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During my family’s recent visit to Israel, we spent time with my brother in Haifa, who gave one of my daughters a “Guardians of Democracy” T-shirt worn by protesters who oppose the current government’s plans to constrain judicial power. We also spent time with my sister in Gush Etzion, a bloc of settlements near Jerusalem, who casually referred to such protesters as “anarchists.”

Those characterizations, each misleading in its own way, reflect a disagreement about the proper role of courts in a democracya debate that echoes familiar arguments in the United States. Israel’s version of that controversy, which has featured mass demonstrations that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees as evidence of a nascent “civil war,” is flaring up again as the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, considers a bill that would bar the Israeli Supreme Court from blocking legislation based on a lack of “reasonableness.” That proposal, while less radical than bills that would virtually eliminate judicial review, encapsulates the issues raised by the determination of Netanyahu’s coalition partners to restrict the court’s authority.

Those issues, which go to the heart of legislative and judicial legitimacy, were illuminated 16 years ago by an exchange between Richard Posner, a now-retired judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, and Barak Medina, a senior lecturer in law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Their debate centered on the judicial philosophy of Aharon Barak, who served as a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court from 1978 to 1995 and as its president from 1995 to 2006. That period included the “constitutional revolution” in which the court took on the task of enforcing limits imposed by Israel’s “basic laws.”

Barak is the bte noire of the right-wing legislators in Netanyahu’s coalition, who see themselves, contrary to their opponents’ take, as defenders of democracy against judicial usurpation. Barak “has brought disaster on Israel,” saysJustice Minister Yariv Levin. “His path stands in contrast to democracy. To him, judges are preferable to the people’s elected officials.”

In a 2007 review of Barak’s bookThe Judge in a Democracy, Posner offered a similar critique, portraying the Israeli jurist as an “enlightened despot” and “legal buccaneer” who overrode government policy based on his personal preferences. “Barak does not attempt to defend his judicial practice by reference to orthodox legal materials; even the ‘Basic Laws’ are mentioned only in passing,” Posner wrote in The New Republic. “His method, lacking as it does any but incidental references to enacted provisions, may seem the method of the common law (the judge-made law that continues to dominate many areas of Anglo-American law, such as contracts and torts), except that common-law rules are subject to legislative override, and his rules are not. The significance of this point seems to elude him. He takes for granted that judges have inherent authority to override statutes. Such an approach can accurately be described as usurpative.”

In particular, Posner took issue with Barak’s deployment of vague abstractions such as “reasonableness,” “justice,” and “equality,” which Posner called “as empty as they are lofty,” to second-guess the choices of elected representatives. As Posner saw it, that “lawless” method invited unjustified interference with the democratic process.

To illustrate the arbitrariness he saw as characteristic of Barak’s approach, Posner cited “a ruling made during the Gulf war in 1991 requiring the Israeli army to distribute more gas masks to residents of the West Bank.” Defending that decision, Barak said: “We did not intervene in military considerations, for which the expertise and responsibility lie with the executive. Rather, we intervened in considerations of equality, for which the expertise and responsibility rest with the judiciary.”

Although the basic laws do not explicitly mention equality, the Israeli Supreme Court has deemed that principle implicit in the “human dignity” protected by the 1992 basic law. Yet Barak’s book “strongly commends the balancing of competing interests as a technique of judicial decision-making,” Posner said, “implying that in the gas-mask case the court should have balanced against considerations of equality whatever military reasons the army gave for distributing fewer gas masks on the West Bank than in Israel proper, such as that Iraq was more likely to aim its missiles at Jews than at Arabs.” The general test, according to Barak, is whether “a reasonable person responsible for security would be prudent to adopt the security measures that were adopted.”

Medina’s rejoinder to Posner, published the same year in the Harvard International Law Journal, faulted the American judge for misrepresenting the Israeli system of government. Contrary to Posner’s assertion that the Israeli Supreme Court’s decisions are not “subject to legislative override,” Medina noted, the Knesset can change the basic laws at will, typically by a simple majority vote. Somewhat contradictorily, Medina also objected to Posner’s assertion that “Israel does not have a constitution.” He noted that “the constitutional assembly chosen to draft a Constitution decided, soon after its election, to also serve as the legislature,” and “it established explicitly that all future Knessets will have ‘all the powers’ given to the First Knesset.”

Treating the basic laws as a constitution, Medina argued, “is based upon the recognition of the importance of judicial review in ensuring respect for basic human rights” and “protecting the fundamental principles of the State of Israel as a democratic and Jewish state.” He said that “appropriate compromise” also recognizes that “it is best to base judicial review upon explicit consent of the people, via its representatives in Knesset.”

Medina emphasized that the Knesset had accepted judicial review based on the basic laws. “The Knesset did not amend the Basic Laws in response to the Court’s decision regarding the ‘constitutional revolution,’ and refrained from limiting the Court’s power to practice judicial review over legislation,” he wrote. “Moreover, in recent years, the Knesset usually examines proposed legislation to ensure its accordance with the Basic Laws, recognizing the supremacy of the provisions of the Basic Laws over ‘regular’ legislation. The Knesset accepted, by a clear consensus, the Court’s decisions in which it voided provisions in legislation which violated the Basic Laws.”

As demonstrated by the ongoing clash over judicial review, that “clear consensus” has broken down. And the fact that the basic laws were enacted by the national legislature, which retains the power to alter them, makes those ground rules strikingly different from the U.S. Constitution, which by design is very difficult to change. While Medina surely is correct that judicial review is essential in “ensuring respect for basic human rights,” empowering the legislature to determine the content of those rights obviously makes them less secure than they would be in a system where the amendment process is more arduous and complicated. That is especially true under a governing scheme like Israel’s, which lacks the checks and balances achieved through an autonomous lower level of government and separation of legislative and executive powers.

In this context, judicial review is both more important and more precarious than it is in the United States. At the same time, the legitimacy of that power is open to question when courts go beyond interpreting and applying the law. According to Posner, that is what Barak’s approach demands.

Medina argued that Posner grossly exaggerated the extent to which the Israeli Supreme Court interfered with executive and legislative choices. He noted that the government and the Knesset had made many momentous decisionsincluding “the economic program of 1985, the expansion of the settlements in the Occupied Territories, the invasion into Lebanon and the withdrawal from Lebanon, the Oslo peace Accords, the policy of privatization, the increases and subsequent decreases in stipeds for families with children, the disengagement from Gaza, Operation Desert Shield against Palestinian terror organizations, the construction of the Separation Wall, changes in Israel’s immigration policy, [and] the policy adopted in the Second Lebanon War”without “significant intervention by the Court.”

Medina added that the court had not responded to “governmental inactions” in areas such as “measures to close widening economic gaps in society and the deepening of poverty,” “discrimination by private agents against Arab citizens,” and “delays in decisions to desalinate water and to recycle materials.” He noted that the court “did not instruct the Government to adopt a policy of affirmative action in order to contend with inequality,” “did not instruct the State to set up soup kitchens or subsidize lifesaving drugs,” “did not prevent discriminatory security checks of Arab citizens in airports,” and “did not even examine the constitutionality of the decision not to draft Arabs into the Israel Defense Forces.”

While some of these policies raise issues that are plausibly related to provisions of Israel’s basic laws and/or resemble constitutional claims that might be brought in U.S. courts, many of them seem far afield from such concerns. Medina nevertheless implied that the Israeli Supreme Court could have intervened in all of these areas, including large chunks of social and economic policy, but chose not to do so, perhaps because it worried about the potential for the sort of political backlash it now faces. It is precisely this open-endedness to which Posner objected: When judges reject or mandate government policies without “reference to orthodox legal materials,” he argued, they are usurping the role of legislators.

Medina did not really have a response to that objection, except to suggest that judges unavoidably act as legislators while pretending otherwise, a point he said Posner’s own preferred judicial method concedes. “According to [Posner’s] philosophy, a judge should ignore deontological limitations, for instance the recognition of values such as the dignity of man or tolerancea view which is in line with his critique of Barak,” Medina wrote. “However, Posner does not maintain that morality is irrelevant for judicial decision. In fact, the opposite is true: Posner believes that the judicial decision should be basedentirelyupon a moral approach that he calls ‘legal pragmatism.'”

Under that approach, Medina said, “a judge should render his decision by calculating the anticipated social ramifications of the application of each of the possible interpretations in the given case (though the nature of the calculation is unclear). Even if one were to ignore the difficulties in implementing such an eclectic approach, it is clear that this approach conforms with the position that a judge’s decision should ensure the greatest harmony between the law and (a certain definition of) the social good. The fact that Posner believes that the correct moral approach is consequentialism (and not deontology) does not make his approach any more legitimate than that which Barak espouses; thus his harsh critique of Barak’s approach is astounding.”

Even by Medina’s account, however, legal pragmatism comes into play when a judge chooses between “possible interpretations” of the law, which requires an intelligible principle that arguably can be applied in different ways. According to the basic law that the Knesset enacted in 1992, for example, “every person has a right to privacy and to intimacy.” That right includes restrictions on searches of “private premises” and protection for “the confidentiality of conversation” and of “writings or records.” On its face, that guarantee is broader than the U.S. Constitution’s privacy protections, and it is clearly relevant in search and seizure cases.

Medina mentioned various other ways in which the basic laws have been construed to protect “fundamental rights of the individual.” He noted decisions “voiding the government’s decision to prevent the participation of certain parties and candidates in elections,” “enforcing the prohibition against discrimination against Arab citizens in the distribution of state land,” “enforcing the prohibition against discrimination against women in a variety of contexts,” “protecting freedom of speech,” “prohibiting the use of harmful meansincluding torturein investigations of those suspected of terror activities,” and “prohibiting the use of military methods that cause ‘disproportionate’ harm to citizens.”

Those cases involved disputes that implicate widely recognized civil liberties. Not so the hypothetical decisions that Medina imagined, which involved issues such as recycling, desalination, pharmaceutical subsidies, and welfare programs to address “widening economic gaps.”

Medina also noted that Israeli “judicial activism” has included “relatively great involvement in ensuring the proper functioning of politics (predominately
restricting those who are suspected of breaking the law from serving in public office, barring someone from public office when there is a conflict of interest, and so forth).”The New York Times cites a recent example: Israeli judges invoked “reasonableness” to “bar Aryeh Deri, a veteran ultra-Orthodox politician, from serving in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet. They said it was unreasonable to appoint Mr. Deri because he had recently been convicted of tax fraud.”

The bill that the Knesset is taking up this week targets decisions based on “reasonableness,” which the Times describes as a “flexible and contentious legal standard that currently lets the court intervene in governance.” Under that standard, the paper says, “a decision is deemed unreasonable if a court rules that it was made without considering all relevant factors or without giving relevant weight to each factor, or by giving irrelevant factors too much weight.”

That sort of analysis seems indistinguishable from the judgments that legislators themselves are charged with making. It is not hard to understand why critics would argue that the “reasonableness” standard invites judges to overstep their proper authority. The question is whether Israel can curb such unbridled discretion without compromising the rights that the Knesset has promised to respect.

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Business

Manchester Pride put into voluntary liquidation and being assessed by regulator

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October 22, 2025

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Manchester Pride put into voluntary liquidation and being assessed by regulator

Manchester Pride has been put into voluntary liquidation and is being assessed by the charities regulator, with the future of the event in doubt.

Artists, suppliers and freelancers have been left unpaid, some of them owed thousands, the performers’ and creatives’ union Equity said.

After nearly a week of speculation and a period of financial difficulty, Pride’s organisers cited rising costs, declining ticket sales and an unsuccessful bid to host Euro Pride as factors behind the decision.

The organisation is a charity and limited company that campaigns for LGBTQ+ equality and puts on the annual parade and live events.

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The company had been in financial difficulty, according to latest accounts, and gone through a series of directors in recent months. All three directors appointed in August resigned this month.

An up-to-date picture of Manchester Pride’s finances is not available, as the last update was submitted in September 2024 for the year up to December 2023, showing a consolidated deficit of nearly £500,000.

At that point, the company said it could continue to exist, as a “going concern”, as it said a review of the charity’s strategy would take place, detailed budgets and cash forecasts had been prepared for 2024 and 2025, and it had been in surplus up to August 2024.

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Manchester Pride said at the time it had a plan to diversify income streams and rebuild cash reserves.

Accounts for 2024 are not due until 31 December this year.

A scene from Manchester Pride 2024. Pic: AP
Image:
A scene from Manchester Pride 2024. Pic: AP

As a charity, Manchester Pride Limited is regulated by the Charity Regulator, which said it had opened a compliance case “to assess concerns raised” about the organisation. “We are engaging with the trustees to help inform any next regulatory steps,” a spokesperson said.

It’s understood that Manchester Pride submitted a serious incident report relating to its finances.

What went wrong?

Directly impacted by the liquidation is freelance event manager Abbie Ashall, who is owed £2,000 after her pay day was missed in September.

Ms Ashall said she was not the worst hit; others are out of pocket even more, having hired and paid people for events they were contracted to put on, all with the expectation of being paid by Manchester Pride.

She had been an employee of Manchester Pride from summer 2023 to January 2025, but left to go freelance when staff members left and were not being replaced, raising concerns about resources to deal with an increasing workload. It was at that point that she assumed things were not going well financially.

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She continued to work for the organisation on a freelance basis, project managing the 2025 parade and now producing a musical, Spraywatch: A Beautiful Rescue.

Manchester Pride’s difficulties can, in part, be attributed to its model of getting people to pay for a wristband to access sites which are public spaces.

“I don’t think that the business model worked at the end of the day,” Ms Ashall said.

“And I think not enough people were buying tickets… we’re seeing a massive trend in the events and festival industry that people just are not buying”.

What next?

Creatives waiting to be paid have been urged to contact the Equity union.

“We are collecting contractual information to pursue all options to recoup money owed, and we will begin these processes immediately,” said Equity’s North West official, Karen Lockney.

“We are also speaking with Manchester City Council and other stakeholders to ensure artists’ voices are heard in discussions about the future of Pride in the city, ensuring that Manchester gets the Pride it deserves”.

Details of those owed money have been passed to the liquidators, Manchester Pride’s board of trustees said in a statement.

What does this mean for Pride in Manchester?

A Pride celebration will take place in August next year with council support, Manchester City Council said.

“There will undoubtedly be anxiety about what the future holds – but Pride is much more than the organisation that runs it. We want to support a new chapter for Manchester Pride weekend, which will take place next August.

“The council will play a full and active role in bringing together the LGBTQ community to help shape how the city moves forward to ensure a bright and thriving future for Manchester Pride.”

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Technology

IBM tops third-quarter estimates and lifts guidance, but stock drops

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October 22, 2025

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IBM tops third-quarter estimates and lifts guidance, but stock drops

Chairman, President and CEO of IBM Arvind Krishna attends the 55th annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2025.

Yves Herman | Reuters

IBM reported third-quarter results that topped Wall Street estimates and lifted its guidance, citing ongoing artificial intelligence tailwinds. Still, the stock dropped 5% in extended trading.

Here’s how the company performed versus LSEG estimates:

  • Earnings per share: $2.65 adjusted vs. $2.45 expected
  • Revenue: $16.33 billion vs. $16.09 billion expected.

Revenue increased 9% from about $15 billion in the year-ago period, IBM said. The company reported net income of $1.74 billion, or $1.84 per share, after recording a loss of $330 million, or 36 cents per share, a year earlier. The results from last year included the impact of a $2.7 billion pension settlement charge.

“Clients globally continue to leverage our technology and domain expertise to drive productivity in their operations and deliver real business value with AI,” CEO Arvind Krishna said in release.

IBM upped its revenue guidance and said it now expects “more than” 5% revenue growth, up from “at least” 5%. Free cash flow for the year is expected to hit $14 billion, up from a $13.5 billion estimate last quarter.

Krishna also said the company’s AI book of business has surpassed $9.5 million, up from $7.5 billion during the second quarter.

Like many technology companies, IBM has harnessed AI to streamline productivity and slash costs. In May, Krishna told the Wall Street Journal that it replaced 200 human resources roles.

IBM’s software revenue rose 10% to $7.21 billion, meeting a StreetAccount estimate. Consulting revenue totaled $5.3 billion, surpassing a $5.24 billion projection.

Infrastructure, which includes its mainframe computers business, jumped 17% to $3.6 billion.

IBM’s board also approved a $1.68 per share quarterly dividend.

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Sports

‘This didn’t happen overnight’: Why the Mariners are built to be back after a crushing ALCS loss

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October 22, 2025

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'This didn't happen overnight': Why the Mariners are built to be back after a crushing ALCS loss

  • David SchoenfieldOct 22, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

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    • Covers MLB for ESPN.com
    • Former deputy editor of Page 2
    • Been with ESPN.com since 1995

Seattle Mariners pitcher Bryan Woo was being interviewed in the clubhouse following the team’s Game 7 loss in the American League Championship Series to the Toronto Blue Jays when, suddenly, in the background, you can hear an anguished scream.

Mariners’ fans understand heartbreak — they can relate to that scream.

For most of the 49-season existence of the Mariners, fans of the club relied on hope: hope for the first winning season, hope the franchise didn’t relocate, hope of making the playoffs for the first time, hope to end a 20-year playoff drought. Hope for a World Series. And with one crack of the bat on Monday night, that hope was crushed.

It didn’t start out that way, though. The Mariners won the first two games of the ALCS on the road in Toronto — and teams that won the first two on the road in a best-of-seven series had gone 26-3 in MLB history (excluding 2020).

After dropping the first two games in Seattle, they won a dramatic Game 5 on Eugenio Suarez‘s grand slam to take a 3-2 series lead. The winner of Game 5, when a series was tied, had gone on to win a best-of-seven series 69% of the time in MLB history.

The Mariners went on to lose Game 6, playing about as sloppy a game as you can play, and then lost Game 7 on George Springer‘s three-run home run in the seventh inning — only the second come-from-behind home run while trailing by multiple runs in a winner-take-all game in playoff history (Pete Alonso hit the first last year for the New York Mets).

That’s a lot of qualifiers, but it hammers home the despair: That was an especially difficult defeat, eight outs away from the franchise’s first ever World Series, a moment Seattle sports fans will forever remember, alongside not giving the ball to Marshawn Lynch in Super Bowl XLIX. The Mariners remain the only one of the 30 franchises never to play in a Fall Classic.

The pain will linger. Soon enough, however, thoughts will turn to 2026, as they must — and Seattle is well-positioned not only for next season, but for the long term.

While the Mariners have just two playoff appearances in the past five seasons, they’re one of the most stable organizations in the sport, one of just six with winning records every season since 2021 and seventh in wins in that span. They have a strong farm system that features eight players ranked in Kiley McDaniel’s August top 100 prospects update, including shortstop Colt Emerson, the No. 7 prospect, and pitcher Kade Anderson, the No. 3 pick in the 2025 MLB draft, who ranks No. 16.

The Mariners also have a stable group of core players: Of the 17 who were worth at least 0.8 WAR in 2025 — MVP candidate Cal Raleigh led the way with 7.3 — all except free agent Josh Naylor and second baseman/DH Jorge Polanco are already signed to new contracts or remain under team control (Polanco has a $7 million player option that he will likely opt out from).

Both remain good fits in the lineup after strong 2025 campaigns, especially Naylor. Other than a couple of solid years from Ty France in 2021-22, first base has been a revolving door — and a problem — for the Mariners ever since John Olerud was traded more than 20 years ago. Re-signing Naylor, in part because he also provides some much-needed contact skills in a strikeout-heavy lineup, feels imperative.

It’s not an old team either. Polanco (31), J.P. Crawford (30) and Randy Arozarena (30) are the only regulars older than 28 years old, while Luis Castillo (32) is the only starting pitcher older than 28. Castillo is signed for two more seasons while the other rotation members are also under control for at least two more years — Logan Gilbert (2027), George Kirby (2028) and Bryan Woo and Bryce Miller (2029). Having that kind of potential stability in the rotation is an enviable position — with Anderson likely to move fast through the minors and Ryan Sloan, a second-round pick out of high school in 2024 and now No. 43 in ESPN’s prospect rankings, flashing top-of-the-rotation stuff in his first minor league season and also capable of a quick rise to the majors.

The foundation for the team’s current success can be traced back to the 2018-19 offseason. Jerry Dipoto, the president of baseball operations, took over the top job for the Mariners after the 2015 season. They had winning seasons in 2016 and 2018, but after the second one, Dipoto was worried about the future of the organization.

“We were just coming off an 89-win season,” he told ESPN during the ALCS. “At the end of the regular season, I’ll sit down with our owners and talk through what the plan is for the year ahead. I thought the right thing to do after visiting with our front office group was just to reboot. We were a little too old, we were a little too top-heavy, and we had very little in the way of prospect capital. We weren’t going to be able to continue to beat that engine and sustain a competitive, championship-level team.”

The front office produces a flowchart of the organization each year that maps out the next six seasons, trying to estimate what those six years will look like. It didn’t look good, so the Mariners committed to a rebuild. It began with Crawford, acquired from the Philadelphia Phillies for Jean Segura (after the Phillies had first asked for Edwin Diaz, who was instead traded to the Mets), and he’s been the team’s starting shortstop ever since.

Seattle also watched Julio Rodriguez, signed as a 16-year-old in 2017, flourish and develop into an immediate star as a 21-year-old rookie in 2022. His inability to lay off sliders low and away — like the final pitch of the 2025 season — can certainly be frustrating, but he’s had two 30-30 seasons by age 24 while averaging 5.7 WAR. His 6.8 WAR in 2025 ranked fourth among AL position players.

That he’s turned into a potential Gold Glove center fielder (he’s a finalist for the award this season) is just an added bonus.

“We all thought that he was going to wind up being a corner man,” Dipoto said. “And, you know, between the ages of 19 and 21, he leaned out, turned into athletic Adonis, and unbeknownst to us, coordinated with his agent, Ulises Cabrera, and invested in an Olympic running coach. He came to spring training in 2022, and he said, ‘You think I can play center field?’ Because he made it a goal of his to be a center fielder.”

Rodriguez not only impresses on the field, but off as well, with Dipoto speaking highly of his star player’s focus, how he wants to be great and how he has studied the careers of great athletes.

“When Julio is in a quiet space, he’s a deep thinker,” Dipoto said. “He is focused on becoming as great as he can become.”

Maybe there’s even more to come — especially if Rodriguez can learn to lay off those sliders.

Along the way, with Dipoto at the helm, the Mariners were drafting pitchers — and doing a great job of developing them. In 2018, they drafted Gilbert in the first round. In 2019, it was Kirby in the first round. Miller was a fourth-round pick in 2021 while Woo was a sixth-rounder that year. They acquired closer Andres Munoz and setup man Matt Brash in two separate trades with the San Diego Padres on the same day in 2020, giving up nobody of major consequence in either deal.

Dipoto credits Scott Hunter, his scouting director since 2016, and Hunter’s staff, as well as Justin Hollander, who is now the team’s general manager. It’s rare to find rotation stalwarts such as Miller and Woo at that point in the draft — let alone two high-leverage relievers in one day.

“Every player that’s been acquired in a trade or drafted was acquired while we were here, and that makes it really special,” Dipoto said. “This didn’t happen overnight. We’ve bumped our head, we’ve stubbed our toe, we’ve put our foot in our mouth. Literally. And you learn.

“To see J.P. Crawford out there since 2019. He’s the rock. To see Julio, who we signed as a 16-year-old, standing out in center field, doing things that really are on a Hall of Fame trajectory. To see Cal Raleigh, who we drafted and developed, go out there and have maybe the best catcher season in history. To see a starting rotation that is 80 percent homegrown.”

Dipoto first signed Crawford to a long-term deal in 2022, then Rodriguez later that same summer and Raleigh before this season. With J-Rod and Raleigh signed through at least 2031, the offensive foundation in Seattle is there, with that group of prospects on the way.

The ultimate key for 2026 sits with the rotation — it struggled in the ALCS with a 6.37 ERA and averaged less than four innings per start. Its collective WAR took a big dip from 2024:

Baseball-Reference
2025: 7.8 (19th)
2024: 11.7 (10th)

FanGraphs
2025: 11.0 (14th)
2024: 14.9 (fourth)

Some of the decline can be attributed to injuries — Gilbert, Kirby and Miller each missed significant time with them — but note the home/road splits in ERA for Seattle’s starters over the past two seasons:

2025
Home: 3.30
Road: 4.67

2024
Home: 2.74
Road: 4.05

Given the quick hooks manager Dan Wilson deployed throughout the postseason, it seemed he didn’t exactly trust his starters to go deep either (Woo, the best starter in the regular season, wasn’t at full strength and pitched only out of the bullpen in the ALCS).

It makes you wonder: Does this team need an ace? Perhaps one like Tarik Skubal, who is entering his final year with the Detroit Tigers before free agency and will see trade speculation follow him all winter if the Tigers don’t sign him to an extension. The Mariners have the prospects and the pitching depth to at least make a serious inquiry into Skubal.

Emerson is likely to take over at third base in 2025 and will eventually replace Crawford at shortstop in 2027 after Crawford’s deal runs out. That means letting the popular Suarez, the third baseman who the Mariners traded for at the deadline this year, leave as a free agent. Second baseman Cole Young (No. 57 on the preseason top 100 prospect list) played 77 games as a rookie this season and will get another shot after starting well before slumping to a final line of .211/.302/.305. He hit just four home runs, but he’s only 22 years old and there might be more power to come (“You should see his BP sessions,” Dipoto said). Rookie catcher Harry Ford, No. 65 in the August update, should take over the backup duties behind Raleigh after a strong showing at Triple-A, perhaps letting Raleigh take a few more DH at-bats and rest those legs after playing all but three regular-season games for Seattle in 2025.

Everyone around the team says that the oft-mentioned good vibes with the Mariners were the real deal, with a clubhouse that got along and a good-natured group of players. The ALCS defeat was disappointing, but the Mariners will be back.

“Players come here and they fall in love,” Dipoto said. “They fall in love with the environment. It’s a beautiful ballpark. It’s the clubhouse. It’s the camaraderie. It’s the 25 teammates. That’s an awesome thing that’s been happening here for a number of years.”

The foundation has been set. Now the organization just needs to figure out how to go one — or, preferably, two — steps further.

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