Mariners losing Silver Slugger finalist nod captures key challenge for Jason Kanzler

The finalists for the 2026 Louisville Slugger Silver Slugger awards were revealed on Thursday, and the Seattle Mariners are not up for the team award in the American League. I know, right? Please try to contain your surprise.

Even a few weeks later, the sheer displeasure of watching the Mariners try and fail to score runs this year is still liable to elicit a cringe. They ranked third from the bottom of MLB in runs per game and in slugging percentage, and second from the bottom in batting average.

This matters in the context of this year's Silver Slugger finalists only because the Mariners were nominated for the AL team award in 2025. Ah, better days. Cal Raleigh hit 60 home runs. Julio Rodríguez went 30-30. Randy Arozarena went 20-20. Jorge Polanco had maybe the best season of his career. And by the end of the year, Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suárez were there, too.

This is what 2026 took from us, and Jerry Dipoto darn well should be determined to do his part to get the offensive mojo back in 2027. The money is there for a big-ticket signing. The trade pieces are there for a blockbuster deal. Teruaki Soto? Sure. Elly De La Cruz? Sure. And so on.

Yet even with Arozarena likely to leave as a free agent, Dipoto seems to be trying to temper expectations. In an interview with Teren Kowatsch of Roundtable Sports on Wednesday, Dipoto did allude to a search for "one, maybe two more bats," but also expressed confidence that he already has "a pretty complete team." He specifically cited Lazaro Montes and Michael Arroyo as internal options who can step up, which is both the risky stance and an unsurprising stance, given Dipoto's past comments about his confidence in the team's young players.

Jason Kanzler and CJ Gillman may be on their own in improving the Mariners offense

Could Dipoto also be trying to avoid tipping his hand to agents and other execs? Yeah, that's possible. Yet his track record of subdued offseasons speaks for itself. And even if Dipoto is looking to make a splash, there's an argument that the bullpen needs help even more than the offense.

Either way, new manager Jason Kanzler and hitting coach CJ Gillman need to have the attitude that the front office isn't necessarily going to be the offense's savior. Even with Polanco and Suárez gone and Arozarena likely to follow, it's on them to get the Mariners back to the glory days of 2025.

To this end, Bucky Jacobsen asked Kanzler at his introductory press conference on Wednesday if he has an offensive philosophy for the Mariners. His answer was sort of a non-answer, but in a satisfactory way.

"The philosophy is 'Score runs,'" Kanzler said. "And that comes in a variety of different formats. We have to do that with whatever tools we have available, with whatever player personnel we have available, and whatever matches their strengths. I am not going to impose some sort of sweeping offensive philosophy. The philosophy is 'Score more runs than the other team, however we can.'"

You can read this as an acknowledgment that the Mariners might need to be more like the Milwaukee Brewers, who used every trick in the book to overcome a shortage of home run power to win the World Series. Yet that was ultimately their version of optimizing what players they had, and the Mariners' version of that might look different.

Indeed, Gillman could shape the Mariners' offense from the mold that worked for him and the Washington Nationals in 2026. They had more of a traditional modern offense, based on hunting strikes and hitting the ball hard in the air. This also worked, as the Nationals joined the Brewers as one of only three teams to score over 5.0 runs per game. This was also akin to what the Mariners did in 2025, as they were top-10 in walks and top-three in home runs.

The best-case scenario is "Why not both?" If patience-plus-power and all-of-the-above are both good ways to score runs, the best thing the Mariners can do is commit to both. It's only a theory but, hey, you got a better one?

The worst thing anyone can be about the 2027 Mariners is fatalistic. This was a bad year, but 2025 was quite good. Specifically with the offense, we know that Raleigh, Rodríguez and Naylor are better than they showed this year. If they bounce back and the Mariners get some combination of more of the same from Dominic Canzone and Cole Young, better health from Brendan Donovan and at least one breakout from one of the young guys, better things will lie in wait.

It can happen. Kanzler and Gillman just have to make it happen.

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