How injuries, slumps and mistakes doomed the Seattle Mariners in 2026
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON - SEPTEMBER 24: Bryan Woo #22 of the Seattle Mariners looks on after losing to the Los Angeles Angels at T-Mobile Park on September 24, 2026 in Seattle, Washington. (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)
SEATTLE - The Seattle Mariners came eight outs away from their first World Series trip in franchise history in October 2025 before a three-run home run by George Springer in Toronto brutally snatched it away.
The disappointment was palpable. Cal Raleigh was in tears speaking to reporters. Julio Rodríguez’s pained scream from the showers in the visiting locker room at Rogers Centre was visceral.
But despite that crushing blow, the Mariners appeared poised to be every bit as competitive in 2026.
Josh Naylor re-signed on a five-year deal in November and acquired Brendan Donovan from the St. Louis Cardinals and left-handed reliever José Ferrer from the Washington Nationals in February to bolster key areas of need.
On paper, the 2026 Mariners looked to be an even stronger roster than the one that lost in the ALCS.
But it went wrong in oh so many ways as Seattle finished with a losing record for the first time since 2020.
The Mariners were officially eliminated from playoff contention on Thursday, but the final result had been obvious for some time. If the AL West wasn't awful this year, the elimination would have come far sooner than the final week of the season. No team in the AL West will finish the season with a winning record, which is a first in MLB history for a full season.
"We were kind of riding high off of last year, and somewhere along the way things just didn’t click, didn’t come together and we were never able to right the ship," catcher Cal Raleigh said. "That’s the frustrating part. I thought we would be able to get there, and we just never did. We never got better. It’s a learning point that we’re all going to have to take accountability for. If it happens once, that’s one too many times and if it happens again, it becomes a habit."
How did it go so wrong? Let's look at some of the many reasons for the downfall:
Randy, Cal and the World Baseball Classic
The 2026 season veered off course right from the start at the World Baseball Classic in March.
Raleigh refused to shake Randy Arozarena’s hand during an at-bat between the United States and Mexico, which seemingly left Arozarena angry in an interview with Mexican journalist Luis Gilbert.
Raleigh attempted to downplay the issue with Seattle reporters, and Arozarena eventually released an apology upon rejoining Mariners spring training, but the year was already off on the wrong foot.
Raleigh didn’t play much in the WBC and tried to cram in his preparation for the season upon returning to Peoria, Ariz. Whether related or not, Raleigh then ended up injured with an oblique strain early in the year that cost him to miss over a month of action. And when he did play, Raleigh was extremely disappointing, batting just .156 with a .569 OPS until mid-August before a late-season surge.
A minor disagreement between teammates in February certainly isn't enough to affect game results in July, but the incident set a bad tone for the season.
Injuries galore
The Mariners had multiple key contributors miss sizable portions of the season due to injuries, and others had their play impacted significantly while trying to play their way through various ailments.
Raleigh was at the top of the list, missing 29 games with a right oblique strain and having his output extremely affected while attempting to play through the injury.
"It’s disappointing," Raleigh said. "We definitely didn’t deserve to make the playoffs. Just a frustrating year in general with a lot of areas to improve on. Ultimately, it sucks because you know you failed, but you’ve got to accept it."
Donovan appeared in just 39 games for Seattle this season as a left groin muscle strain caused him to miss 84 games, and a concussion sustained in the team's batting cages in August kept him out for the final 33 games of the year. Donovan's numbers were really solid in the games that he did play, but they just didn't have him available for most of the year, which also led to Colt Emerson's (perhaps premature) promotion in May.
Emerson proceeded to play through a wrist injury of his own before going on the injured list and missing the final 40 games of the year. Emerson started well, but began to really struggle as he played through an injury that eventually required surgery. J.P. Crawford also missed time with a wrist injury and a sore shoulder.
Outfielder Luke Raley has a scorching start to the season before tailing off and suffering a forearm injury that would end his season in July.
Relievers Matt Brash (right lat strain), Cooper Criswell (right shoulder strain), and Carlos Vargas (right lat strain) combined to miss 311 games, leading to more exposure in high leverage situations for Eduard Bazardo, José Ferrer, Alex Hoppe (since traded to Baltimore) and others. It also left Seattle's bullpen taxed when the Mariners attempted to keep six starters in action before Luis Castillo was traded to the Chicago White Sox in August.
The Mariners had to turn to Leo Rivas, Weston Wilson, Brock Rodden, Patrick Wisdom, Connor Joe, Buddy Kennedy in the field, and Michael Rucker, Nick Davila, Cole Wilcox, Domingo González, Josh Simpson, Hoby Milner, and José Suarez as options out of the bullpen throughout the season – options the team never expected to need to cover so many games of service.
Offensive underperformance, especially from stars
Raleigh's injuries and struggles have already been discussed, but he wasn't the only one to underperform offensively this year.
Julio Rodríguez will finish with the worst season of his five-year Mariners' career. Entering the final series of the season, Rodríguez has career lows in batting average (.250), slugging percentage (.407), on-base-plus-slugging (.718) and the lowest wins-above-replacement (WAR) of his career at 3.1, per Baseball-Reference. His defense has also lapsed at times, with -5 defensive runs saved, per Fielding Bible.
"We got a lot of lessons this year," Rodríguez said. "We all knew we're better than this. We all knew that we had the team going out of spring training. Even right now, you know, I feel like we still have the team. But you know, we're gonna. I feel like coming into into next year, we're gonna have to take a different, a little bit different approach. I feel like.
"I think there are things that we're gonna have to do better in order to take that next step as a team, as an organization."
Naylor also significantly regressed from his 2025 season output for Seattle. He's on-pace to finish with a sub-.700 OPS in a full season for the first time in his career, batting .265 with just 10 home runs, 22 doubles and 44 walks in over 600 plate appearances. Naylor has homered in just one of his last 83 games for the Mariners entering Friday night, hitting two home runs against the Tampa Bay Rays on August 8. His last home run prior to that came on June 12 against Washington.
Between Raleigh, Rodríguez and Naylor, the offensive potential of the team cratered in 2026. Randy Arozarena delivered a standout offensive season in a contract year, and Dominic Canzone broke through to become an everyday player, batting .260 with 22 home runs and an OPS of over .800. But the success stories at the plate were lacking otherwise.
"There’s a lot of areas you could point to," Raleigh said. "Ultimately, I think it was a lack of focus, a lack of execution, a lack of energy at times. You could pool that in with: Defense was not good all year, controlling the running game was not good all year, playing bad on the road all year, hitting with runners in scoring position was definitely not good. I’d say those were kind of some key points that I kind of look at.
"I don’t think it was one thing. I don’t think it was one person. I don’t think it was one department that failed this year. I think it was a collective failure, unfortunately," he continued. "It’s going to take a lot of people having some self-reflection, myself included, on the direction of where we’re heading, what we want to be, and who we want to be as a team. What is our team identity? I don’t feel like there was one this year and that is partly on me as a leader on this team."
Pitching performance cratered in the second half
While the offensive struggles have surfaced from time to time, the Mariners have been able to consistently rely on their pitching staff.
Since the All-Star break in July, the Mariners have had one of the worst pitching staffs in all of baseball. Entering Friday night, Seattle had a 5.14 ERA, allowing 312 earned runs in 62 games. Only the Colorado Rockies (5.84), Sacramento Athletics (5.81) and Cincinnati Reds (5.35) have been worse.
Bryan Woo, George Kirby and Bryce Miller had significant struggles during the year. Woo got rocked in games pitched away from T-Mobile Park, Kirby allowed five runs or more in four of seven starts from late-July through August, and Miller fell off a cliff after June, having an ERA of over 6.00 in July and August combined.
Bazardo – a reliable piece in Seattle's 2025 bullpen – has an ERA of nearly 6.50 since the start of July, and closer Andrés Muñoz has blown 10 saves on the year.
Poor defense
Seattle has been the fifth-worst defensive team in baseball this season, per Fielding Bible, with -19 defensive runs saved. Only the Minnesota Twins (-30), Philadelphia Phillies (-39), Cincinnati Reds (-40), and Sacramento Athletics (-42) have been worse defensively.
The inability of the defense to help steal extra outs has helped contribute to the struggles of the pitching staff too.
One of the most obvious examples came in a July game against the Tampa Bay Rays when Randy Arozarena throttled down chasing a foul ball down the left field line. Cedric Mullins followed on the very next pitch from Luis Castillo by crushing a two-run home run that left Castillo visibly irked in a game the Mariners would lose 7-2.
J.P. Crawford (-12), Luke Raley (-8), Josh Naylor (-7), Brock Rodden (-6), Cal Raleigh (-5) and Julio Rodríguez (-5) have all had bad defensive seasons. Cole Young (+16) is the only Mariner with more than +1 defensive run saved. If not for Young, the team would be significantly worse.
Notables
– Manager Dan Wilson has been under fire throughout most of the season with scrutiny on his lineup construction, substitutions and pitching change decisions, and a seeming lack of accountability in the clubhouse.
Plays such as Arozarena's mentioned above, Rodríguez throwing a live ball into the stands in Milwaukee thinking there were three outs when there were only two, and other seeming lapses of focus or effort led to little visible discipline from the manager's office. Wilson also was poor in explaining team decisions – both to players and reporters.
Wilson and the front office left both Bryce Miller and Luis Castillo frustrated when they were not told sufficiently about the team's plan to "piggyback" the two starters midseason when the team was trying to utilize all six healthy starting options. When J.P. Crawford began taking ground balls at third base, expressing an openness to change positions from shortstop to accommodate the impending promotion of Colt Emerson, Wilson didn't mention that Crawford came to the team with the idea.
– Rob Refsnyder was signed to be a right-handed platoon option to balance out a very left-handed heavy lineup. Refnsyder has crushed left-handed pitching throughout his career, and was coming off a strong season with the Boston Red Sox where he hit .302 with a .959 OPS in 136 games played. But Refsnyder's performance cratered in Seattle. In 53 games, Refsnyder hit just .140 with a .465 OPS, managing four home runs and a double in 114 at-bats. He was released in
– The Mariners acquired outfielder Taylor Ward from the Baltimore Orioles looking to patch the hole in Seattle's lineup that Refsnyder was incapable of delivering. When the trade happened, Ward led the American League in walks and had a career-high on-base percentage at .383. But just like Refsnyder, Ward crashed and burned in Seattle, batting just .115 with a .368 OPS in 31 games and 100 plate appearances since the trade.
The Source: Information in this story comes from FOX 13 Seattle reporting.
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