This story was excerpted from Daniel Kramer’s Mariners Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
SEATTLE -- It’s the season of New Year's, where resolutions and new frontiers are ripe on everyone’s minds -- but especially for those in baseball, with Spring Training just five weeks away.
With that in mind, here are a few resolutions for the Mariners in 2026, both team-wide and among players, that might sound lofty -- but also might be achievable.
Cal Raleigh: Embrace the curtain call
Anticipating another 60-homer season won’t be fair. But banking on Raleigh putting together another All-Star season, leading the Mariners back to October and seeing his leadership blossom even further is completely within reason.
And he would say as much himself.
The expectations will be sky high in 2026, for the entire team but especially its all-world catcher. And he’ll shoulder as much weight of those, individually and in the collective. Raleigh never shied from the spotlight last season, but he also wasn’t comfortable in it -- at least in the context of speaking on his own achievements. For him, it’s always been about winning. So while 2026 might not be “The Year of Big Dumper” as it was in '25, there’s still plenty to accomplish for one of the sport’s burgeoning stars.
Julio Rodríguez: Win AL MVP
This might fall in a “too soon” category after Raleigh was runner-up last season despite having as legitimate of a case as any catcher in the sport’s history -- and that this specific resolution represents a totally different player. But dating back to his days as an MLB Pipeline posterboy, Rodríguez has long looked like the organization’s player with the best chance to take home the league’s top individual honor.
And he certainly looked the part for the second half of last year -- yet that has seemingly been the case for each of his first four seasons.
From July 11 on -- the day he declined an invitation to the All-Star Game for a mental and physical reset -- Rodríguez led MLB with 3.8 wins above replacement, per FanGraphs, over 68 games. That would correlate to a 9.1 WAR season over 162 games and easily put him in the MVP conversation. And for his career, he’s slashed .297/.351/.552 (.903 OPS) in the second half.
If he can create that type of production from Opening Day onward, and couple it with his Gold Glove-caliber defense, he’ll certainly be in the AL MVP conversation come November.
Josh Naylor: Join the 30-30 club
Naylor took everyone -- including Seattle’s front office -- by surprise when surging his way to 30 stolen bases last year. And coupled with his 20 homers, he became just the fourth primary first baseman in history to join the 20-30 club. And while upping the ante to the 30-30 club might sound like a stretch, especially for a player who ranked in the 3rd percentile in Statcast’s sprint speed, it might not be totally out of the question, as he already has a 31-homer season under his belt with Cleveland in 2024.
Rotation: Win the AL Cy Young Award
This group now houses four All-Stars -- Luis Castillo (2019, 2022, 2023), Bryan Woo (2025), Logan Gilbert (2024), George Kirby (2023) -- and the outlier, Bryce Miller, could join that group if he’s able to replicate his '24 finish over a full season.
The Seattle rotation showed its floor last year when grinding through extended IL stints to four among that group. But at their ceiling, the Mariners could have one of the sport’s best rotations, as they did in '24. Supplanting Detroit’s Tarik Skubal for the league’s top pitching honor will be a tall task, but if any one team had the collective firepower for one player to do so, it might be Seattle.
Team: Reach the World Series
This will be the leading storyline all year, from FanFest later this month, through Spring Training and the regular season -- which will come with heightened expectations from a starved fanbase and supreme stakes if they are able to reach October.
Especially after how last year ended.
President of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto and general manager Justin Hollander still recognize that there’s work to do this offseason to bolster the roster, specifically by adding another impact bat. But the club should be the favorites to win the AL West again, which could position it for another deep October run.