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  • Alden GonzalezSep 26, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

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      ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.

SEATTLE — It had been 24 years and five days since this city experienced its last division title, a wait that turned its baseball fans into one of this country’s most tortured. Babies were born, grew up, went to college, got a job, and their beloved Seattle Mariners still had not finished atop the American League West. Maybe this is how it was supposed to happen. With a nucleus that finally righted itself — after stumbling time and again — in the most emphatic way possible. With a dominant, soul-cleansing, late-season series sweep of the franchise’s greatest nemesis. With Cal Raleigh punctuating a division title with his 60th home run Wednesday night.

With, of all things, some help from the supernatural.

Three weeks ago, when the team was struggling and hope seemed lost, Steven Blackburn, a 26-year-old lifelong Mariners fan, found a witch. An Etsy witch, to be exact, which is precisely what you might think it is: a self-proclaimed sorcerer providing services through the popular e-commerce website.

Blackburn and one of his best friends had often joked about using an Etsy witch to fix some of their biggest problems and first thought about contracting one to help the Mariners some time around June. The Mariners weren’t playing quite bad enough then — but by Sept. 5, after a stretch of 15 losses in 21 games, they were. Blackburn searched for witches willing to cast generic spells, found a user going by the name of SpellByLuna and asked for an incantation that would turn around the Mariners’ once-promising season.

Said Blackburn: “Best $16 I’ve ever spent.”

The next morning at 5 a.m., Blackburn, an RV mechanic who lives about 30 miles north of T-Mobile Park, received a message that the spell had been cast. Later that night, All-Star center fielder Julio Rodríguez took over a game the Mariners absolutely needed, homering twice and making a leaping catch in a 10-2 victory. The next day, the Mariners blew out the Atlanta Braves 18-2. They’ve lost only once since, firing off 17 wins in 18 games since “Luna” unveiled the conjuration. Fans now show up at the ballpark in witches’ hats and, at times, full-on witch costumes. The organization has wrapped its arms around the concept, referencing the Etsy witch on social media and inviting Blackburn to the ballpark on Fan Appreciation Night earlier this month.

“It’s been super crazy,” he said. “I did this Etsy thing as a joke. I didn’t expect it to be this big.”

Blackburn wasn’t old enough to enjoy the 116-win 2001 team that claimed the previous division title and advanced into the AL Championship Series. His most vivid memories were of Mariners teams of the 2010s that featured the likes of Kyle Seager, Robinson Cano, Nelson Cruz and Félix Hernández, none of which advanced into October, and of younger groups that came up painfully short in 2021, 2023 and 2024.

Blackburn fully acknowledges the absurdity of it all. But when certain things happen — Mitch Garver hitting his first triple in six years, journeyman infielder Leo Rivas delivering a walk-off home run, Victor Robles diving from out of nowhere to make a game-saving catch — he can’t help but believe there might be something to it. The 2025 Mariners look like the franchise’s deepest, most talented collection in a generation, headlined by a transformative individual season. They have the tortured fan base, the conquest of a bitter rival, and even a little magic around them.

“It just feels like we’re almost destined,” Blackburn said. “It’s been 48 years that this team has been around. This feels like it’s about time.”

IT WAS THE first day of June when Mariners general manager Justin Hollander first reached out to Amiel Sawdaye, assistant GM of the Arizona Diamondbacks, to inquire about Eugenio Suárez and Josh Naylor. The trade deadline was still more than eight weeks away and the D-backs still maintained reasonable hope that they might contend. But Hollander vowed to stay in touch.

Under Jerry Dipoto, in his 10th year overseeing baseball operations, the Mariners had built a reputation as aggressive dealers. Trading promising prospects for veteran players on the verge of free agency, though, was the type of move they steered away from. But Suárez, a third baseman on a 50-homer pace, and Naylor, a first baseman who can hit for power, put the ball in play and even steal bases, addressed the team’s two biggest holes at a time that demanded urgency.

Raleigh was in the midst of a historic season. Rodríguez and the majority of the team’s best pitchers — starters Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, Bryan Woo and Bryce Miller, relievers Andres Muñoz and Matt Brash — were in their mid to late 20s, representing what should be the apex of their careers. And the failure of these past two years, both of which saw the Mariners finish a game shy of the playoffs, had revealed something about the follies of pragmatism.

“You can sometimes take for granted how good you think your team is and how likely or not likely you are to make the postseason,” Hollander said. “We felt like this year’s team had the potential to be the best of any of the other teams.”

So Hollander continually scribbled reminders to call Sawdaye on the notepad he keeps beside a computer on his office desk. He checked in every week or so, just to make sure nothing had changed. The Mariners had interest in acquiring both players in a package deal, but when the call finally came near the end of July, the D-backs revealed their plans to separate them. Naylor arrived on July 24 and brought a type of edge the team needed. Suárez, a beloved figure from a previous stint in Seattle in 2022-23, followed on the night of July 30 and brought the type of vibe that soon became crucial.

Later, sources told ESPN, the Mariners were on the verge of acquiring star closer Jhoan Duran from the Minnesota Twins. But when the Philadelphia Phillies upped their offer, the Mariners relented.

They still came away with two corner infielders who lengthened their lineup and made them a more dynamic unit than they’ve been in recent years, one not solely reliant on Raleigh and Rodríguez. Since then, the rotation has gotten healthy — minus Woo, whose pectoral injury is not expected to impact his postseason availability — and rounded into the type of form it displayed amid a record-setting 2024 season, posting a 2.50 ERA over these past 18 games. The bullpen — not only Muñoz and Brash, but Gabe Speier, Eduard Bazardo, Carlos Vargas and Caleb Ferguson, the veteran lefty acquired after a deal for Duran fell through — continues to look devastating.

Said Rodríguez: “We can do it all.”

“We’ve got athleticism, we’ve got team speed, we’ve got power, we’ve got starting pitching, a back end of the bullpen,” Dipoto said. “It’s very rare in our lives you get all those things hitting at the same time. And here in the last few weeks, they are. And they showed — they’re on a mission. And I don’t think that mission stops with making it to the postseason.”

THE LAST TIME the Mariners hosted a playoff game, it was Oct. 15, 2022, and to their fans, it became the most excruciating day possible. Seventeen innings went by without a run being scored. A Washington Huskies college football game started and ended during that time. Then Astros shortstop Jeremy Peña led off the top of the 18th inning with a home run to center field. After 6 hours, 22 minutes, the Mariners’ 2022 season — the one that ended the longest active playoff drought in North American professional sports — was over.

Heading into 2025, the Mariners had existed for 47 years and made the playoffs only five times. The best group was assembled in 2001, two years after the franchise’s most iconic player, Ken Griffey Jr., left to join the Cincinnati Reds. The Mariners tied the Chicago Cubs for the most wins in modern baseball history that year, then got trounced by the New York Yankees in the ALCS. Twenty-one years went by without another Mariners team in the playoffs; 24 went by without a division championship.

That 2001 season didn’t just mark the last time the Mariners had won the AL West; it marked the last time the people of Seattle had seen its team score a run at home in the playoffs, let alone win a game.

“We all know the history,” Rodríguez said. “We all know the hunger that this fan base has. That’s one thing that motivates us.”

The Mariners emerged from this year’s trade deadline with a 9-1 homestand, validating every belief that they had morphed into a powerhouse. They were 67-53 by Aug. 12, tied with the Houston Astros atop the AL West. Then the Mariners started to slide again. They went 2-7 on a trip through Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia. They bounced back by winning four of six at home but followed by dropping two of three in Cleveland.

Then they went to Tampa and lost back-to-back games to the Rays, after which Dipoto and manager Dan Wilson held a team meeting largely to emphasize that this was a talented, accomplished group that didn’t require any one individual to carry it. Suárez spoke about the importance of staying within themselves, J.P. Crawford emphasized the need for resiliency.

It didn’t work; the Mariners gave up eight runs in the first two innings of the finale, lost again, flew to Atlanta and were dominated by Braves ace Chris Sale on a Friday night, falling 3½ games out in the AL West.

Then, suddenly, everything changed.

The Mariners at one point won 10 in a row for the first time in more than three years. In one four-game series against the Los Angeles Angels, their pitchers set a major league record by accumulating 62 strikeouts. Over a 16-1 stretch, leading up to when they clinched the division, they outscored opponents by a combined 68 runs.

Maybe it was sorcery. Maybe it was the mustaches so many of the players and coaches started rocking when things went poorly, no matter how absurd some of them looked. Maybe it was the bag of crunchy Cheetos Dipoto began delivering to radio play-by-play voice Rick Rizzs on a daily basis, a callback to an old slump-busting ritual that reemerged on that Saturday in Atlanta because, as Dipoto said, “When he gets Cheetos, we score runs.”

Maybe it was a team that grew through struggle and finally learned how to overcome.

“We never give up,” Rodríguez said. “I feel like there’s a lot of people that break under pressure, and I feel like us as a team, we stick together. We’ve had some tough stretches, but I feel like that made us stronger. We were able to break through that. And we stayed together through that.”

DURING BATTING PRACTICE at Daikin Park in Houston last Sunday, Crawford wore socks that read: “Do Epic S—.” Then he came to bat in the second inning and hit the grand slam that basically took the archrival Astros out of the game, catapulted the Mariners to an emphatic three-game sweep and put them in position to capture their long-awaited division title.

The Astros’ ballpark is the site of the Yordan Álvarez walk-off home run against Robbie Ray in Game 1 of the 2022 AL Division Series, a moment from which those Mariners never recovered. It’s the home of a team that had claimed seven division titles over the past eight years, continually pushing Seattle into the background. And it’s a reminder of a year like 2023, when the Mariners arrived in Arlington, Texas, on the second-to-last weekend of the regular season trailing the division by only a half-game, were swept, and later watched the playoffs from their couches.

This time, though, it felt different.

“You could just feel the energy around in the clubhouse,” Crawford, the Mariners’ longest-tenured player, recalled. “Like, ‘Oh s—, it’s go time.’ It was cool.”

The Mariners never trailed in that series. Woo, Kirby and Gilbert combined to give up one run in 17 innings, during which they struck out 18 and walked two. Eight Mariners hitters drove in at least a run. The Mariners went into Houston tied for the top spot in the AL West and came out of it leading by three games, while holding the tiebreaker, with six remaining. Before their home series this week against the last-place Colorado Rockies was over — an eventual sweep, putting their winning streak at seven games — the Mariners had clinched a playoff spot, sealed the division, and earned a first-round bye, guaranteeing home-field advantage in the ALDS.

Given the opponent, the time of year and the ramifications, that series against the Astros might have been the most important in franchise history.

“We knew that was what had to happen,” Raleigh said. “It’s no secret — the Astros have owned this division for a long time. And to go out there and do it at their place, it meant a lot. It’s not just a random three games somewhere. They’re a really good team, they’re really tough. To do it in that fashion was special to these guys.”

The Mariners have fallen just short of the playoffs by stumbling down the stretch in each of the past two years. In 2023, an incredible August was followed by a brutal September that prompted elimination on the second-to-last day of the regular season. In 2024, the late-season firing of longtime manager Scott Servais was not enough to save a season that saw the Mariners blow a 10-game lead in 31 days and find themselves once again chasing over the final month. They grew from it.

“I just think that over the years, besides when we got to the playoffs in ’22, there’s always been so much pressure on us to get to the playoffs,” Kirby said. “And I think all of us were just like, ‘Screw that. Take every game one game at a time, do what you gotta do to get ready today and help the team.’ I think the vibes were so good. Normally, we feel all this pressure, but we just went out there and did our thing.”

When the final out was recorded Wednesday night, and the AL West had been secured, Wilson stood on the top step of the dugout and attempted to take it all in for a moment. Before he was thrust into the role as manager near the end of last August, Wilson spent a dozen years as a stalwart catcher during the best run in franchise history.

The Mariners made the playoffs four times with Wilson behind the plate from 1994 to 2005. Experiencing the emotions of it again felt “weirdly familiar and weirdly unfamiliar,” he said. He’s in a completely different role now, but he remembered the feeling so vividly. Of an entire city coming alive. Of a baseball team mattering so much. Of the excitement over what lies ahead.

“It brings back a lot,” Wilson said. “And it just feels really good that T-Mobile was as loud as it was, and as positive as it was, and that these guys are the reason why.”

A NAVY BLUE felt board is plastered on one of the walls inside the home clubhouse at T-Mobile Park, displaying Polaroid pictures of grown men donning the award handed out after every win: a pair of gold-plated testicles hanging from a chain and inscribed with a trident, appropriately called the “Nuts of the Game.” Thirty-eight pictures hung on that board this week. Only five of them featured Raleigh, who has taken on the responsibility of handing it out.

“He never gives the nuts to himself,” Crawford said. “He’s always looking out for someone else. It’s never about him. In reality, it should be.”

Raleigh will head into the final weekend, a home series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, with a realistic chance of breaking the AL home-run record of 62 set by Aaron Judge in 2022, and just as big a chance of beating him out for this year’s MVP Award. That the switch-hitting Raleigh, famously known as “The Big Dumper” for his prominent posterior, has achieved these offensive numbers — a .954 OPS, 60 home runs and 125 RBIs — while starting 118 games at catcher is akin to “asking Josh Allen to play middle linebacker on top of being the quarterback of the Buffalo Bills,” Hollander said.

The Mariners have played a major league-leading 14 games that lasted at least 11 innings this season, which only means longer nights for their best player. Their staff is composed of pitchers who throw a lot of sinkers and splitters, pitches that are often thrown in the dirt, which also means more blocking. Raleigh has made 4,385 block attempts this season, more than all but five other players. He has squatted to receive 8,715 pitches, fourth-most in the majors, over 1,063 innings, third-most. He has also absorbed countless foul tips, made countless pitch calls and spent countless hours dedicated to the task of getting opposing hitters out, all while hitting like few others.

“As a catcher, you come off the field at the end of the night being both physically and mentally exhausted,” Wilson said. “To be able to do that night in and night out and produce like he has offensively — it’s never been done like this before. We can honestly say that.”

Raleigh has produced 12 more home runs than the previous record for a primary catcher, set by Salvador Perez in 2021. Not long after clearing Perez, he passed Mickey Mantle for the most home runs by a switch-hitter (54 in 1961) and Griffey for the most home runs in Mariners history (56 in 1997 and ’98). He did it while coming off a Platinum Glove season, during a year in which he has made his right-handed swing every bit as lethal as his left-handed one. But in Seattle, there’s an appeal to Raleigh that stretches beyond production.

“He feels like one of them, and the way he interacts is insanely humble,” Dipoto said. “And when you talk to him, it’s not an act. It’s who he is.”

Raleigh started the scoring on Wednesday night with a first-inning home run, his 59th. Seven innings later — on the first pitch of his last at-bat, with 42,883 fans once again serenading him with MVP chants — he finished it with his 60th, tying a major league record with his 11th multi-homer game this season.

“Sixty,” Raleigh said later that night. “I don’t know what to say. I didn’t know if I was gonna hit 60 in my life.”

Earlier this spring, ahead of putting pen to paper on a $105 million extension, Raleigh met with the Mariners’ principal decision-makers to express his desire to win with this group and hoped to learn that they shared his ambition. What followed was the best offensive season a catcher has ever produced, at the center of a baseball team that, depending on what happens over this next month, could be the greatest this city has ever experienced.

“To do it in this fashion has been crazy and exciting and fun and everything that I hoped and dreamed it would be,” said Raleigh, who snapped the Mariners’ playoff drought with a walk-off homer three years earlier. “This is a great, great, great moment for this organization and city. We know we still have more work to do; we’re really excited to have that opportunity.”

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The U is back … in the Bottom 10

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10 hours ago

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October 22, 2025

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The U is back ... in the Bottom 10

  • Ryan McGee

Oct 22, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

Inspirational thought of the week:

(Cole Trickle drives his mangled Chevy Lumina into the pit stall)

Buck Bretherton: “Well, how about that? Something we don’t have to fix!”

(Crew chief Harry Hogge walks over and kicks a dent into the side of the car Bretherton is looking at)

Harry Hogge: “I don’t want you to get spoiled, Buck.”

— “Days of Thunder”

Here at Bottom 10 Headquarters, located behind the footlocker on the “College GameDay” bus where Nick Saban keeps his secret stash of “Anchor Down” Vanderbilt football apparel, we are beginning to worry that perhaps those of you who visit these rankings, as the kids say, “on the regular” might be like those who benefited from Saban’s time in Tuscaloosa. You’re getting a little spoiled.

Just two weeks ago, we had an all-time majestically meh Pillow Fight of the Week of the Year Mega Bowl matchup between UMess and State of Kent, winners of a lot of the most recent Bottom 10 titles. (We tried to look up exactly how many, but someone spilled Yoo-hoo on the archival floppy disk.) Then, this past week, we had the Sam Houston Bearkats kutting it up with UTEPid. Now the stage is set for a third consecutive PFOWY, as Georgia State Not Southern hosts the South Alabama Redundancies. And, as you will read in the words ahead, this is just the tip of a season-sinking iceberg of not-big games coming, as the spotter on the Titanic shouted way too late, “Right ahead!”

So, for all the talk about Power Autonomous Haughty Four conference realignment, in-conference scheduling, CFP committee résumé reading and the headliner showdowns that all of the above seem to bring with them, how about some props for the same happening down here with us? And by props, I totally mean rubber chickens, whoopee cushions and one of those Groucho Marx plastic-nose-on-the-glasses things.

With apologies to former Wichita State wide receiver Mike Proppe, former Drake tight end Hal Proppe, USC DB Prophet Brown and Steve Harvey, here are the post-Week 8 Bottom 10 rankings.

The Minuetmen continued their Backtion in #MACtion schedule, playing a former fellow Bottom 10 anchor, the Buffalo Bulls Not Bills. With 59 seconds remaining, the Amherst Amblers hauled in an interception that seemed to ice a 21-20 win. As the ESPN Analytics Ouija board said they had a 90.9% chance of victory, UMass players proceeded to demonstratively wave goodbye and do faux snow angels in celebration, drawing an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. After a three-and-out followed by a punt, the Minuetmen surrendered a four-play, 50-yard, 22-second TD drive to lose in the closing seconds, their lead turning out to be as real as that snow.

The bad news? The Bearkats lost the Pillow Fight of the Week of the Year Episode II: Attack of the Groans to UTEPid 35-17. The good news? If they don’t tell anyone it happened, no one is likely to ever know, because the crowd they played in front of was so small it would have saved time in the pregame to have had the PA announcer introduce the people in the stands to the starting lineups instead of the starting lineups to the people in the stands.

What a stretch for the Beavs. They finally won a game, beating the Lafayette Leopards, current leaders of the Patriot League. After a week versus the Fightin’ Bye of Open Date U, they will play the first of their in-season home-and-home double feature against Washington State, with whom they are currently tied for first in the 2Pac. Then they host Sam Houston State in the Pillow Fight of the Week of the Year Episode IV: A New Dope.

The Minors won their second game of the season, but their boat remains mired in the Bottom 4 because Pillow Fight victories over other teams in the Bottom 4 come with trophies made of lead. Plus, that pickax of theirs is always accidentally punching holes in the boat.

Ah, the rites of autumn. You can set your clock to their inevitability. The cool dip of the evening temperatures. The changing colors of the leaves. Suburban moms mainlining pumpkin spice. The Miami Hurricanes interrupting their latest “We’re back!” campaign with a midseason loss that lands them in the Coveted Fifth Spot. And the fans of those Canes not understanding what the Coveted Fifth Spot is despite the fact that they are here every year and thus raise Cane by filling my social media timelines with strings of cuss words stronger than Cuban coffee.

The Woof Pack keeps losing close games, the latest being their two-point defeat at the paws of New Mexico. But you know what they say. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. And atomic bomb tests, which happened about 300 miles east of Reno. Feels pretty close to us.

Much like we should all keep a safe distance between ourselves and atomic bomb testing, the Blew Raiders have a built-in buffer between Murfreesboro and the Bottom 5 in the form of Novada, whom they edged by the closest of margins, 14-13 way back in Week 3. But their Nov. 22 visit from Sam Houston does have the makings of a possible boundary-smashing Pillow Fight of the Week of the Year Episode VII: The Farce Awakens.

Meanwhile, the Pillow Fight of the Week of the Year Y’all Edition was won by Georgia Southern Not State over Georgia State Not Southern. I made a joke last week that the loser would have to change their name from GSU to GUS but was angrily informed that this game already has a GUS in the form of the Georgia Southern Eagles mascot named, yes, Gus. The nastiest letter I received wasn’t signed, but it was covered in white feathers.

Our second-favorite red, white and blue team named USA returns to these rankings just in time for its matchup with Georgia State Not Southern, a meeting of the last-place teams in each division of the Fun Belt, aka the Pillow Fight of the Week of the Year Episode V: The Empire Looks Wack.

In my mind I can see this one resident of Massachusetts who had his heart broken by the Red Sox to start the MLB postseason … so he decided to go to the UConn-Boston College game to clear his head, only to watch the Eagles get run over by the Artist Formerly Known As U-Can’t … but then had the thought, “Hey, I can make it out to Amherst for the second half!” and started waving bye with 0:59 remaining when he thought UMass was going to win and watched the Minuetmen blow it … so, when he finally got home to Southie, and after his dog bit him, he made himself feel better by opening a six-pack of Sam Adams and going on the new ESPN App to watch the replay of Bill Belichick’s Tar Holes losing to Cal by fumbling the ball at the goal line late in the fourth quarter.

Waiting list: Northern Ill-ugh-noise, State of Kent, EMU Emus, Oklahoma State No Pokes, Charlotte 1-and-6ers, Wisconsin Bad-gers, Akronmonious, UNC Chapel Bill, the USC-Notre Dame series ending.

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

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13 hours ago

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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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Rising son: Gators task Spurrier Jr. to help QB

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16 hours ago

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October 22, 2025

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Rising son: Gators task Spurrier Jr. to help QB

  • Associated Press

Oct 22, 2025, 01:08 PM ET

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The Florida Gators are turning to Steve Spurrier to help fix the team’s floundering offense.

Steve Spurrier Jr., anyway.

Interim coach Billy Gonzales said Wednesday the younger Spurrier, who was hired as an offensive analyst earlier this year, will be more involved with quarterback DJ Lagway when the Gators (3-4, 2-2 SEC) play No. 5 Georgia (6-1, 4-1) in Jacksonville on Nov. 1.

Gonzales will have tight ends coach/offensive coordinator Russ Callaway organize the offense alongside quarterbacks coach Ryan O’Hara in the booth. O’Hara will be on the headset calling plays to Lagway.

Spurrier, meanwhile, will be on the sideline working directly with the sophomore quarterback.

“What we’re trying to do right now is tweak a couple things so we can put our players in a better situation to go out and make plays and perform at a higher level,” said Gonzales, named the interim after Billy Napier was fired Sunday. “We all understand that’s what we need to do. So that’s the No. 1 goal for us as a coaching staff right now.”

Napier was dismissed, in large part, because he failed to get Florida’s offense on track in his four seasons. The Gators totaled a combined 50 points in losses to South Florida, LSU, Miami and Texas A&M this fall, and they rank 15th in the league in scoring.

Facing the Bulldogs without Napier could show how much of a hindrance he was to an offense that believes it has enough talent to compete in the SEC. Gonzales has made it clear he wants to open things up more and get the ball down the field to receivers.

Spurrier is a part of the plan. The 54-year-old son of a Hall of Fame player and coach who is a living legend in Gainesville, Spurrier spent the past two years at Tulsa. He also worked at Mississippi State (2020-22), Washington State (2018-19), Western Kentucky (2017) and Oklahoma (2016). Before that, he spent a decade working under his famous father at South Carolina (2005-15).

“Whenever you’re around one of the greatest offensive minds in history, it’s obviously going to rub off on you as well,” Gonzales said. “He’s been involved, but now he’s going to have more of a role because he’s going to be down there on the field with the quarterback looking in his eyes and getting a chance to talk to him and review the film that’s being relayed.

“It’s going to put us in a great situation to help DJ and the quarterbacks perform on the football field.”

Lagway has thrown for 1,513 yards, with nine touchdowns and nine interceptions, this season while playing behind a shaky offensive line. He has looked better of late as he moves closer to fully recovering from a derailed offseason that included core-muscle surgery, nagging shoulder pain and a strained calf muscle.

“It’s been a long journey, and I’m thankful for the good and the bad,” Lagway said. “God doesn’t make any mistakes. I’m just excited to see where my journey continues and how I can continue to get better.”

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