Dan Wilson gives Mariners fans license to blame him if 2025 is another near-miss

Because the MLB season is 162 games long, most fanbases can dwell on a single loss for only so long. Yet after watching the team fall exactly 1.0 games short of the playoffs in each of the last two seasons, Seattle Mariners fans have good reason to be more prone to hold a grudge.

And on Monday, Dan Wilson gave the fanbase an excuse to hold one against him.

The Mariners' 7-6 loss to the Athletics in 11 innings marked the club's first time experiencing consecutive defeats since a sweep in San Francisco in early April, and it was utterly avoidable. Suffice it to say that when a manager calls for back-to-back intentional walks only to set up a game-winning hit, that manager needs to own it.

The Mariners are a contender under Dan Wilson, but his in-game strategy is costing the team precious wins

It is, of course, only fair to note that Wilson did own the decisions he made in the 11th inning. With one out and Tyler Soderstrom at third in a 6-6 games, the choice to issue free passes to Shea Langeliers and JJ Bleday so Jacob Wilson could bat came from nobody else but the Mariners' manager.

"Wilson puts the ball on the ground, and we're hoping we get it on the ground,” Wilson (that being Dan, not Jacob) said after the game, as per Daniel Kramer of MLB.com. “I mean, he put it on the ground but was able to get it through. That's on me. That's a tough way to lose.”

Before we go any further, let's acknowledge the evidence that Wilson is, in fact, good at his job.

The Mariners went 21-13 under him down the stretch of 2024, and are 20-14 and in first place in the American League West so far in 2025. The culture of the team has clearly changed since he was put in charge, and it's especially hard to ignore the much-improved returns on offense. This stuff matters, even if the manager's role in making it happen is relatively abstract.

It is also to Wilson's credit that the Mariners have been better than the sum of their parts in 2025. They've outperformed their Pythagorean record, which is based on their run differential. It also just feels true, given that Wilson's Mariners have won eight straight series even despite a constant barrage of injuries to key players.

This said, losses like the one that the Mariners experienced on Monday simply can't happen.

Wilson's maneuvers were the strategic equivalent of fishing for sharks by using one's own body as bait. You just don't walk not one, but two .226 hitters to set up a .333 hitter for a game-winning knock. And if you do so under the notion that he's likely to hit a ground ball, you play the infield at double-play depth.

Wilson is to be commended for his accountability, but Mariners fans need more than a mea culpa from him. What the base wants is better in-game managing.

Even before Monday, Wilson had made a habit of testing fans' patience with his bullpen and lineup choices. To the former, Trent Thornton had way too long of a leash in high-leverage spots early in the season. To the latter, starting a run producer like Julio Rodríguez (.308 OBP) in the leadoff spot 13 times before J.P. Crawford (.417 OBP) finally got his turn made little sense.

The silver lining for now is that the Mariners will wake up on Tuesday morning still in first place. But their lead over the A's is down to just 1.0 games, meaning it could be gone as soon as tonight.

After what happened in 2023 and 2024, the very phrase "1.0 games" is liable to trigger any given Mariners fan. And if that once again proves to be the distance between the Mariners and a playoff spot at the end of 2025, that one Monday when Wilson put a loss in the books is still going to sting.