Seattle Mariners c/o T-Mobile Park
1250 First Ave S
Seattle, WA 98134
Wednesday October 28, 2026
Dear The Seattle Mariners—
How are you? I am fine. It’s been a very pleasant autumn here in the North Puget Sound Region, with record sunshine and corresponding foliage. My favorite!
Not exactly the autumn I’d envisioned at this time last year, though. Yes— quite a different October than the one we’d all permitted ourselves to imagine amid the wreckage of the 2025 ALCS.
This year’s World Series ended an hour ago. And honestly, by the time Richie Palacios grounded to second for the last out, I’d grown pretty fond of that scrappy Brewers team and am glad they won it all— even if I was rooting against them (again) tonight and cheering for a Game 6 more than anything. I thought it would have been more fun had they finished the hapless Rays in front of the hopped-up American Field crowd in Milwaukee this weekend. But the Brewers would not be denied. They just kept coming, with singles and defense and relief pitching. Huh.
With a few fairly pedestrian exceptions otherwise, I did not find this post-season to be all that classic. The games themselves were not thrilling. The teams mostly did not move me. The storylines seemed thin and the aerial photography was not particularly breathtaking. Tampa Bay and Milwaukee aint exactly Los Angeles and New York. Or Seattle.
Did you feel the same way, or was it just me? I do believe there is something to be said for the theory that when you’re expecting to be playing baseball on TV in October and instead you are golfing, that the games actually still being played are less compelling than they were during the 20 years when you weren’t expected to win much of anything— certainly a World Series. Other teams’ celebrations between the mound and first base are not nearly as interesting when you were expecting your own.
That’s some truth I learned in 2026: the anguish of underachievement is far more devastating than the slow drip of perennially low expectation. It’s worse than the standard issue agony of defeat and harder even than the heartbreak of psoriasis. It sucks the big one, especially when you’re at such a loss to arrive at an explanation.
I honestly don’t know where to start…
Oh, I know—let’s start at the beginning. In fact, before the beginning. Let’s start with the handshake.
First of all, FUCK exhibition baseball. Fuck the WBC and FUCK the All-Star game. These guys are already being asked to play competitive baseball for 9 months (if they’re lucky and/or good enough to advance in the post-season). The last thing they need is a month’s worth of international travel and leverage at-bats right before the season. Bury these two jerk-off contests somewhere deep in the off-season or else discontinue them. The flag-waving rights are not worth ruining your real season for. The only logo that’s important to me is the one with the compass thing on it. Save the nationalism for the Olympics and the trade wars. It has no place in paid professional sports.
Cal was wincing and fatigued before he even got to Arizona, and he didn’t recover until late August. Between the WBC and his grueling photo shoot schedule, dude obviously never had a break after his historic 2025 campaign. It doesn’t seem like Cal’s people have advised him to say NO to much of anything in terms of endorsement asks. You couldn’t turn on any Seattle media this year without seeing him in-uniform pimping another insurance company, bank, HMO or Porta-Potty company. It was an embarrassment, honestly, because spokespersoning is not really what he does best. And when the guy’s hitting .165, the endless commercials are extra aggravating.
Still— injuries happen. Even without the extra at-bats and scheduling boobytraps associated with the WBC, guys get hurt playing sports. It’s part of the game. The player has to get through it and so does the team. But organizations with championship aspirations should be able to work around a key player (or two) being down. If one guy’s bad year drains all the blood out of your bat, then you’re probably not really a championship team, are you?
The hard truth is almost no one else stepped up. Almost no one met or exceeded expectations. Randy had a great year. So did Cole. Hancock. Dom I guess. Johnny Fuckin’ Pereda. Who else was as good as we expected him to be?
Dan the Man certainly wasn’t. What a mess. I loved when you brought him in because I thought Servais needed disappearing and Dan seemed like a promising solution. He was nearby and universally popular. He knew the organization and was a former catcher. On-paper it worked beautifully, but in real life he just wasn’t up to it. And whether he was just a fall dude for Jerry’s weird tics or whether he actually had the authority to fuck things up as much as they were fucked up—I guess I don’t know the answer to that. I fired him at the All-Star break, but he kept showing up at the park. And since I wasn’t around, they kept letting him come in and work. I didn’t like the flow of the last day of the season, but the result was inevitable. He had to go.
Managers don’t play the games, of course. Ultimately it’s the players who must be held responsible for the score. Duh. A coach’s role at this level is as a motivator. And this 2026 Mariners squad seemed about as motivated as a _____________ . Obviously, there are different approaches to motivation. Some player-friendly managers get the most out of the roster because the players love them and want to win for them. Others manage from a bridge of fear. No Mariner player wanted to get on the wrong side of Lou—the last (only?) effective manager the team has had. If Lou told a pitcher to knock a guy down or a hitter to move a runner, they’d best be willing and capable. Dan Wilson appeared to have no such sway with his players. He didn’t know how to talk to the media and he didn’t know how to talk to umpires. There’s no reason to think he was effective in communicating with his players. Nice guy, weak leader. So long.
It appears as though there is some urgency in naming Dan’s successor. A couple of my crushes have already been eliminated from consideration, and I’m honestly not sure who’s next. Do you just have to hire the best guy who’s still available this week? Seems like kind of a big decision to make at 1:50am with a lot of the chairs already up on the bar. Oz thinks it’s just how things are these days—that no coach or exec has sufficient authority to force guys to learn to hit the ball to the right side or to choke up with two strikes. In my mind’s lazy eye, players would be required to pass a bunting test on the last day of spring training or else they just didn’t come north. Obviously this is not practical in this age of the pampered mega-star, but something in-between that and the open-faucet policy currently in-place would be super. And it’s not like anyone has to actually learn anything; they just need to get good it. Over and over all February long they need to practice it so that it comes naturally. The Rays bunted more (and more successfully) than any team in the sport this year. And I’ll be darned if they didn’t win a pennant. The Mariners appear to have more raw talent than Tampa, yet they finished ten games under because they couldn’t score without a home run and that’s not always the best approach, especially when you play half your games at T-Mobile Park.
Oh sure, pitching in Seattle is great. Unless you’re Logan Gilbert. His struggles at home; Woo’s on the road; Bryce’s seemingly everywhere—it wasn’t the starting staff we were banking on. For as much fanfare as has been assigned to this young group, this season was underwhelming and at times outright average or worse. And after years of considering relief pitching to be a strength, it was heartbreaking to see the bullpen fall apart so profoundly pretty much from the beginning. Arms falling off left & right, and the once-unhittable Andres Muñoz just getting disrespected so insensitively seemingly every time he took the ball during the first half-- it was really hard to watch at times. His 2+ seasons as a dominator is about par for a Mariner closer. But it was still discouraging and it’s not like blown saves in May are forgiven in September when the guy’s got his legs back. The losses are still losses and they still bore holes that need to be climbed out of at the end of the season.
And that didn’t happen this year. The hole only seemed to get deeper with each passing series, as both the Texas teams started to hit. But I’m so gullible, I didn’t even start to doubt (let alone panic) until early September. I thought the team was so much better than it had shown to that point, and that everyone so maddingly overdue was just going to get hot at the same time down the stretch and they’d end up winning the pitiful division, a couple of games over. Then they’d stay hot through the playoffs, marching right up to the World Series. September’s schedule was so soft, it just seemed like such an obvious storyline to contradict the season’s futility, winning the division late and timing a run perfectly.
But it didn’t happen. Instead, they started the first homestand of September (and the first of 19 games against divisional opponents) by striking out 18 times against the lowly Athletics pitching staff en route to losing 3 of 4 and falling to 7.5 games back of the Rangers. This may have been about the time I started wondering if my Mariners weren’t for real. Real Bad.
Of course it turns out they were in fact genuinely bad. They didn’t do anything particularly well all year, but certainly down the stretch when modestly better play might have salvaged the entire season and made it unnecessary for me to write this nasally bitchout letter—they just weren’t any damned good. The pitching was not sensational. The hitting was awful. The defense was arguably the worst in the sport. Even the home runs, which did seem to be the only way the team could score—middle of the pack.
I know I don’t need to tell you all this. You’re the team, after all. You are the Seattle Mariners! You know how much of a big fat failure this season was—even better than I do, you know! So I guess my question is: how is next year going to be different? What are your plans for the off-season and for 2027 in order to make it so I don’t have to write this letter again next November?
In case you are still in the ice bath and haven’t gotten around to making a list yet, here are a couple of things I hope you’ll be thinking about once you do sober up and find a pencil:
Left Field—Randy did have the best all-around year of anyone on the team. Such a good year, in fact, that he won’t be affordable in free agency. Not that he’d want to return anyway. At 31, it seems he’ll look for a multi-year job someplace it’s easier to hit. It’s also increasingly apparent that he’s not the most popular guy in that clubhouse. And yes, I do blame him for the handshake fallout. He forced the issue like Zelenskyy did in the Oval Office. Both those guys could have made it to lunch intact, but neither could resist the martyr drama. The people of Ukraine and the fans of the Mariners suffered as a result plus Randy Arozarena is a shitty air guitar player. Later days, you weirdo. But suddenly we have a huge hole in left field (again).
Can Matt Brash stay healthy and if so is he ready to close—I love Andres Munoz, but I no longer trust him. I believe the role of closer is the most psychologically demanding of any on the team, and I don’t know if Munoz has the strength for it anymore. His velocity was up during the second half, which is encouraging. But I don’t know if his head is hard enough for that job. I don’t know whether Brash’s is either, but when he’s healthy he is animal…
Some way or another, whether it’s with a meaner Munoz or Brash or Spier or someone new—that role has got to be improved. 28 blown saves is not sustainable.
Can Brendan Donovan get and stay healthy—That sports hernia thing sounds like it’s a bitch to recover from, but didn’t we kind of get snuck up on by that? A contributing Brendan Donovan solves a lot of problems in the batting order and in the field. Can he play left? I liked him at third during the few games he played this year. Hopefully two seasons is enough time to get well and lace up consistently.
Can Dom play every day in right field? Dom had a good year in his new body, and if he continues to progress, he’ll be a big part of this team for a long time. He doesn’t seem like an every-day right fielder to me though, and Vic Robles seems gone from the platoon equation.
There are other questions, naturally—these are just a few on my mind in the first couple of days of the off-season. As much as anything on the field, though, I do wonder (and worry) about what the footing is going to be like in the broadcast booth.
My feelings are mixed about Rizzs’ departure. On the one hand, I was tiring of his terminal brightsiding and feeling ready for a change after spending every summer day with him for the past 16 years. As with Dan, I fired Rizzs before he actually stopped showing up at the ballpark—even if he did eventually get the hint and walk before they made him run. To be clear: Rick Rizzs is a top-tier broadcaster and has been a faithful friend to me and my family for decades. I am in his eternal debt for the lessons he taught me about life, not to mention baseball. But his depth perception was starting to fail. He was having trouble keeping track of the count and the score and I was getting tired of correcting him. You organized a pretty neat farewell weekend which I incredibly do not have any complaints about. The only bummer I have to hang on the whole gaudy legacy experience is how bad the team sucked during what was supposed to be a World Series victory lap for a dedicated company man who put in his time. And that’s a cryin’ shame— as Rick would say: “no doubt about it.”
And I guess I just don’t know what to expect next year. I’m not normally big on change, which is why I like baseball. It’s Gary’s booth, I hope that much is beyond dispute. Gary Hill Jr is a brilliant & versatile play-by-play guy and can work with anybody. And I know I don’t have a vote, but I’m going to cast one anyway: please don’t force him to work with Angie. It’s not because she’s a woman—or at least I hope it’s not. Angie Mentink has a brilliant baseball mind and clearly understands not only the physical but also the psychological aspects of the sport as well as anyone. But perhaps because of this, she talks too much. She talks over pitches and doesn’t let the action breathe. By the end of their time together, Rick & Gary had developed a masterful pace. Neither seemed in a hurry, and there was space to hear the snap of the crowd and see the green of the grass. Angie talks from the end of the pitch through the beginning of the next. I don’t need to know the exit velocity of every hit ball. If it’s 200mph, then sure that’s interesting. But I don’t care about the speed of every hit or pitch and I certainly don’t care about launch angles. Leave the endless numbers to the stat sites and just call the damn game. Jessica Mendoza she aint.
I don’t know what the solution is. Last season seemed like a 5-month audition, with Angie and Ryan taking turns while Rick stayed home during roadtrips. Did you guys reach any decisions? I’ll take Ryan or Valle over Angie or Jay. She’s a solid reporter and hopefully there’s a job for her in the organization that keeps her out of the booth. So sorry.
Oh, this just in: Cole Young has won the Gold Glove! Congratulations on an honor well-earned. It is really nice to have something to put in 2026 shoebox time cap since we did not get the division title, Cy Young or batting title we were promised.
In addition to his sparkling season in the field, Cole was the team’s most reliable hitter for most of the first quarter. And though he came back to Earth a bit during the second half, he played pretty much every day and shows more than mere promise. There’s no reason to think that Colt won’t take root, too—solidifying a middle infield for many seasons to come.
I don’t know if either of them would be on my list of 50 All-Time Mariners though. Then again neither would anyone on this current pitching staff. Not because they haven’t already made meaningful contributions or shouldn’t be expected to be among the greats in the future. But George, really? Top 50 all-time? Where do you draw the line? You can’t let Logan in without George and then you have to invite Woo too? Can’t shun Luis. Wouldn’t it have been simpler to just say ‘no active players?’ Then you’d have had room for Jeff Nelson and Tino and Blowers.
Seriously, 8 of the 50 greatest players in franchise history are on this current team that finished 10 under in 3rd place? Awkward…
Speaking of awkward, it sounds this morning like you have hired someone named Jason Kanzler to be the new manager. The fact that I don’t know who the fuck Jason Kanzler is shouldn’t concern you. I’m not really Inside Baseball and apparently Joe Madden, Jim Leyland and Connie Mack were not available. I certainly don’t have anything bad to say about Jason Kanzler and my eyes are not either rolling. I like that he has a background in psych. Maybe if players can’t be coached physically, they can be manipulated psychologically.
What the heck, it’s November. I think Jason Kanzler has the potential to be not only the best manager in Mariners history, but in fact the greatest manager in the history of MLB. And what’s the sense in stopping there? I believe Jason Kanzler could turn out to be the most-effective coach ever to coach organized sports. Better than Vince Lombardi or Bobby Knight. He may in fact turn out to be the most inspirational leader in history, dwarfing the likes of Ho Chi Minh, Martin Luther King Jr and Alexander the Great.
At this point, Jason Kanzler is both the most important individual in the history of the world AND just another ineffective, affordable patsy on the hot seat for wasting one of the most underachieving rosters in baseball history. Shrodinger’s Manager, if you will. Even if you won’t— I still think he’s going to be great and that the Mariners are going to win the World Series in 2027. Not because of any real data or certainly because the Power Rankings have them at 14 headed in to the freeze. I believe the Mariners are going to win it all next year because I always do until the day they are mathematically eliminated from the post-season, even in years when that’s happened in July. That’s just who I am.
Then again who are you or I kidding? We’re not likely to have baseball next season anyway. See you in 2028!
Jeff Braimes, Bellingham
P.S: I didn’t forget to bitch about Julio. I actually thought it was a little of a horse-beat to do so, and had intended to just leave him out of it this year.
But I guess I just can’t help myself…
It’s not that I dislike Julio or certainly that I root for him to strike out, run into tags, mis-play line drives, get picked off, or throw the ball into the seats after the second out. But when he does, I do probably get more frustrated than when it happens to others, simply because of the hype and fawning that follows Julio everywhere he goes. I didn’t like the day 1 anointing of the guy and am not surprised that he has not yet grown into his plus-size expectations.
And maybe Julio is the victim here. Maybe the team (and the sport) were so desperate for young blue-eyed stars that they pushed too hard and expected too much of Julio, rushing him to the front of the line and erecting an unrealistic gauntlet for the young man to navigate. I don’t believe Julio doesn’t care about winning or that he’s not trying. Not really. But I also view him as undisciplined. Josh Naylor doesn’t have a fraction of Julio’s natural gifts, yet he steals bases at a jog because he’s such a good reader. Julio has raw ability, but his instincts need sharpening badly. He’s just not that smart at baseball.
Though his walk rate was up slightly in 2026, he still strikes out too much. He rarely runs, he never challenges, and how anyone can still consider him as an elite fielder is absolutely beyond me. Randy and Dom aren’t known for their defense, but the top tier of their highlight reels for this season is more impressive than Julio’s. And the lowlight reel? The lunge in Boston was not the only ball that got behind Julio this year. He makes the routine plays look hard and the hard plays? They often don’t get made.
Julio Rodriguez is not the first player to have his mind wander during a blowout. There are plenty of videos of major league players walking off the field after the second out, or staying on after the third. Julio’s conspicuous boner in Milwaukee is hard to watch, but what frustrates me even more is that he made a remarkably similar gaffe a week later. The Mariners were actually charged a ball in the count of Phliadalphia’s leadoff hitter when Julio had too many warmup balls in the outfield. Once play had already resumed! He’s so engrossed in playing catch with the fans in centerfield that he doesn’t realize the game is on.
It’s a bad look. I don’t think athletes shouldn’t be able live as normal a life as they can when they’re on the road. Go out to dinner, have a drink, make a friend if you’re single. Knock yourself out. But if your head aint in the game the next day, then you need to be reined in. No DJing on nights when you forget how many outs there are— that’ll be my rule when I’m the manager. I’ll lock up the Trident and ban the Happy Dance too. Feel free to pass those tips along to new Mariners manager Jason Kanzler.