30 Teams In 30 Days: The Mariners Window Is Open, But I Wish They Would've Done More In The Offseason

I really want to be all in with this team, but it feels like they don't want to be all in on themselves. I'm baffled by the Seattle Mariners' offseason this year. I understand that it wasn't a great free-agent market, but this was still an 88-win ball club a year ago, and many young, good players are returning. The Texas Rangers finished two games ahead of them in the same division. They ended up winning the World Series, so I expected that the Mariners would view the last few years as the opening of a championship window, but it seemed like they were very passive in the offseason. 

With that said, that doesn't change how I feel about the core that they have in Seattle. There are a lot of players here that I really like, with Julio Rodriguez being at the forefront. It is crazy how good his numbers ended up being last year, considering he was not himself offensive during the first half of the season. It shows how insanely good he was in the last few months. He's the best position player that Seattle has had since Ichiro, and he's just now going to be entering his prime, which is a scary thing to think about.

The strength of this team is the rotation. They traded Robbie Ray, who will be returning from Tommy John surgery, but they still have three studs in Luis Castillo, Logan Gilbert, and George Kirby. These are all hard, throwing, striking, throwing, right-handed pitching machines. I love watching these guys go to work. I do like the Mitch Garver signing. I feel like that's one of the more underappreciated moves of the offseason, but after that, I really have many question marks about the latter part of their lineup. It's not to say that it's bad, but when you look at the other two teams that they're looking up at in the division with the Astros and Rangers, those are two teams with loaded offenses, and guys one through nine that can put together really good at-bats. 

In a lot of ways, Seattle took a step back this offseason. Their pitching will be able to carry them, but I do feel like they're lacking the offensive firepower to win this division. They might be one of those teams that need to make a big splash at the deadline if they want to put themselves in a position to contend for the AL West.