ARLINGTON -- Jerry Dipoto was as blunt as he was bothered, and that might be putting it lightly.
“Our offense,” the Mariners’ president of baseball operations said on Saturday, “has been abysmal for two months.”
His candor came in the wake of the front office’s decision to part ways with assistant hitting coach Bobby Magallanes two days prior. It also came hours before another dispiriting night that featured a 7-1 loss in this critical four-game showdown at Texas.
It was a game that was all but decided by the end of the second inning -- Bryan Woo had been ambushed for five runs by that point -- and the offense failed to get anything going other than an RBI double from J.P. Crawford in the fifth, in his return to the lineup after missing four games.
These are trying times for the Mariners, and they’re steering toward an even darker outlook if things don’t turn -- and soon.
“Change grabs attention,” Dipoto said. “There are consequences to our results.”
To be sure, Dipoto outlined that Magallanes is hardly the only, and not even the primary, source of blame for Seattle’s offensive struggles. Dipoto even said that he wasn’t sure if the dismissal -- which manager Dan Wilson lobbied against -- was the right move.
But he also acknowledged that a roster he called the most talented in his 11 years at the helm necessitated an uncomfortable wakeup call.
“There's just been a disjointed feeling within what we were doing offensively all year long,” Dipoto said. “It's just never really felt like we were all moving in the same direction, and it shows on the field. It shows in our results. And I hate that this [falls] on Bobby.
“Bobby is a wonderful human. He's a great guy. He's a source of positivity. But at the end of the day, the only way to instigate some type of change is by making some type of change.”
With Saturday’s loss, Seattle (51-54) fell to three games below .500 for the first time since May 25, the day that it began an eight-game win streak that looked like a turning point.
There have been countless such moments in this season that began so full of expectations, but has been so baffling to watch unfold.
The industry consensus all year has pegged the Mariners as the team to beat in the American League West. But by the end of Saturday night, they were no longer the favorites by FanGraphs’ playoff odds -- marking the first time all year another team from the division had higher odds.
That said, they still have 36.1% odds to win the division, 55.5% odds to make the playoffs and 6.0% odds to win the World Series, second highest in the AL.
These projections underscore the roster’s talent -- and more so, potential.
Yet, after Saturday’s loss, they find themselves 2 1/2 games behind Texas for first place -- and they even tumbled behind Houston for second place, after the Astros (52-54) hung on to a 4-1 win over the White Sox. Seattle is also on the outside looking in among an extremely crowded AL Wild Card race, with eight teams either occupying a playoff spot or within 3 1/2 games of one.
Things won’t get any easier, either, as this road trip continues at Dodger Stadium for a three-game series beginning Tuesday night.
It’s impossible not to draw parallels between this specific window within this specific season to Seattle’s most recent visit to Chavez Ravine in 2024, which capped a 1-8 road trip and led to Scott Servais being dismissed as manager the next day.
Sweeping changes of that caliber are not coming, Dipoto said. But there’s a growing reality that the Mariners are backing themselves into a place where they’re going to have to rattle off a stretch that they’ve really only done once this season, during that eight-game win streak.
“We have a number of players who have really struggled,” Dipoto said, “and we've just been trying to find a voice, some kind of traction to get their seasons going or back online.”
That voice belongs to Ed Paparella, the 31-year-old hitting coordinator from the Minors side who specializes in the technology and analytics space, and who can be a bridge between the high-performance and coaching staffs. Magallanes, like director of hitting strategy Edgar Martinez and hitting coach Kevin Seitzer, is cut from the more old-school cloth of hitting.
Their guidance was instrumental during a 2025 season in which the Mariners had one of the sport’s more prolific lineups. But for whatever reason, it hasn’t translated to 2026.
“We needed to try something different,” Dipoto said. “And in order to try something different, change is necessary.”