Mariners nearly out of time to avoid being MLB's biggest disappointment

Will the real Seattle Mariners please stand up?

This is what every Mariners fan has been asking throughout the 2026 season. And the frustration is warranted, as the M’s have been unable to get out of their own way.

Coming off a magical 2025 season in which they were one game away from reaching the World Series for the first time in franchise history, things were set up perfectly for an encore this year. Seattle brought its entire team back and with the AL West as winnable as it’s been in years, and the American League mediocre at best, there was no reason for the Mariners not to be one of the favorites in the AL to reach the Fall Classic.

But nothing has been easy for the Mariners in 2026. And with just six weeks to go and on the outside looking in for a postseason berth, they are at great risk of being this season’s biggest disappointment.

The Mariners (60-68) entered Friday four games back of the Houston Astros in the AL West. They were also three games behind the Minnesota Twins for the last AL wild-card spot. And while those deficits aren’t mountains, at this point in the calendar, scoreboard watching is real, and gaining ground can be challenging.

This hole seems even bigger for Seattle now, as it isn’t playing like a team motivated to get back to October. The Mariners fell to 12-19 since the All-Star break after losing to the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday and have shown few signs they’ll change anytime soon.

There’s plenty of blame to go around. The biggest might be the lack of impact from the Mariners’ stars. All-Star catcher Cal Raleigh is having one of the biggest year-to-year drop-offs in MLB history. The 2025 AL MVP runner-up could do no wrong last season. His 60 homers and .948 OPS carried the Mariners to a top-10 offense in baseball.

Raleigh is currently hitting .156 with 13 homers and his .569 OPS has dropped 379 points from last year. Seattle’s backstop looks like a shell of himself this season. He doesn’t even have 60 hits in 2026.

Raleigh isn’t the only star who’s left something to be desired. Star center fielder Julio Rodríguez is slashing .253/.317/.416 with 19 homers and a .733 OPS in 117 games. Rodríguez has been fine, but that’s the bigger problem for Seattle. For the Mariners to be the team they expect to be year in and year out, Rodríguez has to be more than just fine.

Outfielder and designated hitter Dominic Canzone is having a breakout year, but he can’t be Seattle’s best offensive player, which he has been in 2026. Rodríguez and Raleigh have to be the engines of Seattle’s lineup. Since they’re not this season, you get what they have now, which is a lineup ranked dead last in runs scored with little hope to do damage on a nightly basis.

The Mariners have gotten really good over the last few years at being incredibly inconsistent. Great offense one year, great rotation in another, great bullpen in another and the results have lately been the same. Maybe 2025 was the outlier, the lightning in a bottle Seattle has been waiting for. Because what we’ve seen in 2026 seems familiar.

Seattle has lacked a spark and for a team that had every good vibe imaginable a year ago, it seems like that has all but run out. It may be one of the reasons the team is promoting MLB’s top pitching prospect Kade Anderson this weekend as it makes one final push.

For as poorly as the Mariners have played lately, they are somehow still in the wild-card race. And as many teams in the AL have shown, a good week can put you right at the doorstep of that final postseason spot. But there is no doubt that it will be an uphill battle for them to get there. The Mariners are currently behind six teams and their schedule over the next two weeks is not a walk in the park. Seattle has upcoming series against the Cubs, Phillies, Blue Jays, A’s and Red Sox.

If the Mariners are serious about making a push to the postseason, it has to start now because time is no longer on their side. And they’ll have to run through some postseason hopefuls to get there.

Seattle is learning a difficult lesson in 2026. It’s important to capitalize on those special seasons like the one it had in 2025, because replicating that success again is never guaranteed.

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