SEATTLE — The Seattle Mariners are entering one of if not the most important offseasons in recent franchise history.
Fan sentiment soured in the final month of the 2023 regular season as an inept offense kept the Mariners out of the playoffs, just a year after the team snapped a two-decade postseason drought in dramatic fashion.
The Mariners appeared to be entering the upper echelon of the American League after the 2022 successes but took a step back last season and put a damper on the understandably elevated expectations of its fan base.
Watching the division rival Texas Rangers win the World Series only furthered the importance of the next four months before spring training begins. The Mariners are now behind both Texas and the Houston Astros in talent, despite having one of the best pitchers and one of the top sluggers in the AL.
Here are a few questions President of Baseball Operations Jerry Dipoto and the front office will need to answer this winter if they want to become a true contender and get more than 54% closer to the franchise's first World Series appearance.
Will the Mariners go after the biggest fish in the free-agent market?
Dipoto maintained the organizational standard of not discussing individual free agents in his latest press conference, but there is one big name this winter that could immediately make a team the talk of the sport: Shohei Ohtani.
Mariners fans are quite familiar with Ohtani, as he's played his whole career to date with another division rival in the Los Angeles Angels. Fans chanted "Come to Seattle" when Ohtani came to the plate during the All-Star Game last summer at T-Mobile Park.
Ohtani hails from Japan, which also produced former Mariners star Ichiro Suzuki. Ohtani, like many current Japanese baseball players, grew up watching Ichiro play for the Mariners, and Suzuki still remains close to the organization. The Seattle area also has one of the largest Japanese populations in the U.S., trailing only Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York, per 2019 data from the Pew Research Center.
Every MLB team will make an effort to sign Ohtani, as his unprecedented ability to both hit and pitch should net him a contract somewhere in the realm of $500-600 million. Even with the noted positives above for Seattle, it would be understandable if the Mariners didn't want to get into a bidding war that will exceed half a billion dollars.
However, the Mariners also can't keep relying on bargain signings or players who were no longer wanted by their previous team. A.J. Pollock and Kolten Wong were two of the big signings of last season, and those ended up being two of the three least valuable players to the Mariners in 2023 by Wins Above Replacement.
Despite being so unproductive, Wong and Pollock collected a combined $17 million in salary, with only five players in the organization making more in 2023. Baseball is an arms race, and if the Mariners won't spend like their competitors, championship contention will only get harder and harder.
How can the Mariners improve an offense that seemed to have a lot of talent?
This one is simple: strikeouts. Only one other MLB team struck out more times than the Mariners in 2023, and Teoscar Hernandez and Eugenio Suarez were second and third respectively among the individual leaders in strikeouts.
Dipoto preached an emphasis on adding players who can generate more contact and strike out less to the lineup at this week's GM meetings.
Someone like Lourdes Gurriel Jr., who just helped lead the Arizona Diamondbacks to a World Series appearance, could be a free-agent target who does a better job of making contact.
Whoever the Mariners end up signing, expect them to be posting a higher batting average in 2024 than what Seattle produced last season.
How can the bullpen be improved before the 2024 season begins?
The Mariners have an abundance of starting pitchers in the organization, including a few highly-paid veterans and a stream of young prospects that either already have debuted at the big-league level in recent years or are very close to it.
However, watching Paul Sewald help the Diamondbacks claw to the World Series made many Seattle fans question why he was traded away at the deadline.
Quite a few talented relief pitchers will be on the free agent market this winter, including Reynaldo Lopez, Josh Hader and Hector Neris.
Offense will be the priority, but good teams can never have too much help in the bullpen, especially with how specialized pitchers have become.
