Mariners need a hard look in the mirror after midseason firing made things worse

Firing Bobby Magallanes was never likely to solve much for the Seattle Mariners. The moved pinned a half-season's worth of offensive futility on effectively a third-string hitting coach, while keeping director of hitting strategy Edgar Martinez and hitting coach Kevin Seitzer in place. It was a punt on a proper quest for accountability, with a side of hope that maybe, just maybe, things would improve.

Want to know how that's going now? Like, do you really want to know?

Well, it's bad. The Mariners offense has not gotten better since the firing of Magallanes in late July. Nor have things stayed the same. The numbers have actually gone down:

• With Bobby Magallanes: .687 OPS, 4.0 R/G
• Without Bobby Magallanes: .678 OPS, 3.8 R/G

We must shout out Jon Morosi of MLB Network for inspiring this little research project, courtesy of his X post on Monday calling out broader failures of Seattle's offense. One can go even deeper, including by pointing out that the Mariners' xwOBA post-firing (.304) is somehow lower than it was pre-firing (.318). The declining results are no accident.

The failure of the Mariners' 2026 offense goes deeper than one sacrificial lackey

At this point, there's a veritable Rolodex of excuses for why those before and after numbers add up to the Mariners having the worst offense in MLB.

Injuries have marred the seasons of Cal Raleigh, Brendan Donovan and Julio Rodríguez, the latter of whom hasn't been the same since his concussion in early July. Raleigh's regression has been well-documented, as has Josh Naylor's. Were it not for Randy Arozarena and Dominic Canzone, this offense would be an all-time punching bag.

Yet since Magallanes was meant to be the mechanical guy between him and Seitzer, it does reflect poorly on Magallanes that he wasn't the guy who discovered the mechanical change that has finally unlocked Raleigh, who has a 1.338 OPS since August 21.

It is equally fair to question, however, why it took another month after Magallanes' firing for Martinez, Seitzer and the other coaches to finally identify the fix. Raleigh had been struggling all year, and the specific reason for the mechanical adjustment (i.e., catching up to fastballs) had been an open secret. Were they just going to wait and hope the problem solved itself?

If Seitzer is meant to be more of a day-to-day approach guy, then it's on him that Mariners hitters are so inept against fastballs. Their -53 Run Value against fastballs is tied for the worst in MLB, and it's so obvious to the opposition that Mariners hitters are now seeing about 60 percent fastballs in August and September. Even in the face of this obvious challenge, they're still 24th in the league in Run Value against fastballs since the start of August.

These failings are Dan Wilson's failings, too. Ideally, you'd hope that a manager in his situation would huddle with his coaches and rally them to fix a problem this severe before it sunk the whole season. He either never did so, or didn't do so effectively. Either explanation dovetails with Wilson's apparent allergy to accountability.

There is the question of whether the Mariners offense was ever that good to begin with. To this end, arguments that they should have expected all the crippling regressions have merit. Yet this was a top-10 offense on paper coming into the year, so anyone who says with a straight face that it was always doomed to be MLB's worst is full of it.

Changes seem all but certain. An icon like Martinez may have some sort of shield around him, but Wilson's days have seemed numbered for a while now. The Mariners can otherwise learn a lesson from the Atlanta Braves, whose offense has largely recovered since they fired Seitzer following a hugely disappointing season in 2024.

If heads do end up rolling, that means the Mariners did it right. They not only looked in the mirror, but chose to smash it.

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