Evidence is mounting that the injury bug never gave the 2026 Mariners a chance

What killed the 2026 Seattle Mariners? Sheesh, how much time do you have? It was some combination of flawed roster construction, bad management and a weird lack of urgency, all of which manifested as bad baseball and led to a 76-86 record. Yet if anything, it's only now becoming clear just how much injuries cost the 2026 Mariners.

Though there had been some rumblings about Josh Naylor possibly needing to go under the knife, it still felt out of the blue when the Mariners announced on Monday that he and Cal Raleigh had undergone surgeries on Saturday. Naylor had an operation on his wrist. Raleigh had one on his left shoulder.

As we discussed in more detail, this reveal could actually say a lot about how both players fell from high highs in 2025 to low lows in 2026. Put together, Raleigh and Naylor gave the Mariners a 156 wRC+, 69 home runs and 10.8 fWAR last season. This year, just a 95 wRC+, 33 homers and 2.5 fWAR.

Since the Mariners finished 5.0 games out of first in the AL West, one wouldn't be straining the truth if one argued the 8.3-WAR dropoff for Raleigh and Naylor was the reason the team didn't make the playoffs. In fact, go ahead and try it out on a skeptic the next time you get a chance. Because if they push back, you can always hit 'em with the "But wait, there's more!"

The 2026 Mariners were never really healthy, especially on offense

Granted, the hard time the Mariners had with injuries in 2026 doesn't look too bad relative to what other teams had to deal with. They lost a total of 1,448 days to the IL during the regular season, which ranked 20th among all MLB clubs.

Rather, the Mariners' plight is more about A) who got injured, B) when they got injured and C) the final impact of those two things put together.

The bullpen had it pretty bad. Carlos Vargas injured his lat on Opening Day, and he didn't make it back before Matt Brash and Cooper Criswell landed on the IL in early June. The effect was the pen being undermanned all season, and you could really feel that as time dragged on. Seattle relievers went from ranking fourth in ERA in the first half to 29th in ERA in the second half.

Yet it still feels like the bullpen got off lucky relative to the offense. Out of the Mariners' projected Opening Day starters, only Naylor, Cole Young and Dominic Canzone avoided the injured list:

Having to play basically three-quarters of the season without Donovan turned the offense into a fighter with one hand tied behind his back. Donovan had a .425 OBP when batting leadoff this year, the second-best of anyone after Nick Kurtz.

It took until September for Crawford to finally push his numbers in line with his career norms. Julio and Raley weren't so lucky. Julio went from a .747 OPS pre-concussion to a .655 OPS post-concussion. Raley went from a .929 OPS through his first 53 games to a .459 OPS in his las 42 games, all the while trying to play through pain.

One can play this game with Canzone and Colt Emerson as well. Even if he never went on the IL and ultimately played in 146 games, Canzone's hamstring scare in June coincided with before and after OPSes of .915 and .763. Emerson had an .884 OPS through his first 22 career games, and then a .430 OPS over his next 47 before he finally copped to having a wrist injury that was bad enough to require season-ending surgery.

The damage is right there in where expectations ultimately met reality. The Mariners were meant to have a potentially top-three offense this year. It instead ended up third from the bottom in scoring.

There's more to the 2026 Mariners' injury story than just bad luck

Even after all this happened, nobody wanted to make excuses for the Mariners when the season was over. Naylor might have said it best: "If you’re not willing to play through pain, this is the wrong job.”

Yet as much as one appreciates the sentiment, there's a line between playing hurt and playing injured. It seems clear that too many Mariners (particularly on the offensive side) crossed that line in 2026, and it's harder to blame that part on bad luck.

There must have been a certain level of hubris on the part of the players, though there might also have been a sense of obligation once the injuries started to pile up. Either way, the buck stops with Jerry Dipoto and Dan Wilson. The latter let a culture of playing through pain spiral out of control. The former basically chose to let it ride with his plan for 2026, even after it became clear it had fallen apart.

With Wilson and several of his coaches now gone, at least one of these things can hypothetically be fixed before 2027. Apart from that, the hope must be that Dipoto builds out a roster that is more disaster-proof than the 2026 roster turned out to be.

When it comes down to it, though, the Mariners will need their injury luck to turn for the better next year. You can plan for what to do when one, two or a half-dozen things break down. But when everything breaks down, this year goes to show there's not a whole lot to be done.

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