Oct. 22—I'm not one of those Mariners' bandwagon fans who jumped off midway through the 2026 season.
No, I was gone by opening day.
A year after Seattle came within one win — ONE WIN! — of the franchise's first World Series appearance while reinvigorating fair-weather fans like me, the M's followed it up with a real stinker (or dumper, in this case) that made many of us remember why we should never have trusted this club in the first place.
So as the Brewers and Rays get ready to kick off the World Series in Milwaukee on Friday night, it got me thinking back to the 2026 Mariners.
What happened? Where did it all go wrong? Looking back, the signs were clear that a collapse was coming, even before the first pitch:
* The first came with Cal Raleigh's snub of M's teammate Randy Arozarena at the World Baseball Classic in early March. All of those great chemistry vibes that emerged in 2025? Gone in two shakes — and one unfortunate non-shake.
* The second arrived with the offseason acquisitions of the accounting firm of Refsnyder, Knizner and Donovan — who in 2026 accounted for a -0.4 WAR, whatever that's good for. Apparently, not much.
* The third occurred on opening night, just as my fantasy baseball league cohorts and I had gathered at a bar for our annual draft to watch the M's-Guardians, only to discover that it was being streamed on something called Mariners.TV for $100 bucks. If the damn team can't figure out a way to get its games on regular TV before opening day, why should we bother?
After witnessing the magic of the Mariners in 2025 and eventually proclaiming my allegiance to the team in a column last October, I guess I expected more.
Suddenly, as an M's fan, I was out faster than Cal Raleigh during a May at-bat.
The Big Dumper batted .056 that month — including an infamous 0-for-38 stretch — before rallying to hit .182 with 23 homers for the season. While no one expected him to duplicate his 2025 numbers (.247 average, 60 home runs), I think it's fair to say that karma from the WBC came back to bite us all.
How about the team's other megastar, Julio Rodriguez? His numbers were fairly underwhelming — a .247 average with 22 homers and 71 RBIs.
But his biggest contribution to this mess was likely his two-out ball flip to the outfield fans in Milwaukee during an embarrassing 22-0 rout to the Brewers.
Nothing summed up the season better than that one play, although others tried.
How about Dan Wilson's piggyback plan with the starting pitching rotation? Sounds like something I would have pitched to my old boss Joe Palmquist 30 years ago. "Hey Joe, how about John Blanchette and I each work four hours and you pay us each for eight?"
It's one of many Wilson missteps in 2026 — mostly involving game management and annoyingly repetitive postgame interviews — which led to his departure at season's end. Although admittedly, I'd love to have a boss occasionally say, "tough one tonight." (Key word: occasionally.)
Even something as easy as the Ichiro statue unveiling went awry for the club. As legends Ken Griffey Jr. and Edgar Martinez pulled back the cover during an April ceremony, the bronze bat in Ichiro's right hand broke in half. Still, who would you trust more with runners in scoring position? A bronze Ichiro with a broken bat or any of the Mariners' hitters in 2026?
So here we are at the Fall Classic. Rather than worry about what the Mariners did to us in 2026, maybe it's time to imagine the possibilities with Milwaukee and Tampa Bay.
Those same Brewers that beat the M's 22-0 bring some real Spokane history. As a kid, my strongest Indians memories came after the Los Angeles Dodgers left, when Spokane served as Milwaukee's minor league affiliate from 1976-78. I still have old Indians baseball cards of Tommie Reynolds, Jim Gantner, Lenn Sakata and Kurt Bevacqua. And Gorman Thomas? The only thing more lethal than his bat was his legendary mustache.
And how about the Rays? It doesn't get more local than their pitching ace Drew Rasmussen, the former star at Mt. Spokane High School who finished 2026 with a 16-5 record and 2.65 ERA. In three starts for Tampa Bay this postseason, he's 2-0 with a 1.29 ERA and 23 strikeouts. (Sidenote: In April, I drafted Rasmussen in my fantasy league. It was the only good move I made that night. I Dipoto'd my roster faster than Jerry could ever dream, trading the rights to Shohei Ohtani for Vladimir Guerrero Jr., selecting injured pitcher Blake Snell in the early rounds without knowing he'd be out for most of the season, and drafting Kyle Manzardo, the former Lake City and WSU star I eventually cut after his dismal 2-for-33 start to 2026.)
But beyond the Brewers' and Rays' local connections, this World Series offers plenty more for disillusioned Mariners fans like me.
In this small-market showdown, Milwaukee and Tampa Bay are both in the bottom half of MLB payrolls. In fact, the two teams' combined payrolls in 2026 cost less than that of three separate teams — the Los Angeles Dodgers, the New York Mets and the New York Yankees.
Even the Seattle Mariners spent more than the Brewers and Rays, two of the five remaining teams to never win a World Series. Of course, the M's — the only team to have never played in the Fall Classic — are the kings of that club.
That should provide a glimmer of hope to the legion of Mariner die-hards who are already looking ahead to 2027, assuming there's no lockout.
And who knows, maybe that will be enough to get me back on the bandwagon for at least TWO days next season.