Mariners end season on high note and other takeaways from the finale

If you’re a Mariners fan, baseball season likely ended for you a long time ago. But on this crisp Sunday in Seattle, the Mariners have officially put a cap on an incredibly disappointing decade.

The 2019 season epitomized that disappointment with perfection, seeing the Mariners set the baseball world ablaze with an unexpected 13-2 start only to plummet to the bottom of the cellar quicker than a Dee Gordon stolen base. For many, including myself, this was the end result expected before the season even began; for others, it was yet another season in which the Mariners provided false hope and crushed dreams.

At the very least, Jerry Dipoto and the rest of the Mariners organization made it well known to the public that winning wasn’t their first priority going into this season. Dipoto’s focus has, and always will be, on 2021 and beyond.

This plan of his, the one those like Jon Heyman choose to ignore, started to show through in the final month of the season once rosters expanded to 40. Young players such as Kyle Lewis and Shed Long dominated in their first extended look at MLB action, further building excitement for what exactly the future of this organization could bring.

That youth movement continued all the way into today’s finale versus the A’s, where Justin Dunn got the start and pitched two nearly flawless innings, striking out three and walking one. Outside of his rough two-run, five-walk debut versus Cincinnati, Dunn put up five strikeouts, three walks, and didn’t allow a run in the final six innings of his season to cap off a great first year in the Mariners organization that started in Double-A Arkansas, giving himself great momentum to make a push for the starting rotation in Spring Training next year.

Kyle Lewis added a pair of hits to put a bow on his incredibly impressive cup of coffee in the bigs, bumping up his final batting average to .268 with a .592 slugging percentage. Depending on what happens with the Mariners’ outfield, specifically Mitch Haniger and Domingo Santana, Lewis could be in line to break camp as one of the team’s starting outfielders, though they may also choose to let him take some time in Triple-A for the first month of the year in order to manipulate his service time.

But the youngsters weren’t the only positive for the Mariners over the last month and change, especially today. Kyle Seager ended his fantastic bounce-back campaign with a two-run dinger in the first inning that wound up being the difference against the A’s, which officially put him at a final slash line of .239/.321/.468 with 23 home runs, 63 RBIs, and a wRC+ of 110 in just 106 games played. Fans who may have soured on Seager following his struggles in 2018 should be encouraged by what Seager did this year, which was roughly a five-win pace with 30+ dingers, while the glove is still one of the best at third base.

Encouragement is not just the key for Seager, but for this entire organization. Given how well the Mariners’ farm system developed and how the MLB team finished off the season, it’s hard to come away from this year feeling too down about where they could be in the upcoming decade, even following a 68-94 record. That record lands the Mariners in the sixth spot in next June’s MLB Draft, which will help Dipoto and co. continue to significantly replenish one of the league’s best systems.

It’s going to be a fun offseason, even if Dipoto is planning for a relatively quiet winter. This may have been the best 68-94 season you could possibly have, and the good news is that most of the players that contributed to their struggles are either not a part of the future or are already gone. It’s a new day in Seattle and the future is extremely bright.

Thank you to all of our staff and readers for making this a great year, despite all the bad baseball we watched. I truly believe that this specific regime will finally take this organization to where we all want it to go and that we’ll look back on this season, and this month specifically, as the moment things finally turned around for Seattle Mariners baseball. I’ll see you there.