As Mariners fans enter their 49th year searching the barren wilderness for a World Series appearance, it is worth noting that it took Lewis and Clark only 28 months to walk from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean and back. All they had to put up with were bears, wolves, buffalo stampedes and a winter so dark and wet their tears went unnoticed. Plus, no GPS.
So what? They didn’t have to encounter the Los Angeles Dodgers, beasts whose relentlessness rivals sandworms in Dune. After inhaling many of the best free agents in the off-season, the defending champs have a 2025 estimated payroll of $390 million, per FanGraphs. That is $58 million more than the runner-up New York Mets. Completing the oligarch circle are the Philadelphia Phillies ($289M) and the New York Yankees ($287M).
MLB attempts to slow this roll with a payroll tax, a figure negotiated with the players union. This year it’s $241 million. The first year a team exceeds the threshold generates a 20 percent tax, the second year 30 percent, and a third year in a row is 50 percent. Additional penalties include forfeiture of choices in the amateur draft, but the main point is that the Dodgers are $150 million over the penalty level, an amount that turns out to about the same as the Mariners’ estimated payroll — $152 million, 16th in baseball.
The Dodgers’ ownership group doesn’t care. They will pay any and all taxes, fees, parking tickets and surcharges, then tell the rest of MLB to drop dead. They want to win a second title in a row, and there is no financial prohibition against that. If asked and it suited them, they would buy Greenland and install a Class A farm team there — the Nuuk Crooks.
The preposterous distance between the Dodgers and the rest of baseball — the only major North American spectator sport without a serious salary cap — is like Lewis and Clark arriving at Astoria to discover the Pacific shore was many miles west.
Despite the exasperation inherent in the foregoing financial explainer, the home opener Thursday at T-ball Park against the Oakland A’s brings along a sliver of hope for Seattle fans — the bosses didn’t screw up the off-season. That’s not the conventional wisdom, which centers around contempt for the custom hereabouts of failing to hire some offense. Still true. But they kept all members of the starting rotation. That was big.
In line behind Thursday’s starter, Logan Gilbert, are Luis Castillo, George Kirby, Bryce Miller and Bryan Woo (Kirby’s shoulder inflammation will delay his season, but Emerson Hancock is an able replacement). Aided by a pitcher-friendly home yard, the group led the sport in 2024 in innings, quality starts, ERA and opponent batting average. The quality creates an advantage in a playoff series that can, with some breaks, be decisive against a superior payroll. Getting to the post-season has always been the trick.
Despite MLB’s best efforts at dumbing down the post-season by increasing the number of entrants, the Mariners, for the 22nd time this century, resisted, 85 wins falling one short. Hope came from the 21-13 finish after manager Scott Servais was fired, replaced by Dan Wilson and hitting coach Edgar Martinez. But hope was dashed in the off-season when no free-agent hitter of note said yup to the damp of the ballpark.
Absent a premier position-player prospect ready for 2025, the Mariners will make do at their three open positions — first base (Luke Raley and newcomer Rowdy Tellez), second base (Ryan Bliss/Dylan Moore) and third base (Jorge Polanco/Moore). The bosses did the hard but correct thing in cutting popular outfielder Mitch Haniger, 34, broken in body but not paycheck (the Mariners will eat his $15 million salary). The bullpen figures to be solid once set-up man Matt Brash returns in May after a long recovery from elbow surgery.
Worthy of note is that the MLB regular season has gradually evolved into two parts — four months of pre-trade-deadline scuffling, then two months of desperation for playoffs. The Mariners typically have been cautious rather than bold at the trade deadline, ever fearful of acquiring a big-contract veteran who flames out. But using money as an excuse for timidity is even more lame now that they have resolved their TV business drama.
The club is finally debuting a Root Sports Stream app for $19.99 a month to get access to all games (no blackouts). The club is the 27th of the 30 MLB teams to join the direct-to-consumer gambit, following the decline of cable TV and regional sports networks. Given the reasonable price and the four-state baseball monopoly (plus British Columbia, should Canadians adopt Washington as the 11th province), further whining by Mariners owners about money will be acutely insipid. Especially with the best pitching rotation in baseball.
Running down the SoCal sandworms requires a bold first step of not playing scared. I believe those were Thomas Jefferson’s words to Lewis and Clark.
Love this column! So true! Those Sandworms!
Kudos for still calling the Opening Day opponent the “Oakland” A’s!
Art, I trust that you are commenting indirectly on the signing of Cal Raleigh to an extension, which coincides with the unfortunate but necessary release of Haniger (what a hard luck career he has had, aside from his bank account!).
Hopefully this portends a new era for the M’s, although I have no doubt that it won’t be fully realized until new ownership arrives on the scene.
In the meantime there is some hope that the team will respond to the leadership of Dan Wilson. Adam Jude had an excellent take on this in his ST piece of 3/25, my favorite line being the admission by Wilson that “I do hear Lou’s voice in the back of my head sometimes.”
Another pundit I read somewhere speculated that the team was never fully on board with Servais because he was perceived as DiPoto’s guy. Meaning that if DiPoto didn’t like a player, Servais would not necessarily go to any great length to stand up for the player. Regardless of the truth of that, Wilson is seen as his own man. Of course we all know that perception matters.
Now though, it is finally time to Play Ball!