Under Wilson’s guidance as manager, the Mariners won their first American League West title since 2001, and many of the core players are returning.
The Seattle Mariners are going to be just fine in 2026.
Dan Wilson came in third place in MLB’s American League Manager of the Year voting for 2025. Cal Raleigh, the Mariners’ All-Star catcher, was the runner-up to New York Yankees’ slugger Aaron Judge for AL MVP honors. Seattle went to seven games in the AL Championship Series with the Toronto Blue Jays, just missing out on the franchise’s first-ever World Series appearance. The club went 90–72 and won the AL Western Division for the first time since 2001. Mariners’ baseball is trending in the right direction.
The Mariners can be counted on to make the necessary personnel changes this off-season. Seattle’s president of baseball operations, Jerry Dipoto, has a record, since accepting Seattle’s general manager position at the end of the 2015 season, of not hesitating to make deals that will improve the club’s chances of finally reaching the game’s grandest stage. Dipoto remains a busy executive, along with team general manager Justin Hollander, with 190 trades completed under his watch. Dipoto and Hollander made the bold call in late August 2024 to fire skipper Scott Servais and replace him with Wilson, who had never managed at any level professionally. It was the kind of gamble that could cost a general manager or executive his job if it didn’t work out.
As the 2025 season rolled on, the Wilson hire proved to be the right move. The club responded with success that hadn’t been experienced in nearly a quarter-century. Wilson deserves high-fives from one end of the Mariners dugout to the other for steering the club to postseason play in 2025, but there’s more to accomplish.
When spring training opens next February in Peoria, Arizona, many of the plans the Mariners put in place in 2025 are set for the coming season. The outfield appears solid again with Randy Arozarena, Victor Robles, and Julio Rodriguez. J.P. Crawford should have another solid year at shortstop. Seattle’s pitching strength, barring injuries, is as dominating as any in the American League. The top three starters are young and should remain in the rotation for many seasons to come, or until Dipoto sees a trade that would be too good to pass on.
Bryan Woo, one of two All-Star pitchers for the Mariners in 2025, went 15-7 with a 2.94 ERA. Logan Gilbert, at 6-6 and a 3.44 ERA, proved more valuable to the rotation than his record indicates. George Kirby went 10–8 with a respectable 4.21 ERA. In the bullpen, Andres Muñoz—the other All-Star—collected 38 saves in 64 appearances, and his stunning 1.73 ERA was third among all MLB relievers. Muñoz and Woo were named to the 2025 All-MLB Second Team.
But Raleigh’s top priority this off-season is finding a way to cut down on his strikeouts. Since making his Seattle debut in 2021, Raleigh’s strikeout totals have increased. Last season, he whiffed 188 times, nearly 30 more than Judge in roughly the same number of games played.
Wilson, whose son Eli is a catcher in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ minor league chain, has changed the culture within the Mariners’ clubhouse, showing that the AL West no longer belongs exclusively to the Houston Astros. Finishing three games ahead of Houston in 2025 is as much a psychological victory as what the final numbers in the division standings tell. From 2017 to 2024, Houston claimed the division title all but one season. As a former player of 14 seasons with the Mariners, and as an All-Star, Wilson understands the importance of breaking the belief that one club is superior.
When Wilson was hired in August 2024 after a road defeat to the Los Angeles Dodgers and just before a home series with the San Francisco Giants, few knew how things would shake out for Seattle in 2025, with the possible exception of Dipoto. A rookie manager at the game’s highest level usually requires plenty of patience. For Wilson, the bar is set very high, very early in his tenure. Coming from a Mariners’ era when Hall of Famers Edgar Martinez, Randy Johnson, Ichiro Suzuki, and Ken Griffey Jr. were his teammates, and the club seemingly always came up just shy of winning a pennant, Wilson has been anointed as the leader to take the Mariners over the hill to a World Series appearance.
The Mariners’ fans have great expectations for the 2026 season at T-Mobile Park. Wilson and his crew are willing and able to oblige.
