For the purposes of discussion follow along with this dollop of hyperbole: Dan Wilson is the finest man alive. Such a claim, were it opened to the town square for debate, would not suffer much dissent.

Yes, there is a folksy charm to his midwestern sensibilities and mannerisms. Yes, he appears to have achieved a sort of Lutheran Pope ideation in his decades of ceaseless kindness and good manners. But kindness and calling every woman your age or older “ma’am” has its limit. To truly engender the kind of universal respect and admiration a man like Dan Wilson enjoys, you have to be good.

You need to love others; to pour yourself into them in big and small ways, everyday, for years. You need to be that person to everyone, everywhere, all the time. Character is consistent, and consistency cannot be faked.. By every account that is how Wilson has comported himself for nearly 40 years of public life in the Pacific Northwest. It’s a staggering testament to his character, and one any and all of us can and should aspire to emulate.

All that to say that Dan being so like that is why it’s easy to see the appeal of him as manager of the Seattle Mariners. Cynical voices (hello!) were quick to skewer the team for indulging their 1995 fetish upon the announcement of Wilson’s hiring back in 2024, but I think it has much more to do with how highly so many of the organization’s power brokers think of Dan*.

A quick aside: As one of this internet’s finest and foremost purveyors of scorn for the ownership group of the Seattle Mariners Baseball Club, I want to offer them some slight praise. As sports ownership groups are rapidly shifting from family-owned luxury totems to yet another market for faceless amalgamations of venture capture, oil blood money, and what Defector’s David Roth would term “prospective genocidaires”, the Mariners ownership group consists by and large of old world rich guys.

These are people with far more money than sense, yes, and that wealth has absolutely rotted their brains and souls, but they are still people for whom relationships and loyalty hold a sort of value. Many of these dudes have been banging around the halls of Mariner power as long as Dan Wilson has been here, and they love him. They love him because knowing such a kind, good person must mean there’s an element of kindness and goodness in them, or so I would imagine they tell themselves.

Anyway, we have then a man whose foremost life skill is being a fabulous human being, and one who earnestly wants to be a baseball manager. Given that, as near as we public can tell, baseball managing is a role at least as much a hybrid shaman/medicine man as it is Bonapartian field general, it’s not hard to see how “Good man = good manager” becomes an alluring hypothetical.

All that, then, makes the reality of the present so stark. Dan is every bit as good of a man as everyone says. His players seem to genuinely love him and appreciate his role in both their careers and lives. And yet the Mariners - who entered the 2026 season with as much hype and fanfare as any in franchise history - enter today’s off-day 59-66, in danger of finding themselves out of the playoffs in the weakest American League in recent memory. Dan’s goodness has not only not elevated the team to new heights, it has failed to prevent precipitous fall off to arguably the franchise’s lowest point of the decade..

There is at the core of this a level of hubris from both Dan and the team. An idea that character is a catch-all substitute for acumen and skill requires a level of self-dilusion. The Mariners love Dan, and Dan really wants to be a good manager. Everything he does, all-day, everyday is geared towards achieving this outcome. And yet, for reasons both within and without his control, the team is wretched and unwatchable in a way that fans are not only ignoring the team, they are beginning to hate the unhateable man himself.

This is the cruel reality, in baseball and life: You can mean well, and spend every moment of your life trying to do well, and fail spectacularly. Good intentions serve as a starting point, but do not guarantee an outcome. An opposing hitter does not factor in the purity of the intent with which you called Michael Rucker in from the bullpen, and a hanging slider to Christian Walker cancels out any thoughtful check-in on a player’s loved ones before the game.

We can want good, and be good, and still fail to do good. Good intentions are not enough; for Dan Wilson, the Mariners, or for us.

There is no real bit here, just a balancing of accounts. Well before I decided to let this project lapse my oldest son had asked if he could poll the readership for a school project. The project concerns the 2025 Seattle Mariners, and the impacts of sports in developing, maintaining, and enriching communities. Even though I decided to move on from The Light Bat, I haven’t yet moved on from parenting, so I want to keep up my end of the bargain. If you’d be so kind as to fill out this (very short) Google form, which is completely anonymous, I and he would be grateful.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfdqoAI74VTc85vxMcoJx7Gxy1E84J6UNfn8-p7Ay-G_g6uPw/viewform?usp=header

Our hope is to get over 100 responses to this. If you know a Mariner fan who would be interested by all means feel free to share. My son and I are very grateful to any and all of you who choose to participate in the survey. Through your kindness you not only help him get an excellent grade, thus enhancing the likelihood that I will not beggar myself sending him to college next year, you grant - as the title of this post implies - this newsletter the blessing to pass from the torment of this world, and to finally find succor in the next.

Thanks so much. We appreciate you.

Goms.

Welcome, friends. I will not bury the lede. This will be the last edition of The Light Bat newsletter. Since our first post just a little over a year ago in total we’ve produced 107 written posts, 12 podcasts, and countless hilarious images. The majority of the first two were my responsibility (Nathan). The latter were entirely the product of Samuel’s uniquely damaged and therefore extremely precious mind. He has supped on the worm juice of Mariber, and the resulting alterations of his brain chemistry should be both celebrated, and most likely quarantined lest it spread.

I have zero regrets regarding this project. I wanted to see if I could still write about this team in a way that gave myself and others joy. I’ve been thinking, talking, and writing actively in some capacity about this franchise every year since 2011, when my friend Jon Shields let me hammer out some truly disgustingly bad prose for his site Pro Ball NW. But I hadn’t really committed to the grind of covering a season in many years.

I was happy to find out that the answer was yes. By nature I am very slow to let myself feel pride or accomplishment in my own endeavors. But I believe The Light Bat was an additive feature for those of you who came along for the ride with us. I am quite sure nobody wrote, talked, or used the demonic forces of photoshop about the 2025 Mariners like we did, and I’m very proud of that.

For the past 15 years I have used baseball as an entry into the online space as a way to hone my thoughts, meet and befriend fascinating people - many of whom I count among my closest friends to this day - and have some of the happiest, most rewarding experiences of my life. This journey has been profoundly, deeply important to my life. In many ways the person I am has been largely shaped by it.

Things have changed, however. I am 44. I probably look it, and I’m definitely beginning to feel it. I have two children who will soon be grown, and will never be ungrown. After having mental tabs open and processing power dedicated to the Seattle Mariners almost their entire lives it’s time for less mental clutter. It’s time, to channel 2025 Baseball America Executive of the Year Jerry Dipoto, to streamline my systems in order to maximize future potential output. I don’t want to be a dad for the short term. I want to do this the right way.

Additionally, the space that is online has steadily and fundamentally altered and, in my view, significantly worsened over the passing of time. There is less opportunity on the internet, and I believe that is true regardless of how you define “opportunity”. Fewer jobs, fewer real people, fewer space to experiment with things, to discover, to learn, etc. I am doing my best to remain hopeful that the trends that have so limited and harmed what we experience online - which I believe are also negatively impacting society and humanity at large - will reverse course in my lifetime. But until such a time, spending so many of my mental resources here is not wise, productive, or healthy.

I want to thank you. All of you. Each and every one of you who read, listened, commented, and supported this newsletter with your eyes, ears, and wallets. I hope you never felt like I took you for granted. It has always been amazing to me that what I had to say about this baseball team found people of like mind and spirit, and I will never stop being grateful that it did.

I need to single out Samuel for a special thank you. Over the past year there is absolutely no way this newsletter would exist without him, and if it did it would have been a hollow copy of what it was. His boundless energy, talent, and good humor made everything here so much better. I am so thankful for him and his friendship.

As I sign off, I hope the Mariners fan community continues to carve its singular impact into baseball fandom. This stupid, infuriating franchise left us all for dead for decades. As a result we made something amazing by ourselves, something I believe greater and more beautiful than winning. We made a true community; one that lasted over time and with the ebbs and flows of the franchise, capable of enduring major change, scandals, and differences of opinion. Today, more than ever, I recognize the fragile and special nature of such communities. We need them wherever we can find them.

I hope you all enjoy the offseason, the 2026 Mariners, and all the offseasons and seasons to come. If winning is what brings you joy, I hope the team wins abundantly. When they don’t (and they often will not), remember your agency in all this. You can make the joy yourself. You can make it more joyful than winning ever could.

Thanks again, as always, and for the final time, for reading The Light Bat.

Goms

***

Over the past year, we have witnessed this esteemed publication courageously present a series of extremely serious, non-satirical positions to the world, only to have the low-minded masses question whether these were, in fact, “a bit.” The King’s Court, in its infinite wisdom, has repeatedly affirmed that The Light Bat speaks only the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us Lutheran God.

To clear our good name we have compiled a series of recent rulings that have of course ruled in the favor of The Light Bat, providing further evidence that it has never been a bit. We are serious.

Big Mariner Doubt LLC v. The Light Bat

Post: The Light Bat’s 2024-2025 Offseason Plan

Date: December 6, 2024

Quote:

Trust in yourselves, Mariners. Honor the work already done. Rest. It’s time. Do not make any moves in the 2024-2025 offseason.

#NoMoves

Question of Bit:

Did The Light Bat genuinely propose a #NoMoves offseason, OR is #NoMoves a bit about the Tommy La Stellaization of Mariner offseasons?

Opinion of the Court:

The Court finds the suggestion that the #NoMoves Movement was “a bit” as offensive and untoward of this court. It is the logical endgame derived from every single Jerry Dipoto offseason since *[sighs heavily]* November 2015. It is Ultimate Mariber, and to confuse The Light Bat’s argument of strategic constraint with an actual desire for a Transact is misguided.

VERDICT:

Sodo Neighborhood Association v. The Light Bat

Post: Modest Proposal to Defeat the Marine Layer And/Or Find and Kill God

Date: January 31, 2025

Quote:

I’m not going to bury the lede here. Securing a safe, longterm future for our beloved Seattle Mariners and providing our hometown nine with minimal resistance to their mighty flyballs requires bold imagination. Now I know what you’re thinking: “Didn’t you just melt the north pole? That seems pretty bold!” And yes, it was. Thank you for noticing. But I’m thinking BIGGER! GRANDER! MORE…….HIGH UP! I give you: Mariners Ballpark at Mount Saint Helens (Brought to you by Draft Kings):

Question of Bit:

Did The Light Bat sincerely advocate for the Seattle Mariners to construct a new ballpark in the crater of Mount St. Helens, OR is this proposal a “bit” meant to criticize baseball’s obsession with blaming the marine layer for offensive suppression when Nelson Cruz has done this?

Opinion of the Court:

Climate Change Arena cannot stop the waters from finding the infield grass of The Magenta Manor at T-Mobile (not brought to you by Draft Kings). The Light Bat correctly identifies that the Seattle Mariners must INNOVATE, and lays out a feasible plan for the baseball club to play its games in the friendly confines of Mount St. Helens’ lava dome.

VERDICT:

Roman Catholic Church v. The Light Bat

Post: Is There a Shadowy Vatican-Based Conspiracy to Defeat the Mariners?

Date: May 16, 2025

Quote:

Since Pope Leo XIV was raised to the papacy the Mariners have gone 1-5, with the worst wRC+ in the sport…This papal decree has castigated the Seattle Mariners, and withdrawn them from God’s light.

Question of Bit:

Did The Light Bat actually accuse His Holiness of conspiring against the Seattle Mariners because the Roman Catholic Church’s existence is threatened by a Good Mariners Baseball Club?

Opinion of the Court:

Investigative journalist Tom Hanks’ 2006 documentary, The Da Vinci Code, has shown the lengths the Catholic Church will go when the institution feels threatened. Newly entered evidence has even shown “The Baseball Pope” threatening the Seattle Mariners on their very own charter plane (Exhibit Attached). This was a conspiracy uncovered by a humble newsletter which has historically spoken truth to power.

VERDICT:

The Mariner Moose v. The Light Bat

Post: Light Bat Exclusive - The Moose Files

Date: September 5, 2025

Quote:

The Mariner Moose is willfully making the Mariners lose baseball games in a desperate attempt to bury this headline. He wants the Mariner Doubt to be so great that you don’t care where the Moose was on January 6th. But you know what? That’s how the Mariner Moose wins and the Seattle Mariners lose.

Question of Bit:

Did The Light Bat launch a full-fledged investigation into the political activities of the Mariner Moose and accuse the Moose of sabotaging the Mariners to distract the public from a bombshell news report, OR was this a bit born out of frustration with a floundering Mariners team down the homestretch?

Opinion of the Court:

The evidence has clearly placed the Mariner Moose at multiple locations of extreme political activity, and his absence from court today is another indication of his unwillingness to cooperate with this ongoing investigation. Insinuating that The Light Bat is not a serious newsletter, staffed by serious journalists, covering a serious baseball team, is unconscionable. They are heroes.

VERDICT:

To our haters, we are sorry we have never been wrong. To our supporters, thank you for reading The Light Bit Bat *[shit]*.

It’s the offseason. I hate it every year, but this year has been more acute than most. Having tasted the thrill of a division title and deep playoff run; having seen my family, community, and the region come together over Mariners baseball, I have no desire to return to the world of contract years, AAV, and trade rumors. But Dan Wilson called for Eduard Bazardo with Andres Munoz just hanging out in the bullpen.

The world, clearly, does not particularly care what I want.

The offseason plan is an annual exercise enjoyed by many bloggers and fans. It’s a chance to flex knowledge of the game’s inner-workings, an intellectual conversation and, crucially, a chance to argue with people over the value of various teenage prospects (what the sport is really all about). The Light Bat also enjoys the offseason plan, albeit with our own unique perspective*.

Last winter, The Light Bat’s offseason plan observed the team’s annual tradition of making itself worse in-between seasons and advocated simply not doing anything. Depending on how you feel about qualifying Donovan Solano as “something”, the team followed the plan nearly to the letter, won their first division title in 24 seasons, and made it further into the playoffs than they ever had before. It’s possible this humble missive knows a thing or two about what it’s talking about.

This year we are presenting a far different and, depending on your view, ambitious goal. Please keep in mind the CAVEATS: The Light Bat does not play by the rules arbitrarily laid down by Mariner ownership, nor the broader conventions under which MLB teams operate. As collectively bargained baseball franchises have more freedom and opportunity to build rosters however they see fit than any major sports organization in America. All that and a federally-backed trade monopoly! (No wonder they absolutely have to have a salary cap eh?)

If you’re interested in reading a thoughtful, thorough, and more traditional examination of what the Mariners’ offseason may look like, I’m happy to once again steer you towards Jonathan Jick’s Words from the Wharf.

Ok, that’s the preamble. Let’s create a Mariners.

*No matter how much on-field success they achieve, the ownership and management structure of the Mariners disqualifies them from being discussed in an overly serious or technical manner. This has always been true and, given that structure is unlikely to ever change appreciably, always will be.

THESIS

This is the moment the Mariners and their fans have been waiting for. The team is coming off one of the greatest seasons in franchise history, and possesses a bevy of talent both in the minor and major league levels. With Julio Rodriguez and Cal Raleigh the Mariners have arguably the best centerfielder and, undeniably, the best catcher in the game, in their prime, contractually locked-in at reasonable rates. Additionally, even coming off a relatively down year, the team’s deep stable of starting pitching talent affords their run prevention a preposterously high floor.

There have arguably been other, better opportunities for the team to push its chips all-in, but not significantly. This is the chance for the team to go on the kind of free agency bonanza we’ve always wanted them to. There are a bevy of available players, right this very moment, that fit the Mariners’ current roster holes and/or simply make the team better as it continues its quest to become the final MLB team to make a World Series.

As of now, per Spotrac, the Mariners’ payroll is 15th in baseball at approximately $167 million. The highest payroll in the game belongs to the two-time defending champion Dodgers, at approximately $350 million. Quick math shows something like a $183 million dollar gap between the two franchises. That gives us some serious wiggle room.

Of course, we are not totally unrealistic. We are not going to do something so extreme, so pie-in-the-sky that the end result saddles poor John Stanton and friends footing the bill for MLB’s largest payroll.

We’re going to leave them third.

THE MOVES

NOTE: For this portion of the exercise I am not attempting to guess what kind of contract structure a free agent may gain on the open market. The numbers are taken directly from Fangraphs’ crowdsourcing estimates, which are as good of a guess as any.

Mariners sign LF Kyle Tucker to an 8-year, $280-million dollar contract ($35 mil AAV)

While the much-celebrated re-signing of Josh Naylor was an excellent start at attempting to cobble together a 2026 roster as good as the one 2025 ended with, this is a move that clearly indicates the Mariners will actually exceed the past season’s standard. Tucker is the premiere free agent of this class, a fabulous (and fabulously-consistent) hitter who - standing next to Julio Rodriguez - would give the Mariners two-thirds of one of the league’s most potent outfields for years to come.

Mariners sign DH Kyle Schwarber to a 4-year, $111-million dollar contract ($27.75 mil AAV)

We are in Beef Country now, lads. The DH position in Seattle has been a comically-deficient position ever since the organization made zero efforts to retain Nelson Cruz after 2018. Schwarber is the Gospel of Three True Outcomes made manifest. He does absolutely nothing positive on a baseball field outside of drawing walks and smashing baseballs extremely long distances. Fortunately the structure of the sport makes those two things among the most valuable outcomes available, and he does them as well as anyone.

NOTE: As a show of my good faith in this exercise, I am reducing Schwarber’s overall expenditure by exactly one (1) million USD to allow John Stanton the budget for reinforcing the windows of the Hit It Here Cafe.

Mariners sign 3B Alex Bregman to a 5-year, $155-million dollar contract ($31 mil AAV)

This one should be obvious. The Mariners’ 3B position presently consists of Colt McColt - a preciously talented but utterly unproven 20-year old - and Ben Williamson, whose power supply couldn’t heat an Easy Bake Oven for five minutes. Bregman is a proven asset on both sides of the ball, and instantly makes the team significantly better. Many will lament this move due to Bregman’s association with the Hated 2017 Astros. For those of you in this camp I remind you scripture directs us to leave childish things behind when we cease to be a child.*

*If you are a child reading this, please enjoy hating Alex Bregman in good conscience

Mariners sign Bo Bichette to a 7-year, $189-million dollar contract ($27 mil AAV)

This one will be controversial for a few reasons. The first is that Bichette should probably move off of shortstop, if not immediately than very soon. The other is, if he does plays shortstop, he does so by replacing eternal incumbent J.P. Crawford. Of course, Bichette could simply slide over to second base. Additionally, Crawford should also probably move off of shortstop, if not immediately than very soon. Unlike Bichette he doesn’t really hit. Either way, it’s the kind of problem good rosters have.

Mariners sign Cody Bellinger to a 5-year, $135-million dollar contract ($27 mil AAV)

Admittedly, we’re starting to crowd the roster a bit. Before signing Schwarber this move would have easily slid Randy Arozarena to DH, which is where he primarily belongs moving forward. It would take some creative playing time management to juggle Bellinger’s addition, at least for 2026. But, as with Bichette, having too many good players is a wonderful problem to have and, whether by future trade or injury, these things have a way of working themselves out in the end.

Mariners sign Framber Valdez to a 5-year, $140-million dollar contract ($28 mil AAV)

While it’s likely the Mariners’ rotation bounces back from an injury-addled 2025, it remains highly unlikely the group ever approaches the highs of 2023-2024 again. Valdez lengthens the already-long list of quality 2-3 starters in the Mariners’ arsenal, provides redundancy for injury, and gives top prospect Kade Anderson plenty of leash to get acclimated to professional baseball. He’s a bit of an ornery SOB, but I’m confident he will not try to purposely cross up Cal Raleigh to try and hit him in the beans. Cal would not take kindly to that. And hey! A left-handed starting pitcher. Is that legal? dot meme.

The Lineup

1. Schwarber (DH)

2. Julio (CF)

3. Tucker (RF)

4. Raleigh (C)

5. Naylor (1B)

6. Bregman (3B)

7. Bichette (2B)

8. Bellinger (LF)

9. Crawford (SS)

The Rotation

1. Woo

2. Gilbert

3. Valdez

4. Kirby

5. Castillo

6. Miller

The Bullpen

-Munoz

-Brash

-Who cares

The Final Tally

Right around $341 million for 2026, just behind the Mets for third place in MLB.

Notes

• I call this the Costco Plan because it’s buying way, way more than the Mariners technically need, but doing so at a tremendous value. The total financial outlay for these players is $176 million dollars in 2026. Fangraphs has them projected to produce a total of 22 fWAR over the next season. That is a cost of right around $8 mil/win, a fabulous ratio in modern baseball.
  
  By comparison, previous Mariner offseasons saw the team spend around $30 million dollars in 2025 for Mitch Haniger and Mitch Garver. Those players combined to produce exactly 0.0 fWAR last season, which puts the ratio of $/win in the infinite. These are the kinds of numbers that draw concern at Q4 earnings reports from shareholders. Given their prolonged track record of being unable to identify and/or acquire lower level talent at value, this proposition seems the clearest and most secure path forward

• A quick reminder here, once you’ve unrolled your eyes at all the above: Seattle is one of the very wealthiest cities in the country per capita; richer than New York City, Boston, and Washington DC among others. The Mariners’ long-standing track record of performing like a mid-market team does not change the reality that this region has more than enough affluence to support a Top 5 MLB payroll, regardless of what anyone with a financial stake in the team may say.

• If you are concerned about how these various contracts look in, say, 3-5 years let me once again refer to history. The Robinson Cano contract - which scared Mariner ownership so badly they are only now letting themselves sort of pretend like they might try to do something sort of like it again someday - was in place here from 2014-2018. Over that time he produced like a Top-3 MLB second baseman, even factoring in his 80-game suspension in 2018. After that, he was traded for a Top-5 MLB prospect and the vast portion of his remaining contract was taken on by another team. The deal produced literally nothing negative for the organization, either in the immediate or long term.
  
  The risks of a bad ending to a large contract always exist, and I will not say they do not. They are, however, often vastly exaggerated by the ownership class and its various mouthpieces as justification for not doing them.

Conclusion

By my back-of-napkin, early-AM math this plan results in the Mariners having something like a 105-win true talent roster. No doubt, given the mindset of the Stanton/Dipoto Regime, it would be viewed as neither financially feasible nor necessary from a talent perspective. Their goal is well-established: Be consistently good enough to contend for one of baseball’s ever-increasing playoff spots for as little money as possible.

The goal for myself, and I would at least hope some other fans, is for the Mariners to build as good of a baseball team as is possible, every single year. MLB’s current salary structure allows for similarly-inclined ownership to do any number of things to achieve those ends that may, on the surface, be considered outlandish or over-the-top.

This plan begins to do something like that, and it does so without pushing the Mariners beyond the previously-established boundaries of what other teams have shown is financially possible. It has the added benefit of leaving the Mariners’ legitimately exciting and deep farm system entirely untouched. Should the team feel compelled midseason to add a player like Tarik Skubal, fill out the bullpen, or otherwise touch up holes that emerge through injury or underperformance, they will be well-stocked to do just that.

The goal of sports is to win every single game, every single day, for all of eternity. It is an impossible goal, but a fantastic philosophical starting point. It’s where I’m coming from with the 2026 Seattle Mariners, and every Mariners team to come.

Goms

Making things worse, the AL MVP vote did not go the way we as Mariner fans hoped. We’re not going to lambast the BBWAA here. These awards are hard, and the vast majority of the voters take the responsibility very seriously. Still, we need to say something about it.

Last night the 2025 American League’s Most Valuable Player award went to New York Yankees “outfielder” Aaron Judge. It was the third win for Judge, on the back of an offensive performance that borders on the historically obscene.

Nipping at his heels in a close second was the intrepid hero of our tale, California “Cal” Raleigh. It was an incredibly close vote, with Judge receiving 17 first place votes to Raleigh’s 13. Neither player received a third place vote, and no other player received a vote higher than third. Here ya go:

While I’m disappointed for Cal, it’s hard to feel any acute grievance. This was not a miscarriage of justice like, say, 1996 Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey Jr. losing out to literally Juan Gonzales and his 3.5 fWAR. By practically every measure old and new (besides one) Judge had the advantage offensively.

He’s a terrific hitter; one of the greatest of all-time, and 2025 is one of his greatest seasons. Raleigh’s case came down to how you valued his defensive position relative to Judge’s, and how cool you thought it was to see a switch-hitting catcher hit 60 home runs.

I would have been thrilled had Raleigh won the award. He deserved it. So did Aaron Judge. In a perfect world they’d share the crown. This is - spoiler alert here - not a perfect world.

ANYWAY, we here at Light Bat HQ are mostly interested in breaking down the vote to determine just who is doing the most hating. Hating is sports fandom at its purest. It uses data and logic but is not beholden to them. It will merely shape them to serve whatever needs the hating has at any given time.

To that end we have broken down the MVP vote by city and, based on how Raleigh and Judge performed respectively against that city’s teams, determined just how much hater-ass hating is going on across these United States*.

*And Toronto

A few notes:

-There are millions upon millions of people in Texas whose spirit and character are not reflected by the state’s most annoying stereotypes. We’d love to meet one of them someday.

-Minnesota I am sorry that we have Scandanavian heritage here and access to the sea. You don’t have to be so passive aggressive about your feelings of inadequacy.

-The committee recognizes and appreciates the closer a city is in relation to New York the more that city’s voters were inclined to let hatred fuel a vote for Cal. BBWAA members of Boston, Baltimore and, yes, even New York. We see that hate, and we honor it.

In conclusion: The 2025 AL MVP result was disappointing but predictable and not unjust. We nonethless would like to petition NYC Mayor-elect Mamdani to institute a new “MVP Tax” that applies only to Aaron Judge; the funds of which can help pay for his many progressive policies, and hopefully drive Aaron to join all the massive swath of NYC elite who will start fleeing the city, uh, any day now.

Imagine Aaron Judge in Boston whites. Boy oh boy, could be cool!

The 2025 season, however, was different. It gave us the deepest postseason run in franchise history, something like 30-40% of the greatest moments we’ve ever had with them, and memories this author will cherish for all time. If ever a Mariners’ season deserved a “don’t cry because its over, smile because it happened”-style montage played over Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You”, it was this one.

So, yeah, the sting hasn’t worn off. And now we’re faced with the cold dark of Winter and, glorious playoff run aside, the same cast of characters in charge that we’ve all gotten used to sleeping through the past decade-and-change of offseasons. The Mariners’ brass and ownership are known quantities, and what we know about them is going to make this offseason challenging for a number of reasons, which we will now discuss more at length.

Regression (Derogatory) Looms

The 2025 Mariners benefitted from multiple players’ very best performances in 2025. The obvious one is hopefully-soon-crowned AL MVP Cal Raleigh. His 9.1 fWAR tied with 1997 Mike Piazza for the third-most by a primary catcher in the past 50 years, and a whopping 58% higher than his previous career high. Cal is already one of the 10 greatest Mariners of all-time, and his career is off to a Hall of Fame start, but expecting anything close to a repeat of 2025 moving forward would be foolishly optimistic.

Jorge Polanco didn’t just bounce back from his atrocious 2024 but posted a season in 2025 that was offensively as good as he has ever been. His 132 wRC+ was a career high, and his 524 PA was the most since 2021.

And, of course, Josh Naylor. One of the most instantaneously-beloved Mariner acquisitions of all-time, Naylor’s play in a Mariners uniform was far and away the best production of his career in pretty much every statistical category you can imagine. If you love Josh Naylor I get it, but expecting him to play like a 5.5 win first baseman any year moving forward is going to leave you, uh, dissatisfied with reality.

On the pitching side, Bryan Woo not only performed at something like his 90th percentile outcome, he did so over 185 innings, which is more than he pitched in college and the minor leagues, combined.

Every team benefits from career years and outlier performance every season to some degree, and the Mariners certainly have better data than I and smarter people than myself looking at it. But that doesn’t change that in the unlikely scenario the Mariners bring back all their incumbents from 2025, that hypothetical roster is highly unlikely to repeat last season’s level of success.

The Mariners Don’t Like Signing These Kinds of Guys

I’m going to focus on the big three of Jorge Polanco, Josh Naylor, and Eugenio Suarez for this point. Polanco and Suarez are both well into their 30’s, coming off career-ish seasons right at the point in a player’s aging curve when real collapse becomes increasingly possible. Josh Naylor is significantly younger at 28, but plays a non-premium position and does so with a body that, well, typically does not age gracefully.

Crucially, 2025’s success for these three means they will all be at the very height of their potential earnings for players of their profile. We have over 10 seasons now with the Jerry Dipoto/John Stanton Mariners. They hate paying top dollar for any player, doubly so for ones over 30. The hilarious Mitch Garver signing aside, practically every post-prime player the Dipoto Mariners have ever acquired has been done so on a cheap, one-year deal off a down season that hopes to catch positive regression.

However you feel about the potential 2026 production for Naylor/Suarez/Polanco, history shows that the kinds of deals they are projected to receive are the types this organization has avoided like plague.

Now, in fairness, the Mariners have been extremely vocal about targeting Naylor specifically, practically since the day they acquired him. Is make the thought of literally Josh Naylor - something like the 8-10th best first baseman in baseball - receiving the third-highest free agent contract in Mariner franchise history humorous to me? Extremely, yes. Particularly when you consider all the truly elite players over the years this franchise has spurned to keep the metaphorical powder dry for the right time/player.

The Youth Is Completely Unproven

Assuming the likely scenario where the Mariners need to replace at least one of Naylor/Polanco/Suarez with an in-house option for 2026, the Mariners will need to lean on everyone’s favorite content-generating machine: The Farm. Unfortunately, at least for 2026, the prospects are a combination of underwhelming and/or underbaked.

Ben Williamson slugged .310 in 295 plate appearances in 2025. Despite a shadowy cabal of media and organizational voices insisting his defense was going to be generational, it was merely “good”. He will be 25 in 2026 and the prospect of him becoming a Real Boy hinges on learning to make me use more than one hand to count his home run totals.

Cole Young has the sheen of Top 100 prospect still attached, and will spend the next season at the tender age of 22. There is plenty of time for him to grow and fulfill his destiny as The Adam Frazier of a New Age, but there’s little guarantee that happens fast enough to make playing him everyday in 2026 an acceptable solution for a team smack in the middle of their contention window. Also his defense his not good.

Colt McColt, the team’s best prospect, benefits from being good enough at defense that the offensive struggles almost certain to come from being 20-years old and trying to hit major league pitching will not keep him from being useful. That said, those offensive struggles are indeed almost certain. It is possible - and would be wonderful - if he broke out into a young Kyle Seager 2.0, rampaging towards a RotY campaign that cements him as a core player moving forward, but counting on that is a tall ask.

Elsewhere, most of the team’s top positional prospects are either still in the low minors or Laz Montes. I like Laz Montes. Him becoming a bashing 1B/DH would be such a wonderful development for this franchise. It is far, far more likely he never gets the strikeouts under control and goes the path of Carlos Peguero (minus the credit card fraud plz).

The Foundation is Cracked

Prior to 2025 everything this organization did flowed from the depth, youth, and relative health of its starting rotation. Luis Castillo/Bryce Miller/Logan Gilbert/George Kirby/Bryan Woo’s collective run of health and production from 2023-2024 allowed this organization to function with a preposterously high floor. Ex. The 2024 team spent half a season as one of the worst-hitting groups in the 150-year history of baseball and still managed to only miss the playoffs by a single game.

In 2025, that run of health and production finally ran out. The rotation was not bad, but it was not good. With Gilbert, Kirby, and Miller suffering from prolonged and protracted stretches of inactivity/below average form due to injury, the Mariners were forced to lean into their depth arms of Logan Evans and Emerson Hancock, largely to predictably poor results.

Looking ahead to 2026, a repeat of that poor injury luck feels unlikely, just as 2023-2024’s run of near-perfect health was unlikely. Additionally, thanks to Dan Wilson being Right With The Lord, the Mariners were able to use the number two overall pick in last year’s draft on Kade Anderson, who at worse should provide better rotational depth than Evans/Hancock should injuries reoccur.

That said, the struggles of 2025 are fresh, and they must be weighted accordingly. While it’s unlikely four of the team’s pitchers will struggle with injury again in 2026, that recency makes it highly likely some combination of them will. This makes the oft-floated concept of trading Luis Castillo - the one rotational arm clearly in decline - for salary relief extra risky. While peak La Piedra is unlikely to ever return, he was the sole Opening Day rotation member to stay healthy last season.

In my view, the Mariners’ best chance of overcoming their own track record of inadequate offseasons and looming negative regression lies in the rotation’s return to health and form. But that is a big unknown. Pitching health and production is quite possibly the most fickle and unpredictable quantity in the modern game.

***

And there you have it, folks. Next week I’ll look into what I think this team could do this offseason to not only overcome these issues, but build a team that can enter 2026 as a World Series Favorite. While that plan will not quite be of the “Fantasy Baseball Player High on Cocaine” variety, it will neither seek to shape a roster that fits ownership’s vision for how best to run a baseball franchise..

Thanks so much as always for reading and supporting The Light Bat!

If you joined us during the season, the vibe around here during winter’s months is a bit different. While there will be the occasional transaction analysis or proposed trade/signing here and there, we tend to be a bit more esoteric and experimental. If you crave the sweet sweet comfort of data, projections and Real Ball there are many, many, many other sources for more traditional roster breakdowns,

Personally, I recommend Jonathan Jick’s Words from the Wharf, where he has an ongoing five-part exhaustive analysis of the various factors and scenarios the team is facing and considering. Additionally, if you’re a 67-loving youth and need everything disseminated to you by video, I strongly recommend Ben Ranieri’s Sea Level. Both gentlemen know ball, and respect their audience.

For our purposes today, we are not going to trouble ourselves with contracts, prospects, or arbitration projections. Today is about coming together on what we, as fans, expect of the Seattle Mariners moving forward. Ergo, ipso facto, and (most importantly) therefore, The Light Bat returns.

The 2022 Seattle Mariners were a hell of a lot of fun. Despite their flaws, the team rode the coat tails of Julio Rodriguez’s Rookie of the Year campaign, Cal Raleigh’s first full season at catcher, and Logan Gilbert’s first full season on the mound. There were two factors that led to the team separating itself from all the previous Mariner teams of the past two decades: A phenomenal trade deadline, and an incredible late-season hot streak.

Luis Castillo was lights out down the stretch, and August’s historic 14-game winning streak put the team on the path to its first playoff appearance in more than 20 years. Despite a sweep in the ALDS at the hands of their bitter rivals the Houston Astros, the team entered the offseason with a momentum not felt in generations.

With a superstar 21-year old centerfielder, four-win second-year catcher, and a once-in-a-lifetime in-house rotation all granting the team the baseball equivalent of a Hall of Fame quarterback on a rookie deal, the limits to the Seattle Mariners’ future were defined solely by the vision and acumen of ownership and management.

I’m not going to rehash what happened the next two years in any kind of detail. You already know. Suffice to say, rather than leveraging the opportunity handed them by their own good work and a healthy dose of good fortune, the Mariners squandered every last bit of momentum and goodwill 2022 afforded them. They treated their roster as though they were means-testing income levels necessary to qualify for a free school lunch.

Their vision seemingly did not extend one step beyond what they had already accomplished. As a fan, it was hard to process their actions (and inactions) as anything but those of a franchise happy to be where it was: An edge-case playoff team on a budget, happy to see it payoff with occasional playoff appearances, but thrilled either way with full stadiums and stable returns on investment.

The 2025 Seattle Mariners were a hell of a lot of fun. Despite their flaws, the team rode the coat tails of a MVP-worthy season from Cal Raleigh, another fabulous year from Julio, and a dominant season from Bryan Woo to the franchise’s first division title in nearly a quarter-century, and the longest playoff run they’ve ever had. There were two factors that led to the team separating itself from so many Mariners teams of the past: A phenomenal trade deadline, and an incredible hot streak.

Despite falling just short of the organization’s first-ever World Series appearance, the team enters the offseason with momentum and the opportunity to cement themselves as the new bullies of the AL West.

In many ways the opportunities of the winters of 2022 and 2025 mirror themselves. Therefore, I think it’s important to be clear on what where we are at.

The Seattle Mariners remain the only MLB franchise to never make a World Series. The demands and expectations are simple: Every moment, every day, and every decision made by ownership and management moving forward must be done with the understanding that 2026 is the year that changes.

The concepts of “sustainability” and “longterm thinking” espoused by the Mariners specifically (and the sport broadly) are rejected for what they are: Soft language used to justify austerity and profit maximization. Every dollar ownership has sunk into this franchise since the day they purchased it either has or will come back to them orders of magnitude greater. Their return on investment is already guaranteed by the nature of the asset they own, and the government-backed monopoly under which it operates.

I have said this before. It is not a new thought or a particularly insightful one, but to expand and emphasize: The people who sit atop the Seattle Mariners - ownership and upper-level management - are not necessary for the franchise’s continued health and existence. The sport as we enjoy it requires fans to love it, players to play it, and workers to facilitate the shared experience of those two parties. Every single other party - owners, sponsors, business partners, etc. - exist solely off of the abundance created by us and our players. Do not ever forget for one day that it is our money and labor that built the lavish offices and play spaces John Stanton, Jerry Dipoto, and friends call home. They need us, and we do not need them.

The Seattle Mariners are ours. Our region’s shared passion, creativity, and resources created the space for them to be born, and for half-a-century we have supported them ceaselessly. We have created a thriving community of fandom with generations of memories despite being given less from the team than every single other team in the sport. We made this team matter well before John Stanton and his cronies became owners by title, and we will do so long after they have cashed out their investment and moved on to leach off something else.

Major League Baseball’s collectively-bargained labor agreement puts very few limits or standards on how much its teams are limited by or required to spend on rosters. As such we do not require the team’s 2026 payroll to reach a certain threshold to be satisfied with their effort. What we do require is that roster payroll not be an inhibitor in the team’s pursuit of its first ever World Series appearance and championship. Again, that appearance and championship should and must be the driving focus of everyone in leadership for this offseason, the 2026 season, the 2027 season, and every season that comes after.

That said, given a brief survey of the sport and team’s landscape, it is our belief that nothing less than a 2026 payroll of at least $200 million is required to show ownership’s willingness to begin to match the commitment shown by the team’s players, fans, and employees.

Despite the similarities between today and three years ago, it’s possible 2022’s opportunity was even greater than today’s. If you want to focus on the age and salary of the team’s best players, it almost certainly was. Nonetheless, fecklessness, greed, and incompetence led to them squandering that opportunity to an astonishing degree.

We are not doing that again. It’s 2025. We are not going back.

Goms.

It was the most fun I’ve had with baseball in decades. My overriding sense, at the moment tucked way back and very safe from the front and center emotions of pain, frustration, sadness, and anger at last night’s 4-3 loss, is one of deep gratitude that I got to experience this year, and that it was timed such that I was able to share it with my son. I will never, ever, ever, forget our journey with the 2025 Seattle Mariners.

It’s all gratefulness, in the end. Grateful for the season, grateful for all of you for reading this newsletter all season and making it such a fun project. Grateful to the players - Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodriguez specifically - for some of the greatest baseball ever played by guys in the uniform. Weighed and measured objectively the scales of the season will not just tilt towards the positive, they will do so with such force that the scale smashes through the floor, potentially resulting in some significant structural damage. But, like, in a good way.

I’ll probably write about all that - the wonderful histories, the heroic performances, and the ways it introduced a new generation of fans to the narcotic-like high all of us old heads have been clamoring for all this time - as the offseason progresses. Today, though, I can’t do it.

Today I need to be mad.

We’ve gotta be able to call it for what it was: The way Dan Wilson managed the seventh inning of last night’s Game 7 was a disaster. The Mariners entered the inning nine outs from their first-ever World Series. Bryan Woo was on his third inning of work, on two days’ rest, after not pitching for a month. Only after a leadoff walk was followed by a single did Pete Woodworth run to the mound to allow time for a reliever to warm up. The lack of preparation was (and is) completely baffling. A manager is supposed to be constantly planning 1-2 moves ahead. Like so many times this season, Dan Wilson felt a move behind.

When the call to pull Woo finally came, it was for Eduard Bazardo. In the continued interest of being fair we must continue being honest: Bazardo was absolutely fantastic in 2025, and one of the best stories on the pitching side. All season long, in every possible circumstance and role imaginable - especially in the first half of the year as Seattle’s rotation imploded with injuries - Bazardo took the ball. The 2025 Mariners would have never made it to Game 7 of the ALCS without Eduard Bazardo.

He also isn’t the team’s best reliever. He’s not their second-best reliever. I thought Joe Posnasnki broke it down well this morning. Of all the possible options you had in that moment Dan Wilson (and/or whoever influences these kinds of decisions in the org) quite possibly chose the very worst one. Two pitches later George Springer’s fly ball soared through the air. I imagine Andres Munoz had a good view of it landing from his seat in the bullpen.

It’s the simple statements that hurt in these moments. The Mariners were nine outs away from their first-ever World Series appearance and their best reliever never pitched with the lead. Munoz was being saved for the game Dan Wilson wanted, not being properly utilized for the game he got. It was the kind of rigid, role-focused bullpen usage we saw all season, and it cost them dearly at the absolute worst moment.

Where do we go from here? I can’t even begin to think clearly about it. I never thought Wilson had any business managing a big league clubhouse when he was hired, so I won’t pretend to be unbiased here. Given enough time he could grow into the position, much like his predecessor Scott Servais did. But this is not a team or roster that should be waiting on growth. This was a team that could have won a World Series. They could win a World Series next year, too. They and we deserve to have the team managed by someone who gives them the very best chance of doing so.

The Mariners have had five teams I think you can credibly argue were true contenders: 1995, 1997, 2000, 2001, and 2025. Every single one of those seasons has featured all-time heroic performances by the greatest players in franchise history, and I can make a good case that Dan Wilson has played a major role in keeping all of them from reaching the final mountaintop. His presence here feels inspired by nothing more than equal parts nostalgia and limited imagination.

I’m sure he is a very nice man. Everyone says so. I have no interest in arguing otherwise. I also have no interest in watching him manage another game for my team. Every season has moments of “what ifs” but it should not be so easy to draw a straight line from where the season ended to the tactical shortcomings of your team’s manager.

Next season should be treated by everyone in this organization as World Series or bust. Cal Raleigh already said that’s the goal. Julio’s primal scream said the same thing. Dan Wilson was not good enough this year to manage a team with those kinds of expectations, and we don’t have time to find out if he can be next year.

***

That’s going to be it for the newsletter this week. Next week we’ll try to put a capper on the season, which truly has been one of the greatest in Mariner history. Thank you so much for reading The Light Bat all season. I hope you’ve found it an additive to your baseball experience.

See y’all in a few days. Goms.

When this season is over, we will look back on the moments from the past six weeks and realize something like half of the greatest moments in franchise history have occurred within them. The feeling in the Puget Sound region is now the one I and my fellow olds have been chasing for the past 30 years. This place is alive, with a sense of unification and shared hope that, while not singular, sports is exceedingly good at creating.

I’m so happy it is back. It was a long, long, long, long walk in the dark. But we’re here now, and 30 years from now younger people than I will pass on the memories of the 2025 Mariners to their friends and families. If the world can get itself a bit more right, we’ll know that shared cultural heritage is preserved well beyond any of us. I personally happen to think that is a big part of being human.

Whatever happens, great work getting to this point. We kept caring, kept a community of fandom alive, and kept pushing for something better. All that was hard work, and the idea that it would ever lead here was never guaranteed. But it did, and now we’re here. Go be with others, go (safely) absolutely crazy.

We’ve waited forever for today, and now today is here. (At least) nine innings for glory. See you all on the other side.

Goms.

Consider the below a peek into the mental notebook I’ve been keeping the past 48 hours or so. The truly great ones can synthesize these experiences on-the-fly into something wonderful, but I make no claims to be among them. This is just my brain. This is my brain on Mariber.

• I have told this story before but I will repeat it for newer readers: As newly weds living in LA, my wife and I went for a walk. For reasons that are forgettable and therefore unimportant we started talking about baseball. For the next 45 minutes or so I delivered, uninterrupted and without surcease, The Legend of the 1995 Mariners. It was, to that point, probably the longest I had ever spoken about a single topic in my life.
  
  She didn’t leave me, and hasn’t. At least not yet.
  

• The mythos is solidifying now. The 2025 Seattle Mariners do not have to play another baseball game (although they are guaranteed to play at least two more) to be inducted into the inner circle of our home’s sports pantheon. Every victory, every game, every day they continue we and they are adding new layers of depth, mystery, and wonder to the memories we will pass down as heritage for the rest of our lives.
  
  Dump Shirt Guy leads to Cal, leads to mustaches, leads to Geno, leads Etsy Witch, to 15 innings, to Humpy winning (and now needing to die), to Polanco singles; Bazardo relief innings, Leo Rivas singles, Julio homers, beating Skubal four times, and on and on and on.
  
  The facts and particulars will be misremembered, wrongly told, morphed, exaggerated, forgotten, and thoroughly butchered by drunk uncles and overly-caffeinated tik tok’ers. In 10 years or so no one is going to correctly remember or care what actually happened with the 2025 Seattle Mariners. That’s because legends aren’t real, don’t need to be, aren’t even designed to be. And make no mistake, this team, these players, and this season are already legends.
  

• What is real is that with just one more Seattle victory every team in Major League Baseball will have appeared in the World Series. The Seattle Mariners - literally the Seattle Mariners - are on the cusp as they have never been before. For almost half-a-century, as the team has let us down over and over and over again, this fanbase has taken it upon themselves to create stories, communities, and joy to fill in the gaps in this experience where, at least for a normal team, victories are supposed to go.
  
  It has been a wildly uneven and disproportionate partnership, and over the years I think seeing this team at the mountaintop became such an abstract concept it ceased being the central focus of what we’ve all made this be for ourselves. In that sense Alex Rubinstein and Jon Bois nailed it in The History of the Seattle Mariners: If you’re a Mariners fan still here for winning in the traditional sense “you’re an astronaut who brought his wallet”.
  
  In an interview in today’s Seattle Times, Bois further fleshed out that idea, which I think is a correct diagnosis of what this has all been for so long:

  
  “He said that if the Mariners do win the whole shebang, ‘it would not teach us anything that we don’t already know. It would be sort of antithetical to the idea that we argued with the Mariners: Winning or losing isn’t particularly important,’ Bois said. ‘You love them like a family member, whether they succeed or fail.”
  
  The Mariners are special. They are special not because they have earned our love, not because watching them succeed validates all the energy, time, and money we’ve put into them over the years, and definitely not because winning is what this is all about. They are family. Being let down by family is a big part of the experience. So is choosing to not walk away when you are let down. They are always here whether we want them to be or not, and often the answer to that is “not.”
  
  We still let them in, and we always will. That’s pretty much what family is I suppose.
  

• There is, at present, no way to properly measure time. There was a life we lived before the 2025 Mariners’ postseason, and there will be one after it’s done. For the moment, however, we exist solely in the eternal. Like Cal Raleigh’s eighth inning home run last night we have been suspended so far above ground level for so long that terra firma is becoming a hazy memory. We are flying higher than we ever have. Descent from here is guaranteed by nature, but there is no law written that states when it has to start, nor how far we can go before we land.
  
  To the journey. Goms.

Despite the worst regular season of his still-young career, George has been unstoppable in two postseason starts thus far, running a 14/1 K/BB ratio over 10 innings. Only the cursed bat of Kerry Carpenter has been able to put blemish on Playoff Kirby. Combined with two excellent postseason appearances in 2022 and George is rapidly earning a reputation as That Guy come October.

It’s no secret the Mariners have an absurdly deep stable of starting pitching talent. At various times over the past 3-4 seasons each of them has appeared to be the best one. Whichever of them is your personal favorite, you’re right.

Bryan Woo’s clocklike consistency this season has been a marvel. Logan Gilbert is the longest-tenured, with a delightful, ever-evolving pitch mix, and the most vocal about wanting to stay in Seattle for the long term. Bryce Miller is all the most lovable parts of Texan culture distilled into a single form. Luis Castillo is the reminder of just how well trade deadline acquisitions can go.

Around these parts, George has always been the favorite. At his best his command recalls the brief Spring of Cliff Lee in a Mariners uniform; an arm so precise and cold that every ball outside the strike zone is a contemptible failure. His front-door two-seamer to lefties is my favorite pitch a Mariner has thrown since Felix’s changeup. He apparently can be quite aloof, and his gameday persona of Furious George contrasts nicely with his George Bailey-ass features.

We here at The Light Bat are therefore thrilled to have George Kirby on the hill tonight, and even more thrilled to have come into possession of his detailed gameday itinerary. Like many elite athletes, George has every minute of his day carefully crafted before he even wakes up. This is a key to high performance, and if you and your circle aren’t doing the same (and talking about investments in crypto, AI, NFTs, etc.) you’re already failing to assert yourself as an alpha.

Enjoy this sneak peek behind the curtain, and remember: It’s very real and NOT made up.

5:30 AM: Wake up to alarm (Pipe organ cover of Skrillex’s RATATA)

5:40 AM: Sit in rocking chair, drink chamomile tea, stare at wall

5:50-6:10 AM: Continue staring at wall until wall relents. Repeat if necessary

6:10-7:00 AM: Work with sourdough starters to ensure proper density and flavor

7:00-8:30 AM: Farm chores: Milk cows, feed chickens, bail hay, and oil mechanical arm attachments

8:30-8:35 AM: Call mother

8:35-8:45 AM: Ham Radio (leisure)

8:45-9:30 AM: Enter The Machine

9:30-10:00 AM: Ham Radio (business)

10:00-11:00 AM: Attend school board meeting (non-participant)

11:00-11:30 AM: Breakfast (oats: plain, dry)

11:30-11:35 AM: Doublecheck on wall

11:35 AM -12:15 PM: Dry run with mechanical arm attachments. Ensure fluid movement, responsive interface with the neural matrix, and test out new energy ball of death projectile on targets (facsimiles of various banking enterprises deemed “untrustworthy” and/or “high falutin’”)

12:15-12:45 PM: Make soap (scents - sourdough, rye, whole grain)

12:45-3:00 PM: Watch Sam Ramey’s Spider-Man 2. Contemplate

3:00-3:30 PM: Walk to T-Mobile Park (Favorite route - underground Seattle. It has the yeastiest smells)

3:30-3:40 PM: Beat Saucedo’s ass at ping pong. Again

3:40-4:00 PM: Reeducate Bryce on Rye bread variants

4:00-4:20 PM: Find a stadium wall. Repeat as listed above

4:20-4:40 PM: Power rank the variations of Rachmaninoff’s “Variations on a Theme of Pagini” (The third is the best one). Post list online (MySpace).

4:40-5:00 PM: Attach the mechanical arms. Turn on Skrillex. Assume the gameday persona of a megalomaniacal, interdimensional warlord sent from beyond for the sole purpose of vengeance, death, and the torment of innumerable foes. Focus until the periphery of vision turns red, and breath shortens. Become an instrument of torture; the avenging angel of a dead god with an eternal hunger only the blood and screams of enemies can slake.

5:00-5:08 PM: Read letter from father.

5:08-8:30 PM: Commence planned evening (Avenge Mister Felix)

8:30 PM-5:30 AM: No memories retained

5:30 AM: Wake up to alarm (pipe organ cover of Skrillex’ RATATA….

FORTUNATELY the inherent harm of the medium has been, at least today, mostly alleviated by the presence of Jordan Shusterman of Yahoo Sports and the Baseball Bar-b-cast Podcast. Mere moments from hopping a flight to Seattle to bask in the long-awaited dominance of our Seattle Mariners, Jordan hops on with us to talk about the team, Josh Naylor’s unexpected delights, the vibes/analytics duality, and the inherent insanity of rooting for a team that starts its games at 10 PM your time.

Jordan is the best, entirely more gracious than I deserve, and I could not be more grateful for his time. Check out the podcast, read his work, and THRIVE.

PERSONALLY I THOUGHT AFTER THE 2022 18-INNING 1-0 LOSS AT HOME DRENCHED IN THE BILLUOUS, ASH-FILLED SMOKE FROM HELL ITSELF IT WAS A FAIRLY BREEZY AFFAIR.

ANYWAY AFTER THAT THE MARINERS GOT DRUNK IN THE CLUBHOUSE IN SEATTLE THEN FLEW LIKE 3,000 MILES TO ANOTHER COUNTRY TO PLAY A WELL-RESTED BLUE FAYS TEAM IN FRONT OF A BUNCH OF FANS WHO PRETEND TO LIKE BASEBALL WHEN THEY AREN’T MAD THAT THEIR HOCKEY YANKEES HAVEN’T WON A TITLE SINCE BEFORE COLOR TV WAS A THING.

THE CROWD WAS REALLY FAIRLY LOUD AT FIRST AND GEORGE SPRINGER HIT THE FIRST PITCH HIS SAW OVER THE RIGHT FIELD FENCE BUT THEN VLAD GUERRERO JR. HIT A LINE DRIVE RIGHT AT JULIO. THE BLUE JAYS DECIDED TO SWITCH TACTICS AND DO NOTHING BUT HIT GROUND BALLS AND WEAK FLYBALLS. THEY HAD CLEARLY TAKEN THEIR INSPIRATION FROM THE AFOREMENTIONED MAPLE LEAFS BECAUSE IT WAS A DECIDEDLY INEFFECTIVE STRATEGY FOR A TEAM THAT SUPPOSEDLY IS THE BEST IN THE AMERICAN LEAGUE.

SOME GUY IN TORONTO SPENT A SINFUL AMOUNT OF MONEY ON A CUSTOM-PRINTED CAL RALEIGH BUTT PLUG T-SHIRT AND THE SEATS NECESSARY TO MAKE SURE IT GOT ON NATIONAL TV. I BET WHEN THEY WEREN’T CRYING ABOUT THEIR TERRIBLE HOCKEY TEAM (THAT WILL NEVER WIN ANOTHER STANLEY CUP EVER AGAIN) THAT GUY AND HIS BROS THOUGHT IT WAS PRETTY FUNNY. PERSONALLY I THOUGHT THE PUNCHLINE WHERE DUMPER HIT A KEVIN GAUSMAN SPLITTER TO NUNAVUT WAS PRETTY GOOD.

ALSO JORGE POLANCO GOT ANOTHER HUGE HIT. HE’S ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SEATTLE MARINERS OF ALL-TIME NOW, WHICH OF COURSE MAKES PERFECT SENSE TO ME. THE MARINERS BULLPEN, WHICH THREW LIKE 54 INNINGS ON FRIDAY, WAS PERFECT AGAIN AND SEATTLE IS NOW THREE WINS AWAY FROM THEIR FIRST-EVER WORLD SERIES APPEARANCE. LOGAN GILBERT WILL TAKE THE HILL IN APPROXIMATELY SIX HOURS WITH THE OPPORTUNITY TO PUT THIS SERIES IN A CHOKEHOLD BEFORE IT EVEN REALLY GETS GOING. IF I WERE A BLUE JAYS FAN I’D BE PRETTY SAD ABOUT THAT AND WONDER IF MAYBE I’M THE REASON NONE OF MY TEAMS EVER SEEM TO WIN BIG GAMES.

FORTUNATELY FOR ME, HOWEVER, I DON’T ROOT FOR THE BLUE JAYS. I ROOT FOR THE MARINERS OF SEATTLE: AL WEST CHAMPIONS, CURSE BREAKERS, DRAGON SLAYERS, AND WIELDERS OF THE MANDATE OF HEAVEN. THIS TEAM IS NOW SO FAR BEYOND THE CHARTED MAP OF ITS KNOWN UNIVERSE THAT TRULY ANYTHING COULD HAPPEN AND I WOULD NOT BE SURPRISED. IF VICTOR ROBLES ACCIDENTIALLY CATCHES A FLY BALL THIS AFTERNOON WHILE PRACTICING A TRIPLE SALCHOW IN RIGHT FIELD I WILL SIMPLY CALMLY NOD MY HEAD, AS THAT IS OBVIOUSLY A THING THAT HAPPENS IN THE LAND OF NONSENSE WE AND THE TEAM ARE CURRENTLY OCCUPYING.

I AM SORRY FOR THE BREVITY AND OVERLY-EXCITED TONE OF TODAY’S NEWSLETTER BUT I HAVE HAD A LOT OF COFFEE, MOST OF WHICH I DIDN’T REALLY NEED BECAUSE THE SEATTLE MARINERS ARE, AS I ALREADY SAID, THREE WINS AWAY FROM THE WORLD SERIES. FIRST PITCH IS LATER THIS AFTERNOON YOU HAVE SCANT TIME TO GET YOUR AFFAIRS IN ORDER AND TO NOTIFY YOUR ATTORNEY OF YOUR LAST WISHES IN SUCH A CASE THAT THIS ABSURD, DELIRIOUS, UNFORGETTABLE RUN PROVES TO BE YOUR UNTIMELY DEMISE. YOU CAN ADD ME TO YOUR WILL IF YOU LIKE I HAVE A KID STARTING COLLEGE NEXT FALL AND COULD USE THE HELP. ANYWAY BACK TO BUILDING VARIOUS BRICK WALLS AROUND THE OLD DOMICILE JUST TO RUN THROUGH THEM.

THANKS FOR READING THE LIGHT BAT AS ALWAYS WE WILL BE BACK TOMORROW OR WEDNESDAY OR I DUNNO I’VE LOST TRACK OF THE DAYS AND TIME NO LONGER HAS ANY MEANING I MERELY EXIST IN A SHADOW DIMENSION WHERE I AM EITHER PREPARING FOR A MARINERS GAME, WATCHING A MARINERS GAME, OR RECOVERING FROM A MARINERS GAME. GAME GOMS GOMS GOMS.

P.S. KYLE FARNSWORTH IS LOOKING JACKED

In order to advance to their fourth-ever ALCS the Mariners will need to do nothing less than beat Tarik Skubal, the best pitcher in baseball. To counter they are starting George Kirby. I don’t know if George is the Mariners best pitcher, but he is my favorite. He is certainly the most cussed, and the one who seemingly takes the greatest joy in the abject misery and failure of his opposition. I wouldn’t want anyone else on the hill today.

In 12 hours or so the streets outside T-Mobile Park will either be a madhouse of joy, with strangers hugging and mugging for local news cameras and chants of “MVP” ringing down Royal Brougham, or it will be a glum, subdued dismissal; a quiet walk into the night, with winter closing fast behind.

There is no in-between; no long game, no moral victory, no second-chance. Today is the game that will be with you the rest of your life. Strap in, and get comfy.

I.

Franklin Gutierrez’s career was dead. Not Princess Bride Mostly Dead. Dead dead. I won’t list them all (there are a lot) but here is a small sampling of injury updates from 2012-2013, before he simply stopped playing baseball in 2014:

02/28/2012: “Franklin Gutierrez left Mariners camp with a trainer Tuesday after injuring his shoulder on a throw.”

04/27/2012: “Franklin Gutierrez (pectoral) is currently dealing with plantar fasciitis in his heel.”

06/28/2012: “Franklin Gutierrez has been diagnosed with a mild concussion after he was hit in the side of the face by an errant pickoff throw at first base Thursday.”

08/12/2012: “Franklin Gutierrez (concussion) is experiencing more headaches and will not begin a rehab assignment soon as originally hoped.”

09/05/2012: “Franklin Gutierrez left Tuesday’s game against the Red Sox in the fourth inning after feeling tightness in his groin muscle.”

09/27/2012: “Franklin Gutierrez left Thursday’s game against the Angels in the sixth inning with an apparent injury.”

04/22/2013: “Franklin Gutierrez left Monday’s game with an injury.”

06/24/2013: “Franklin Gutierrez was removed from Sunday’s game in the sixth inning due to tightness in his legs.”

12/02/2013: “Franklin Gutierrez has been sidelined in the Venezuelan Winter League by a viral infection.”

In 2015, years after his death (and while also leading the American League in slugging), Franklin Gutierrez took the greatest swing of his life and won a ballgame.

“As Guti rounds the corner, you can see his eyes close, and then his head bobs up and down a few times and he is flying, flying, the clouds are the ground. Something died right there, after touching first base. Something died, and something was born again.”

To fully understand rooting for the Seattle Mariners, you have to understand Franklin Gutierrez. We have already died a thousand thousand deaths, and lived to tell the tale. Today is already a victory, so we may as well win a baseball game while we’re here.

II.

Will they win today? Well friends I’ve been watching, studying, playing, and thinking about baseball for something like 35 years at this point. I’ve been writing and talking about it since 2011. I’d like to think I have a pretty good feel for how these things can go. So I hope you know when I say the following it’s not a knee jerk, half-assed prognostication:

I haven’t a damn clue. Lol. Lmao.

They are the better team, and I think by a fair bit. They are also facing the best starting pitcher in baseball, who cruelly and villainously pitches with his left hand*. It is very hard to imagine the Mariners scoring more than 2-3 runs while Tarik Skubal continues to toe rubber tonight.

The good news is George Kirby could not give less of a cuss. He is the Mariners’ angriest pitcher by a good amount, and if right the most plentiful and gleeful harvester of souls. If there is one Mariner pitcher I truly believe can match Skubal filth-for-filth on the big stage, it is George.

As such my guess is this is going to be either a tie or a one-run game headed into the 8th-9th inning. At that point luck, bullpens and, *gulp* managers are going to decide which of these teams survives.

I could recall for you dozens of times the Mariners have faced these kinds of moments and fallen short. Night Court, Lollablueza, 2022 ALDS, etc. I would just remind you that this team has been slaying its history’s dragons for weeks now. Whatever traumas and scars we bring to the table, this roster is either too stupid or too good to find themselves overly concerned by them.

Give Mitch Garver one swing so mighty it blows the past two years into mist. Call it 4-2, Mariners.

*Mariner starting pitchers are virtuous and pure of heart and as such would never resort to such low tactics

III.

This is all a half-life. The Light Bat, the ongoing social media stuff, the radio show. Way back in 2015 I found something I loved to do, something I earnestly felt good at for the first time in my life. I was managing editor of Lookout Landing: One of, if not the most widely-read and influential team baseball site on the internet.

Everyday I woke up, checked Twitter, logged onto Slack, and got to work with my staff/friends to figure out a new way to talk about the Mariners. It was easy. It was an absurdly talented group, full of energy and ideas. We brought in terrific traffic with work I remain proud of to this day. The site - which had already seen numerous staffers go on to bigger things in the industry - launched multiple careers in the game. I figured as long as I kept working hard my turn would come in time.

It never did. In retrospect 2015 missed the biggest window for the “blogger to full-time writer” pipeline by about 18-24 months. One-by-one my staff left for bigger and better things. You’ll know some of them from the biggest and best things in the industry (something I’m very proud of). I had a young family to provide for and the vanishingly-scarce compensation simply could not and did not justify the work. I set it aside and, without wanting to be particularly dramatic or self-pitying, I truly have never again had that sense of greater purpose; like what I could do lined up so perfectly with something that people wanted or needed.

Still, I’ve been chasing it. That’s why this half-life has stretched out so long. For almost a decade I’ve been waking up and thinking it will be gone, I won’t care anymore, and I’ll just go about the very real work of trying to survive financially, emotionally, and spiritually in 2025.

I’ve gotten very close. There have been whole seasons where I almost never felt like I had anything to say. But through no intentionality on my part (at times perhaps even against my active wishes) the desire to be a part of community as we experience whatever it is this baseball team has done or will do has continued on.

I am very glad that it did. For years I’ve been uncertain of what it is exactly that keeps that fire lit, but today I think I do: I do not care if the Seattle Mariners win or lose today. I just want to experience it without guardrails on my heart. And I want to share that with others.

Thank you for being here and sharing so many days, games, stories, and weird indulgences with me for so many years. Together we’ve tapped into a wellspring that seems to never run dry. Let’s drink deep; today, tomorrow, and forever.

And let’s win a damn ballgame. GOMS

All today’s newsletter is going to touch on is yesterday’s 8-4 win, and today’s looming Game 4. Let’s get at it.

Game 3: Mariners 8, Tigers 4

It was a slow, drawn-out suffocation on national television*. After a nervy start and some fluky outcomes in a game one loss, and the nail-biting experience of trying to beat Tarik Skubal, yesterday’s win was the kind of game the Mariners have made commonplace since the trade deadline.

They were the better team; the deeper team. Without Skubal to hold back the floodwaters the Mariners’ lineup simply pressured Detroit run prevention with a steady drip, drip, drip, of quality at-bats; driving up pitch counts, punishing mistakes, drawing walks, and capitalizing on mistakes. Logan Gilbert - who I cannot imagine is thrilled being pushed all the way back to game three - was fantastic. Six scoreless innings, seven strikeouts, no walks; one of the best postseason starting pitching performances in franchise history.

As I said previously it was the kind of win we’ve grown accustomed to the past few months, but I think we need to pause to acknowledge how rare it is in the broader course of Mariner history. On the few occasions this team has poked its nose into the affairs of the sport’s gilded elite it has done so as a plucky underdog. Always looking to channel the energy of a miraculous run, or overcome long odds with an outclassed roster, October Mariner baseball is typically more narrative than tangible entity.

That is not the case with this team. The 2025 Seattle Mariners are a physics lesson. They lean on teams like a sumo wrestler, until the opponent eventually collapses under the weight. Histrionics, comebacks, and/or inconceivable occasions of good fortune are not required. When you’re the better team all you need to do is play clean baseball for nine innings, and more often than not the results will take care of themselves.

This roster in its current form is 34-21. They are one of the best teams in baseball. Being where they are is not a fluke, and they do not require abnormal circumstances for them to beat anyone in the game. After a half century of being blown around by the winds of fate, they have become the elements themselves. They are gravity. You need to defy them to survive. All they have to do is be.

*FS2, MLB Network, or Estonian Pit Cooking TV. Check your local listings.

Game 4: Miller Vs. Mize

Continuing off that theme for today’s game: If the Mariners’ offense continues to simply play to its talent level they will very likely emerge victorious. Bryce Miller has been a wispy shadow of his 2024 self, but Casey Mize is a 2025 Detroit Tiger, which means he has been very bad since the All-Star Break.

It’s going to come down to which sub-par starting pitcher can avoid disaster. If Miller can throw three scoreless innings Seattle should have an excellent chance to win, and I think there’s a fair chance he does just that. Opposition matters, and this Tigers lineup has been an oil-spewing jalopy for months now. Avoiding facing Carpenter and Torres in crucial situations with runners on should minimize threats.

A crucial point in this game will be if/when Miller starts to allow baserunners. Assuming Seattle doesn’t jump to a massive lead it is absolutely, positively vital Dan Wilson has a quick hook for Bryce. This is not regular season baseball, and pulling a struggling starting pitcher is a requirement regardless of the inning or the bullpen’s readiness. You are not saving bullets. This is the finale. Let it fly, Dan.

Once the starters are out it’s a battle of attrition to the finish. Seattle’s bullpen is better than Detroit’s. Their lineup is significantly better than Detroit’s. Of course it’s still baseball. It’s the very dumbest game that has ever been devised and we are hell’s own damned for attaching our emotions to it. A loss on any given day is possible simply by the nature of the sport.

That said, if this game is close after three innings I think it’s quite likely Seattle wins, avoids the terrifying prospect of Tarik Skubal in an elimination game, and we all start preparing for our baseball team to play a series to go to the World’s Series.

See y’all on the other side. Goms.

Yesterday evening my son and I, along with approximately 45,000 other nice folks, crammed into T-Mobile Park. The game was an excruciatingly close and tense one, and eerily similar to Game 1’s 3-2 loss. The differences between that loss and last night’s 3-2 win were subtle (Dan Wilson not letting his starter face Kerry Carpenter for a third time), and obvious (Jorge Polanco hit two home runs off of Tarik Skubal, the best pitcher alive).

I don’t want to belabor the personal side of being personally present at the Mariners’ first home playoff win in 24 years, and getting to share that with my son, but I do want to touch on it. It has been a decade since I drug him to our first MLB game just the two of us. That ended up being a good day at the ballpark, and as he has grown into the person he is today - smart, funny, kind, and deeply thoughtful - and our relationship has gone through the ebbs and flows that come through adolescence baseball has continued to serve as a common language for us.

When the Mariners last won a home playoff game I was 19, two years older than he is now. Back in 2001 I was away in California at college, unable to watch the games, and far removed from my home, my family, and the community of Mariner fans that were such a big part of my childhood in the 1990’s.

This time, I wasn’t alone. I was back home, in Seattle, and able to share the experience with the best baseball fan I know, who also happens to be my son. A few weeks ago I stopped mentally putting limits on what the 2025 Seattle Mariners could achieve, but if they never win another game they have already given me one of the best days a father could ever have. It’s a joy I’ll hold forever; one of those experiences that sloughs away decades of misery, frustration, and disappointment and leaves you buzzing with nothing but the distilled, perfect essence of what sports fandom can be: Passion shared with family and community; something that unites in a way that almost nothing else does.

What a night.

The Birth of Legends

As Mariner fans we are learning how the playoffs work on the fly. Many things are new to all of us, and some things are brand new to anyone who either wasn’t around or literally had not been born yet back in 2001. A carryover from those long-ago years and now is a reminder that in playoff baseball all it takes is one moment, at-bat, swing, or pitch to be remembered forever.

We remember Carlos Guillen because of his bunt in Game 3 of the 2000 ALDS (He didn’t step on home plate. Don’t ask about it.) Doug Strange will never buy a beer in town because he watched David Cone’s 3-2 split finger bury itself in the dirt. Freddy Garcia threw 6.2 scoreless innings in the 2000 ALCS, and I will always love him for that.

The 2025 Mariners’ playoff story is only two games old, but already we’ve seen at least three players ensure that no matter what happens next we’ll always remember them.

Jorge Polanco

The Jorge Polanco in Seattle story was capital “f” Finished just about one year ago. His 2024 season was both disastrous - easily the worst season of his career - and incredibly familiar - a previously dependable veteran acquired by the Mariners at the exact moment his career began to decline.

There was no reason to believe he would be back this season. There’s no reason to believe either side would want him to be back this season. When the Mariners’ finally re-signed him in February it felt like both sides simply acknowledging they couldn’t do better and deserved to be miserable together.

Instead, Polanco completely regained his career, playing nearly 140 games, crushing 26 home runs, and playing just enough defense to make the dingers extra valuable.

And now? Well hitting two home runs off literally Tarik Skubal, with your team already down 1-0 in a playoff series? Call this an overly test-screened Disney Star Wars script because it has been completely re-written. Jorge Polanco has gone from another body in the Dipoto Era scrap heap to one of the most important Mariners in a decade. Good for him.

Andrés Muñoz

All season long the Mariners played close games, and all season long they avoided the temptation to push the boundaries of Andrés’ workload. For many (including myself) watching a rickety-at-times bullpen surrender leads while Muñoz was treated like a priceless ancient ruin was extremely frustrating.

The Mariners played Andrés this season with the long game in mind, and in the last two days we’ve seen the benefits. After rarely being used back-to-back, and almost never for more than three outs, he has pitched three scoreless innings in the last two days. His performance allowed the team every opportunity to win Game 1, and yesterday he slammed the door shut on quite literally the biggest Mariner victory in a couple generations.

I don’t know how much Muñoz has in the tank, or how much longer he’ll be in Seattle, but closing playoff games is one of the quickest and easiest paths to iconic status for any pitcher. Andrés is now officially in the club of guys we’ll look back on old video of in 20 years and Feel Things.

Julio Rodriguez

Look, y’all, if I was gonna make a big deal about trying to pretend Julio Rodriguez wasn’t already a Top 10 Mariner player even before these playoffs started, and concern troll about his contract, or his effort, or whine that he was voted an All-Star by his peers, and dilute the discussion of sports and athletes down to talking about them like stocks or corporations that can only succeed if they tick off an arbitrary and ever-changing list of accomplishments, styles, and demeanors? As though all these games and players exist solely for the approval me: All-knowing sports consumer? Well he’s been the best player on the field thus far in the playoffs, so if that were something someone or some people were trying to do I think they’d be feeling pretty stupid these days, if they are capable of feeling anything at all.

Julio could have gone hitless in these playoffs with a critical error and still be the best centerfielder in baseball, one of the very best under-25 players in the game, and a person who seemingly (for some reason) deeply, earnestly loves being a Seattle Mariner. But he didn’t go hitless or make an error. Instead he’s been the best player on the field for both games and, as much as this can be true of one player, is the reason Seattle isn’t down 0-2 headed to Detroit.

His legend is already plenty long and will only lengthen and ripen over time, This kid is so special. This past season has been The Season of Cal Raleigh, and I would be overjoyed if these became The Playoffs of Julio Rodriguez.

***

That’s it for today. The regular newsletter/podcast schedule is completely out the window between now and the end of the playoffs, whenever that is. I’ll write and record when I have time and there’s something worth writing/recording about. If this past weekend was any indication I think that will be fairly often.

This week has dragged on interminably, but then we are more than used to waiting for our time. It’s here. Tomorrow the team will set out on what could quite simply be the greatest thing any of us has experienced as sports fans. It could also be over by the middle of next week. Either way, I will never forget the 2025 Mariners.

Let’s get to the Bat.

Way back on Opening Day this newsletter stated the goal for 2025: To find joy and freedom in exploring this stupid baseball team over the course of an insanely long season. I’d like to think we mostly succeeded (particularly as it concerned Red Sox pitchers) but the process felt more draining than I’d prefer. There was something missing, and it’s only the past month that has helped crystalize what that was.

Writing and talking about the Seattle Mariners has simply been far too much work for far too long, but we Mariner fans have done it and done it as well as any group of fans I know. For decades this franchise has given us the absolute bare minimum for subsistence, and yet we have taken on the labor of turning it into something we can enjoy communally. We all, every Mariners blogger/writer/podcaster/analyst/radio personality/Tik Toker, have done an excellent job keeping the flame lit. But, I confess, I have gotten extremely tired.

It’s not the losing. It will never be the losing. It may sound paradoxical but the franchise’s years in the true wilderness (2004-2013) were among my favorites. I could hang around with Casey Kotchman, Brad Wilkerson, Jeff Weaver, and John Jaso forever. The lost season of 2015 - with the reborn, dinger-crushing Phoenix that was Franklin Gutierrez - is the most fun I’ve ever had with baseball.

For myself, the drain has come from a slow, creeping belief that I had experienced everything this team could offer. That feeling definitely has something to do with the Jerry Dipoto Era’s goal to be an 86.5 win team you can set your watch to. It probably also has to do with the dangers of false certainty that comes with aging.

Up through this past September 5th, just about four weeks ago, I could have compressed the past decade of Mariners baseball into a single paragraph:

This organization has represented, in word and deed, so many of the failures of our modern society. They lack the necessary ambition to aim for better things, because the certainty of their comfort has grown central to their existence at the expense of the broader communal good. The passion of their community and the fruits of their workers are wasted on them, as they consider both to be nothing more than assets to be protected, hedged, and always, eternally, exploited. Winning baseball games is not the goal. It is merely another factor, closely monitored and regulated vis a vis expenses, in ensuring that profits stayed steady. Go biz.

I hate that every word of the preceding paragraph is absolutely, 100% true. Even more, I hate that the Mariners thought so little of us, or so much of themselves, or both that they didn’t even bother to hide that truth from us. Knowing that I and my internet friends have chosen to love something with our whole hearts that we know is owned by such a craven and ghoulish group of people can (and has at times) slowly sucked a lot of energy out of this whole experience for me.

This past month has been an escape from all that, in a way not even the playoff run of 2022 was. As the Mariners have won again and again and again they have lifted themselves (and us along with them) up and out of the place they have been for the past decade.

Nothing has changed about what I think about this organization. They are still exactly who they have always been. The gift of this run - provided first and foremost by these players (workers always bring the change we need) - is that it has allowed me to change how I feel about them. I have physically felt decades of soul-suffocating frustration and cynicism chip and crack. My conversations with casual baseball fans is no longer me attempting to smile and shield them from the blistering anger I feel towards the people who run own this team. My recent writing, podcasts, and radio appearances lack the constant hedging towards expected pain and failure.

That is the gift of the past month. After decades of crossing and re-crossing the same territory of increasingly strip-mined soil we have at long last found new ground, filled with the beautiful possibilities inherent in the unknown. Starting tomorrow, we set out to find out what’s out there. It could be absolutely anything.

If you’re a newer fan, I am so excited for you to experience the thrill and drama of playoff baseball, which is unlike anything else in sports. All of the empty space of a regular season game is about to get injected full of a hyper-concentrated cocktail of adrenaline and anxiety.

Imagine the way time stretches out as your roller coaster gently clacks its way up the big hill before launching you headlong into an ill-advisable number of G forces. You’ve got all the time in the world to contemplate the various horrors and traumas that could await you in the very near future, and you have zero agency in what happens to you. Now imagine doing that a couple hundred times in 2.5 hours. It’s great! You’ll hate it. You’ll also love it like few things you’ve ever experienced. You will absolutely become addicted to it, and like me grow bitter in its absence.

If you’re an older fan like myself, this series marks the return to days you may have thought were gone forever. I have always assumed, given the way math tends to math, that given a long enough timeline I would see the Mariners in position to realistically win a World Series. But that rudimentary understanding of probability is far different than the tangible experience we sit on the eve of today. We are crossing into a new world.

It’s going to be loud. So damn loud.

Goms

An ensemble episode welcomes Jage, who you know from recapping Jerry Dipoto’s radio shows back in 2022-2023 AKA: HELL. Also joining the show from Locked on Mariners is Ty Dane Gonzalez. Rounding out our, uh, roundtable is the show’s resident Montanian (Montanan? Montanite? Montsman?) Ben Ranieri from the Sea Level newsletter.

A lively show touches on what level of validation the Mariners front office should feel over 2025, and if it is enough for us to shed our frustration and cynicism about this org moving forward. We also break down how the Mariners could/should slot together their rotation for the ALDS, and which of the presumptive four most gives us the ick.

Everyone loves it when the boys are back in town, but what nobody ever talks about is that for it to occur the boys first need a foundational gathering in town to come back to. My hope is this episode lays just such a foundation. Many thanks to Jage, Ty, and Ben for their time. Support their work, folks.

Thanks as always for listening!

In case you weren’t already aware, The Blight Bat is the official podcast of the newsletter. So far this week we’ve released three episodes, and have at least one more to come:

-Mike Duncan, Revolutions Podcast Host and NYT Bestselling Author, joined the show to absolutely, positively gush about the 2025 Mariners, Cal Raleigh, and the historic levels of joy both have given us.

-Danny O’Neil of The News Tribune and The Danged Apostrophe Newsletter stopped by for a discussion on the Jerry Dipoto Philosophy, living with risk, acknowledging luck, and enjoying the hell out of it.

-David Roth of Defector Media and the Distraction Podcast re-joined the show to diagnose the corpse of the 2025 Mets, the still-very-much-alive 2025 Mariners, and the absurdity of pretending we can know how this stuff works. Jason Vargas’ moistness is also discussed in moderate detail.

What a great, fun week it has been. And it’s only Wednesday! Onto the newsletter.

The Year in Mariner

The 2025 Seattle Mariners’ regular season was one of the greatest, most thrilling, extreme, and joy-filled seasons in the franchise’s 49 years of existence. I have been paying attention to this team since the 1980’s, entrapped by them since the 1990’s, and had my soul wholly-encased in their grimy, filmy essence since the mid-2000’s.

There have been better Mariner teams; more talented, won more games, won more dramatically. None have finished a season as emphatically dominant as this one. Even the 2001 team that won 116 games finished September relatively relatively coolly, losing more than two games in a row and suffering their only sweep at the hands of the Oakland A’s.

The 2025 team did not finish cool. On the morning of September 5th they woke up 73-68, losers of four in a row and 14 of their last 20. They had fallen 3.5 games back in the division, and were clinging like a declawed cat to the bottom rungs of the AL Wild Card picture. If you believe in the weight of history, it very much appeared to be dragging the Mariners back to their familiar spot on the outside of the playoffs.

Then they won 17 of their next 18 games.

It will go down as one of the greatest stretches in franchise history. It occurred during the season’s final month, and it was the factor that separated this season from being Another Mariners Season to one that will see this team raise (at least) a division champion banner next Spring. Those factors probably make it the best run since - say it with me - 1995. The term “generational run” absolutely applies here, without hyperbole or exaggeration.

How did they do it? Through extremes. Recent Mariner teams have lacked an offense to allow for prolonged hot streaks, but also possessed the pitching to limit backbreaking losing streaks. For months at a time it would feel like the 2023-2024 Mariners would simply alternate wins and losses without ceasing. The 2025 team pushed up beyond the ceiling of its recent pears, and plummeted below the floor. Here’s a look at the season recap of the Vibe Compass - Samuel’s passion project and something I’ve absolutely loved having around all season - to help illustrate:

What a team, and what a season.

Three Memorable/Historic Elements to the 2025 Mariners

Dingers

For decades, the Mariners have been defined by their pitching. T-Mobile Park’s offensive suppression combined with Felix Hernandez, Hisashi Iwakuma, and the current rotation to make Seattle’s run prevention the forward-facing attribute of baseball games in the Pacific Northwest.

It wasn’t always like that, however. Older fans know the Mariners’ first run of greatness back in the 1990’s was the inverse of its modern brand, with Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez, Edgar Martinez, Jay Buhner, and others doing their damndest to bash past - Randy Johnson excepted - and incredibly lacking rotation and bullpen.

The 2025 Mariners’ pitching was far, far, better than those 1990’s teams, but for the first time in a generation the team lived and died on the fruits of its lineup which, post trade-deadline, was probably the best overall group of hitters in the American League.

They had the third most home runs in baseball. Their wRC+ was second. They stole the third most bases in the game. The Mariners were an aggressive, powerful, deep, exhausting group to face through nine innings. For once, in a game of microscopic long-term advantages, the Mariners’ ‘offense was the tide rather than the shore, and as games wore on that depth would erode the will of its opposition. I truly did not know if we’d ever see it again, but the Mariners were an offensive juggernaut this season.

Living for Today

I will stop short of saying the Mariners flipped the script this trade deadline. The team still held onto practically all of its top minor league assets. There is a chance that the failure to finish off the Jhoan Duran deal could come back to haunt them, as the bullpen is still almost certainly the weak link of this team.

However, by adding two players in Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suarez who are free agents after this season, the Mariners did cut against their extremely long and well-established track record of viewing every transaction with a 50/50 split between the present and the future. For once, the Mariners added talent for the express purpose and clear intent to win now, with no concern given to 2026 and beyond. It was and still is remarkably refreshing. Doubly so because it has worked so incredibly well, overall.

Is it a bit disingenuous to count this as a win for “Payroll Twitter”, that online faction of the fanbase that has constantly been screaming at this organization to live in the present? Possibly. Will I do it anyway? Does Dan Wilson say “Consarn it” when he stubs his toe?

Dumper

I’ve already called Cal Raleigh’s 2025 season the greatest individual season in Mariners history, and gotten a bit of push back. The raw numbers don’t match the peak of Griffey, A-Rod, and Edgar. Ichiro breaking the all-time single season hit record is probably still the single most impressive feat any Mariner has accomplished. That said, context matters, and a primary catcher hitting 60 home runs in this ballpark to lead this team to its first division title in 24 years is a totality of work I personally find irrefutable.

Where Cal will land in the annals of Mariner lore is now simply a question of how high he can go. After clinching the playoffs in 2022, ripping ownership, signing a long-term extension, and setting all kinds of records in 2025 he’s already pushing the Top 5, an incredible feat for a player just finishing his fifth season in MLB. He’s almost certainly a team hall-of-famer if he doesn’t play another game, and 1-2 more seasons even at his previously-established career norms is going to start tracking him towards the kind of career that ends in Cooperstown.

No one saw this coming, and that makes it even more enjoyable. Surprise is the great enhancer and enabler of joy. I don’t recall a sports experience more joyful than watching 2025 Cal Raleigh put up the greatest season in Mariners history. Dumper forever.

***

That’s it for today. Friday we’ll dig into the upcoming ALDS, and look ahead to see just how far the Mariners could potentially keep this dream season going. Thanks as always!