The single biggest lesson Jerry Dipoto must learn from Mariners' 2026 failure

There's no shortage of reasons when it comes to why the Mariners' 2026 season fell apart.

Injuries, regression, a lack of roster depth and inconsistent performance all played a role. Overall, Seattle never found the rhythm they were capable of, particularly compared to the team that reached the postseason the year before.

Despite all of that, with Jerry Dipoto set to remain in Seattle as president of baseball operations, there is one lesson from 2026 that should matter as he looks ahead.

Jerry Dipoto can't keep waiting around for the 2025 Mariners to return

The Mariners entered 2026 with a team and a plan that made sense. The pieces had worked together before, and there was reason to believe they would do so again. Unfortunately, the team and the plan both proved to be more fragile than they appeared.

The problem was what happened after that fragility became apparent. Once things started to go wrong, Seattle seemed to sit back and wait, hoping the 2025 version of the Mariners would eventually reappear.

They waited for the offense to get going. They waited for the injured players to get healthy. They waited for star players to return to form. Waited for everything to fall into place. Meanwhile, the baseball season continued on.

Each week spent waiting was another week that the Mariners weren't addressing what was actually happening in front of them as they were falling apart. And the longer they waited, the harder the problems were to fix.

What could Jerry Dipoto have done differently to save the Mariners' season?

A front office builds a roster based on projections and expectations. Once the season begins, those projections are replaced by evidence. Players get hurt, young playes develop differently than expected, veterans decline. Any number of things can change.

At that point, how the roster looked in March might not reflect what a team is actually capable of accomplishing throughout the season, and sometimes things have to be rearranged.

Dipoto couldn't have predicted every injury, and he certainly couldn't have predicted which players would regress. But, once he saw those things happening, it was his responsibility to recognize that things had changed, and to adjust accordingly.

Instead, too much time was spent waiting, with the expectation that if everyone could just get back to where they were supposed to be, it would eventually work out as expected.

Yes, the pieces fit last season, but that didn't mean they were guaranteed to fit again. When they didn't, Seattle needed to figure out what the 2026 Mariners needed to regain momentum, rather than wait around for last year's version of the team to return.

The same question can be asked about the number of players who tried to play through injuries. While this may not be unique to Seattle, it seemed to be a recurring issue for the Mariners this season. Looking back, it's fair to wonder if too much emphasis was placed on sticking with the original plan, and not enough on acknowledging when players weren't performing as expected.

All of this to say that the Mariners didn't build a bad roster. They just didn't respond aggressively enough when the roster stopped working in the way they had hoped. Patience is valuable. The front office shouldn't panic and make drastic changes after every slump or the first sign of trouble. But at some point, waiting for things to fix themselves becomes its own decision. And in 2026, that decision cost the Mariners time.

By the time they finally confronted what wasn't working, the season was essentially over, and little could be done to change it.

That's what needs to stick with Dipoto heading into 2027. Don't spend all season waiting for the team you think you have to show up. Instead, pay attention to the team you have in front of you, and when that team shows you something is wrong, fix it.

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow