Why Jon Morosi believes Mariners will hit better this season

The Seattle Mariners’ lineup going into the 2025 MLB season looks an awful lot like it did in the latter part of the 2024 season.

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You can expect outfielders Julio Rodríguez, Randy Arozarena and Victor Robles near the top of the batting order. Slugging catcher Cal Raleigh will be somewhere in the middle. Jorge Polanco can slide into the bottom-third along with fellow infielders J.P. Crawford and Dylan Moore. And Luke Raley will share first base duties with a veteran right-handed bat (Donovan Solano taking over for Justin Turner in this case).

That means after finishing 21st in runs scored, 22nd in OPS and 29th in batting average among MLB teams last season, the Mariners are banking on a lot of in-house improvement in 2025. To be fair, Robles and Arozarena gave Seattle a boost as in-season pickups in 2024, and the Mariners were statistically one of the best offensive teams in baseball in the final month, but those are small sample sizes we’re dealing with.

We know the Mariners believe they’ll be better with the bats this year, but is the plan something fans can buy into?

“It’s credible. It’s not fail-safe,” MLB Network insider Jon Morosi said Wednesday during his weekly conversation with Seattle Sports’ Wyman and Bob. “It’s not the Yankees. It’s not the Dodgers. Let’s be real about what the goal is and what other teams have. Line up the Mets’ lineup and line up the Mariner lineup and tell me which one we’d take.

“You can convince yourself, not that difficultly, but you can convince yourself that it’s going to be a better year (for the Mariners’ offense) – and I actually think it will be. But they don’t have an elite offense, and I think that they need to be real about what it’s going to take to function as a good one through nine – and I think that was part of the issue last year.”

Morosi had a colorful way of putting the Mariners’ situation into perspective, though.

“Let’s put it this way: It’s my job to know all 30 teams and understand what their plans are and how they’re coming together. I’ve certainly heard many worse sales pitches than what the Mariners are offering right now. There are teams that offensively have far greater concerns,” he said.

Morosi said the Mariners lacked “good connectedness and harmony” up and down the lineup for most of 2024, but acknowledged that changed after the trade deadline and especially once new manager Dan Wilson and interim hitting coach Edgar Martinez entered the picture in late August. Wilson is now entering his first full season as the skipper while Martinez is overseeing the Mariners’ offense as the team’s new senior director of hitting strategy.

“I think that has a chance to be a game-changer for the Mariners,” Morosi said of the involvement of Martinez, a Baseball Hall of Famer. “Certainly Edgar was around when they had success late last season, and that seems to be the message that we’re getting from the front office. … They’ve got a good team, they’ve got a good lineup that should be better than it was last year, and the bar to be better is not that high.

“If they would have had an average offense last year, they’re in the playoffs – comfortably. And no one is there in Peoria, Day 1 (of spring training) saying, ‘Alright boys, let’s be average. We’re going to be average this year.’ But among the three of us friends talking, that’s probably what they have to be. If they’re average (offensively), they’re gonna be a really good team.”

As Julio goes, so go the Mariners

There’s one thing the Mariners’ lineup has that makes it a little easier for Morosi to buy into the idea of Seattle’s offense taking a step forward in 2025: a budding superstar who didn’t have a great 2024 season.

"Julio (Rodriguez) has to be a little more steady. I think he knows that, the #Mariners know that, the fans know that."

MLB Network's @JonMorosi spoke to @WymanAndBob about the M's 2025 offensive plan.

Full video 📺: https://t.co/VXiQynVj1O https://t.co/hBp5kORCKz pic.twitter.com/Fk19FcbSRD

— Seattle Sports (@SeattleSports) February 13, 2025

“If Julio plays the way that he can play, they’ve got the type of player that very few teams have,” Morosi said of the Mariners’ two-time All-Star center fielder. “And to me, a lot of this season – at the risk of oversimplifying it – if he comes out there and puts up something that looks like a 30/30 season, and more importantly a smoother and more consistent six months, that’s what I’m watching (for).

“His performance is going to be the what answers it one way or the other. Can he be more consistent? He’s still a young player, but he’s not a kid anymore, and I think that for an organization that’s looking to him as the heart and soul of the team – you could argue Cal Raleigh is that in a lot of ways, too – but he needs to be a little smoother in terms of the production month to month.”

Rodríguez still had a good season in 2024, but it wasn’t his best and he wasn’t consistently at the top of his game. Though he won American League Player of the Week honors in late September and finished the season with a .273/.325/.409 slash line for a .734 OPS, he had to recover from sitting at a lowly .244/.293/.323 slash and .616 OPS through July 3.

“There are certain players that can be a little hot and cold and it still works. Arozarena can be that way, by the way,” Morosi said. “But Julio has to be a little more steady. And I think he knows that, the Mariners know that, the fans know that, and I look for big things from him this year.”

MLB Network insider Jon Morosi joins Wyman and Bob for a weekly half-hour conversation. Hear this week’s full segment at this link or in either of the audio and video players near the top of this post. Catch Wyman and Bob from 2-7 p.m. weekdays on Seattle Sports.

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