3 reasons why Mariners have no excuse for a quiet offseason, 1 why they might anyway

Taken a look at the Seattle Mariners' projected 2027 roster lately? Without Randy Arozarena and J.P. Crawford, it's bleak. As in, "Brennen Davis on the bench" bleak. The kind of bleak that invariably makes one antsy about what the team will do this winter.

The vibe right now is one of uncertainty. The first order of business is hiring a manager to replace Dan Wilson, and that process doesn't seem to be in any hurry. It's also Jerry Dipoto who'll be doing the hiring, and even he isn't 100-percent convinced that he deserves to be running the front office after the team's 76-86 disaster of a season.

It's also not as if big offseason swings are a fact of life for the Mariners. Every now and then, there's a Robbie Ray, a Josh Naylor or a Brendan Donovan. Other times, there's only an A.J. Pollock or a Donovan Solano.

Even so, a season like the one the Mariners just had at least makes one hope that fixing things will be a priority. And if anything, the hope is strengthened by real advantages the Mariners have in their favor.

Why a quiet offseason by the Mariners would be unforgivable, even if it can't be ruled out

They actually have some money to spend

This is the bright side of Arozarena and Crawford entering free agency, and presumably alongside Victor Robles once the Mariners decline his $9 million option. These three players alone cost the Mariners close to $33 million in 2026.

There are raises that will eat into that amount, but the Mariners still project to have between $30 million and $40 million in wiggle room to add to their payroll this winter. That's assuming payroll won't go down in 2027, in which case it's actually a positive that John Stanton isn't interested in changing the team's spending level.

A $30-40 million budget doesn't buy a lot, but it's real money that the Mariners can invest in real players in free agency. If not Arozarena, there's enough in there for a Seiya Suzuki or an Ian Happ, plus more. The Mariners should be able to afford to bring back Crawford as a utility player, and maybe a new reliever as well.

They have a ton of trade capital

There are areas where Dipoto has his strengths as a president of baseball operations, and making trades is one of them. That success is largely tied to another strength of his, which is maintaining a strong pipeline of talent to the major leagues.

Perhaps now more than ever, that pipeline has put Dipoto in an enviable position. He has developed six viable homegrown starters, which feels like one too many even before you factor in how Ryan Sloan and Logan Evans will be looming in 2027. The Mariners also have six prospects in MLB Pipeline's top 100, with the fast-moving Ace Reese awaiting his turn.

At the least the Mariners can and should look to flip an arm for a bat. If they'd rather stretch their comfort zone by trading prospects for an established superstar, nobody would complain about that either.

The AL West is begging for a favorite

The Mariners finished 10 games under .500 this season. In most divisions, that leaves you 10 or more games out of first place. In the AL West, it left them just 5.0 games out of first place. That's how much the division just plain sucked this year.

The Mariners have the power to change that in 2027. Even setting aside how much money and trade capital they have to improve, their current roster is loaded with rebound and breakout candidates. The same cannot be said of any other AL West squad.

The Athletics and Los Angeles Angels are years away from relevance, while the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros are fighting uphill battles to reclaim lost relevance. Even though both of the latter finished ahead of Seattle this year, each also continued a pattern of diminishing returns that date back to World Series runs in 2022 and 2023.

The mediocrity of the AL West could be more curse than blessing

Of course, the pessimistic reading of the situation in the AL West is that the Mariners don't need to try hard to reestablish themselves next year.

It's doubtful that 81 wins will be enough to win the division again, but Stanton and Dipoto might not see a good excuse to raise their ambitions beyond the 88-win threshold that Dipoto infamously alluded to in 2023. One also fears that they'll learn the wrong lesson from the Cleveland Guardians, who are three wins from the World Series despite winning just 85 games in the regular season.

For all his talk about changing the culture after Dan Wilson's firing, the reported meeting with Joe Espada doesn't inspire a ton of confidence about Dipoto's intentions. One's mind also goes to how he addressed the holes the club is about to have because of free agency by saying "we are excited about our young players.” That hints a little too strongly at a lack of urgency to find outside help.

All this ultimately puts one in wait-and-see mode as far as the Mariners' offseason is concerned. It could be loud. Very loud, even. Yet if it ends up being quiet, the only consolation will be that at least it wasn't a surprise.

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