’s winter is fast approaching.

The organization should do all it can between now and the trade deadline to push another cold and damp Seattle winter back further than it’s ever been before.