Lefko: Mariners’ next 10 games will answer a season-long question

Do you pin the Seattle Mariners’ offensive struggles on the coaching or the players? We’re about to get the answer to that question after these next 10 games.

Salk: Who can unlock Julio? Why Edgar Martinez has a shot

The Mariners finds themselves in a similar situation to where they were before embarking on the nine-game disaster of a road trip that culminated in a managerial change. We’re now about to run the experiment again with our control group (the players) and the variable of two new coaches.

This 10-game road trip that starts Friday night also represents the last, best chance to salvage an opportunity to reach the playoffs. Because while the Mariners are about to face three teams without a winning record (the Angels, Athletics and the even-.500 Cardinals), the team they’re chasing, the Houston Astros, are in the midst of playing seven out of 10 games against two of the hottest teams in baseball. That’s an opportunity to cut into Houston’s four-game lead in the AL West.

If the Mariners finish above .500 on this road trip, the answer will unequivocally be yes, it was the fault of the coaches who were let go. The Mariners have had just two winning road trips all season, one thanks to a series sweep over the league-worst White Sox and the other with the help of the moribund Rockies. Maybe the simple conclusion is that they aren’t a very good team, but it was impossible to extricate a true answer to the aforementioned question until now. This is also the more palatable option, because the alternative may ask for a fundamental overhaul.

It’s the cruel nature of sports and leadership that sometimes the ideal person for building a team up, or making them good, isn’t the one who is best suited to help them take that next step on the path to winning a championship. We’ve seen it across all sports, whether it’s Jon Gruden finishing what Tony Dungy built with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, to Terry Francona finally unlocking the answer for the Boston Red Sox, or Nick Nurse stepping into immediate success after Dwane Casey toiled for years with the Toronto Raptors. What makes one person good at a certain aspect of a job might also be what is keeping a team from reaching its full potential.

The Mariners under Scott Servais, especially in this post-pandemic version of the team, had a knack for winning close games and going on inspiring runs when it seemed all hope was lost. Basically, they played better when they could channel that underdog mentality of no one believing in them. The Mariners under Servais also consistently struggled to maintain prosperity, to handle playing as the better team and win when they were expected to do so.

The 2022 ALDS loss to the Astros will be the dark cloud that forever hangs over the Servais tenure, but there were moments in 2023 and this current season that led the Mariners to where they ultimately are now. Last season, Seattle didn’t lose a single series to the Astros – that is, until a must-win series at home at the end of the year. That was the conclusion after being swept in three games in Texas, when the Mariners went from a half-game out of the division lead to a three-game deficit that was too much to overcome.

This year, it was a collapse after owning a 10-game division lead, featuring series losses to the Marlins, Rays, and Angels and a subsequent unraveling in every critical series after the All-Star break, leaving no choice but to drastically shake up the status quo to change what felt like an inexorable march of listless offense until the merciful end of the season.

If the Mariners’ offense resembles the same one that took the field in Detroit and Pittsburgh as losses pile up, then you can definitively say it wasn’t the manager who shoulders the brunt of the blame. It could then point to a need for an organizational audit to rebuild how hitting is taught and how free agent position players are being evaluated. So, for the sake of maximizing this dominant starting pitching, which has opened up the possibility of a championship window, let’s hope it was the fault of the manager, because the alternative might require another detour and delay before the Mariners are able to ascend to the tier of World Series contenders.

In either scenario, there is a key component that is needed this offseason: bringing in a high-caliber hitter. If new manager Dan Wilson and hitting coach Edgar Martinez do enough to get this team into the playoffs, great! However, it’s clear this team needs an impact player to supplement the core of everyday hitters. However, if the Mariners falter and stumble down the stretch, then it becomes imperative that they find a way to help their own hitters succeed and bring in a superstar who can take some of the offensive pressure off of Julio Rodríguez and Cal Raleigh.

Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto raised eyebrows for saying last year, “We could go out and acquire prime Babe Ruth, and it’s not going to help us.” But he was right in the sense that if everyone else in the lineup is struggling, one guy isn’t going to make much of a difference when it comes to trying to win a World Series. We’ll now see if those team-wide offensive struggles were due to the men in the clubhouse or those behind the scenes.

Ten games to save a season and determine the course of what comes next for a team at a crossroads. Here we go.

More on the Seattle Mariners

• Standout day shows glimpse of Mariners’ outfield potential
• Why Mariners’ offseason is an ‘easy fix’ according to former MLB GM
• Seattle Mariners Breakdown: Analyzing playoff picture after series win
• Watch: Robles, Rodríguez slug two-run HRs in same inning
• Passan: The one thing that makes Seattle Mariners’ rotation phenomenal

Follow @MikeLefko