Drayer: Mariners focus on accountability, making a shift for 2027

Instead of standing on the field at T-Mobile Park watching his team go through light drills to keep them fresh as they awaited a division series opener, Jerry Dipoto was instead at the the back of the press box Monday afternoon taking questions from the media about the Seattle Mariners’ stunning 76-86 finish.

Jerry Dipoto: Mariners players pointed out things ‘abandoned’ in 2026

This was clearly not the expected outcome coming off a 2025 campaign that ended one game shy of the World Series. It also likely was not much of a surprise to Dipoto and other front office members as the team had seemingly been on a collision course for the undesired result for some time, as aspect after aspect of the team continued to come up short.

The offense stumbled with key contributors cratering from their career numbers. The pitching slid, with the starters knocked off their perch as one of the better rotations in baseball and the relievers having struggled through the loss of significant arms and lack of a bridge to the leverage relievers, particularly after the team went to a six-man starting rotation. The defense, which has always been a priority at least in theory, was shockingly bad, and the overall play of the team far too often sloppy.

None of this escaped the eye of Dipoto, who during the midsummer months traveled frequently with the team, at times his frustration with the inability to turn things around evident.

“This is what I’m in charge of, is overseeing all of it. So the blame falls on me first,” he said Monday. “I wake up and I look in the mirror every day trying to figure out why this happened. For the last five years, we’re one of the winningest teams in Major League Baseball. This year, we stunk and it never got on track.”

Now, like in 2024 when the Mariners had a somewhat similar stumble that led to an in-season manager change, all things should be on the table when it comes to evaluating what happened this year and trying to rectify it. Unlike ’24 where the manager move seemed to be the biggest change, this winter it appears Dipoto is prepared to get perhaps a little uncomfortable, starting with the managerial hire.

When asked what qualities the Mariners would be looking for in their next skipper, one preference jumped out.

“We will go outside to hire our manager,” Dipoto said. “We need fresh thought. We need something new. It could be a shift in programming. It could be a shift in messaging. It could be a shift in language.”

Mariners programs and language have been central to what they have done under Dipoto, and while continuity throughout an organization is generally viewed as a good thing, a shift does deserve a look. New eyes will bring new ideas.

“Most of what we’ve done, in recent years especially, has been insular,” Dipoto admitted. “And I think this year’s failure requires that we look outside to find someone who might be able to poke holes in what we’re doing and help us see something that perhaps we’re blind to. Because obviously this is not been what we intended nor what we expected from our team.”

Accountability has been under the microscope, and Dipoto said he did an ineffective job of making sure everyone was held accountable by each other, be it in the front office or clubhouse. Holding somebody accountable are words heard often and not fully understood. Dipoto was quick to define when asked.

“Holding accountable looks like culture,” he answered. “It is, what are you willing to tolerate? Are you willing to tolerate less than full effort? Are you willing to tolerate less than full focus? Are you willing to tolerate what we saw in midseason was a team playing with limited urgency and waiting for the water to turn on? And it just didn’t come on instead of turning it on ourselves, and we saw it unfolding. Our players saw it unfolding. And we talked about it a lot as the season went along.”

The talk however did not lead to action, and that was clearly on Dipoto’s mind.

“Again, it’s where I would count myself most at fault, is you can talk about it or you can just go out and do it,” he said. “We had a tendency this year to just shrug it off to, ‘We’re more talented than the teams around us. Don’t worry, it’ll happen,’ instead of going out and making our own thing happen.

“That’s what accountability looks like. It’s calling that out in the moment. It’s stopping it before it gets rolling any further. It’s being truthful in our discussion with one another. And for years, our program has always been built on truth. We tell the truth with love, and sometimes you might get your nose out of joint for a moment, but you wake up the next day and you realize that you’re loved and you’re just trying to help one another.”

Accountability was a topic that was addressed by multiple players in their final interviews this season, and a few who did not want to be named commented during the season that they would like to see more telling of the hard, nose-out-of-joint truths when needed. In the Mariners clubhouse, however, patience and belief in each other instead led the way this year. That patience and belief unfortunately did not pay off. Time will tell if the result leads to meaningful and effective change moving forward.

“Part of my job is making decisions for how to get better and make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Dipoto said. “And, you know, it happened. And failure is only failure if you don’t learn from it. We’re hoping to learn these lessons and move forward in a productive way.”

Seattle Mariners news and more

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