3 encouraging things MLB insiders said about Mariners this week

Fans never want to hear “it’s early,” and you can’t blame then when a team with World Series aspirations — facing the highest expectations in years, which is very important context here — is struggling as much as the Seattle Mariners are to begin the 2026 season.

How this slow start by Mariners offense is different than others

And I mean struggling. Like the worst record in baseball. Like the worst average in baseball. Like your biggest stars are all hitting below the Mendoza line. The only thing working (besides second baseman Cole Young) are the arms, and while they’re off to a better start than they were last April, it hasn’t been enough to get wins. The Mariners lost four in a row by one run before being completely shut out on Wednesday as the Rangers swept them in Texas.

This team is supposed to be great. What’s going on with the offense?

It’s a question we asked several national guests this week. So rather than tell you “it’s early,” I figured I’d let a few baseball experts who joined us on Bump and Stacy do the talking.

From a GM who’s been there before:

“This is one of those teams that you just know how good they are and where they’re going to end up,” former Reds and Nationals GM Jim Bowden, now an MLB analyst for The Athletic, told us Tuesday. “I remember when I was a GM in the mid-90s, we had a team that started 1-8. And I had all the media members asking if I was going to fire the manager, if I was going to step down, if I was going to trade all the players. And I said no, this is a playoff team, I’m not worried about it. And we ended up in the NLCS that year.

“So when I see a team like the Mariners… I’m not going to really look at your win-loss record right now. I know the talent you have.”

What about the rest of the West?

Ugly baseball is ugly baseball. There’s no way to make the M’s offense sound like it’s been misunderstood. They’re swinging and missing way too often; from Luke Arkins, they’ve seen the single biggest jump in strike-zone whiff rate.

And as of right now they’re in fifth place in the AL West and 3.5 games back of the first-place Rangers, who just swept Seattle for the first time since 2023. How quickly can the M’s catch up? Is it an early problem for a team favored to win the West again?

“You’d like to think the talent is going to win out eventually,” Yahoo Sports’ Jordan Shusterman, co-host of Baseball Bar-B-Cast, told us Wednesday. “I think if there is something to lean on, they have four against Houston coming up here (and) all of these AL West teams seem pretty seriously flawed at this point. I don’t think that’s necessarily a shock, but it is a reminder of maybe why there was so much confidence in Seattle to take care of the division this year.

“It’s hard to imagine a team is going to start running away with it the way that maybe a team like Seattle could do. I mean just think about some of the runs that Seattle went on last year, and not just at the end of the season. At the end of April they rattled of like (16) of 20 and (23 of 34). They’re capable of piling up wins in a hurry, and if you’re going to get pitching like this then they don’t need everybody to start hitting, but you are going to need some of those main guys to start being a little more productive.”

If it’s not going to be more hits, how about more energy?

It can take time to fix offensive woes, especially with missed time in the offseason for the team’s top hitters. In the meantime, Mariners broadcast analyst Ryan Rowland-Smith is looking for something else from the dugout: energy. And he said that knowing that getting three homers robbed in a single game, which the Angels’ Jo Adell did to the Mariners last Saturday, can suck the wind out of your sails.

“On the other side when people say ‘where’s the energy?’ and this and that, I’m not going to lie, there’s times I’m like hey man, it feels like there’s no energy with this team,” Rowland-Smith said. “However, when you get robbed with three home runs, dude, you’re deflated in that dugout, man. I don’t care what game of the year it is, that can suck the life straight out of the dugout.

“Sometimes you do have to manufacture some of that energy, because it is low. I’m not in there, so I can’t speak for that. But from my point of view, I’m watching like, oh man, someone does need to get some sort of energy cranking with this team, because it does look pretty flat.”

More on the Seattle Mariners

• One way a Colt Emerson call-up can get tricky for Mariners
• Mariners to face MLB’s viral new pitch for the first time Friday
• Bowden: Why M’s shouldn’t consider trading a starting pitcher
• Brendan Donovan working through ‘growing pains’ at 3B
• Seattle Mariners, KING 5 announce TV affiliates for 10 broadcasts

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