If you can’t wake up and smell the coffee when you’re in Seattle, you might not have a pulse, which explains the Mariners’ whole flatline season.
Within a 6-day stretch they lost 22-0 to Milwaukee and 19-2 to the Cubs. Since July 4 they had losing streaks of six, five and four games. Among the 30 teams, they rank 30th in batting average, 29th in OPS, 29th in slugging and 30th in runs scored, only 3.52 per game. The team that finished 18 games over .500 and got to Game 7 of the American League Championship Series last year found itself seven games under .500 on Monday morning.
Certainly these conditions could not stand. Sure enough, on Monday, an American League West general manager was fired. He was Dana Brown. Of the Houston Astros, who were tied for first place.
That’s sort of the theme of the A.L. West, a group that unfortunately is forced to provide at least one participant to the postseason. It’s like watching six months of SNL skits that aren’t even close to funny.
Jerry Dipoto, the man upstairs with the Mariners, is still in place. He has been Seattle’s general manager since 2016 and was the Angels’ general manager for three and a half years before that. His career is unsellied by World Series appearances. Two Augusts ago, he fired manager Scott Servais, his longtime manager and friend, and Servais learned about it on the ESPN crawl. He’s also the guy who warred with Mike Scotscia, the only Angel manager ever to win a postseason series, and finally gave owner Arte Moreno a him-or-me ultimatum. In a rare moment of clarity, Moreno said, “Him.”
Dipoto replaced Servais with Dan Wilson, the Mariners’ catcher during their playoff days. Wilson guided the M’s down the stretch last year, but this year has been tougher, with more criticism. The club’s solid pitching rotation has strayed, with Bryan Woo fighting inconsistency and a shoulder problem, and George Kirby leads the league in hits allowed. Luck has fled the scene, too. The Mariners lost shortstop J.P. Crawford, brought up Colt Emerson and watched him approach his promise for a while, and have now lost him too.
The only thrill was the arrival of 21-year-old Kade Anderson, the former third-overall pick from LSU. Anderson started against the Cubs on Saturday and left in the sixth, down 3-2 after home runs from Alex Bregman and Michael Busch. Still, the lefthander struck out five and showed why he was the Roy Hobbs of the Double-A Texas League while at Arkansas. He pitched 93 innings, gave up 47 hits and 13 walks, struck out 135 and went 10-1 with a 1.06 ERA and an 0.643 WHIP.
But then it was back to wondering what happened to the comet that Julio Rodriguez was riding in his first two seasons, as the 25-year-old centerfielder suffers career lows in batting average and OPS.
And back to trying to reduce the civic nervous breakdown about Cal Raleigh.
Last year the assembled numerologists of baseball were furiously scrolling to see if any catcher had approached what Raleigh is doing. This year they’re measuring the launch angle of his fall. Raleigh had 60 home runs for Seattle in 2025. He came into Monday night with 55 hits for the season.
By now you know that Raleigh threw away the crutches, like a pro wrestling babyface who gets that one last surge of vengeance, and clubbed three home runs in an 8-2 win over the Phillies Monday night. He had never hit three homers in a game before. He had only 14 home runs for the season, and his OPS of 2026 fell short of his slugging percentage of 2025 (.579 to .589). For those who don’t know, and there’s no reason you should, OPS is calculated by adding the slugging percentage to the on-base percentage. That, along with the swandive to a .159 batting average, has added to the detritus at Raleigh’s feet. It is one of the most futile offensive seasons in baseball history, but Raleigh earned the right to endure it because, in 2025, he hit more home runs than any switch-hitter and any catcher ever did.
Raleigh has neither dodged, denied or spun his situation. Time and again he has taken the brunt. “I’m awful,” is how his explanations usually begin. He also has swatted aside the excuses, as in the oblique injury he had in the spring, or his participation in the World Baseball Classic. Raleigh didn’t have a hit in the WBC and was benched in the final two games.
He hasn’t hit many pitches with much authority, but he’s a particular hostage to the modern, supersonic fastball. He is hitting .137 against the heater, and so he is seeing it, or not seeing it, more often. But then Raleigh never was a threat to Tony Gwynn, and his .247 average in 2025 was by far his career high. He’s a .217 hitter, lifetime. The sudden power outage is the riddle. That could be explained by burnout, since Raleigh led the league in games caught in 2023 and 2024 and caught 121 last season. But Monday’s outburst might represent a second wind.
Raleigh jumped on Zack Wheeler’s second pitch, a fastball, for his first homer. Next time, Wheeler threw only one fastball to Raleigh,, who homered off a cutter. Raleigh’s third blast was off a cutter thrown by Chase Shugart.
“I’ve been feeling better,” he said. “I’m trying to get my hands back sooner. Mentally, it’s just been about that hope and belief and optimism that things are going to get better every day.”
And the truth is that the most disappointing team in baseball is probably a six-game win streak away from taking the division lead. Houston and Texas were one game below .500 as they led the West. The Athletics and Angels are 63-161, not surprising because the Athletics are in the midst of a 3-year layover in Sacramento before they get to Vegas, and the Angels claim to be Los Angeles’ American League team, a presumption that has dawned on few Angelenos. Such confusion makes it hard for to either team to start its home games on time. The fact that they both stink also factors in.
Still, it’s difficult to understand why Houston owner Jim Crane stepped in at this moment to fire Brown, who took over before the 2023 season.
Crane is not sold on the importance of general managers. He fired Jim Click after Houston won the World Series in 2022. He also promised the Astros would not fall victim to the performance cycles that tend to bring down champions. He said the “window” was always open.
The window was shattered by a 3-6 homestand against the Mariners, A’s and Angels. Until then the Astros were playing as expected, if not a little better. Josh Hader was the dominating closer, Jeremy Pena was one of the game’s best shortstops, and Brown had resurrected Peter Lambert, a washout in Colorado but now Houston’s second most-consistent starter. Brown also got a nice haul from Chicago, including third baseman Isaac Paredes, in exchange for Kyle Tucker. The Astros weren’t rich enough, or interested enough, to try to keep Bregman, who signed with Boston.
But Brown was knocked for failing to sign Pena and starting pitcher Spencer Brown to longer contracts, and for signing Cristian Javier to that same type of deal, before Javier got hurt. The Astros lack young, talented outfielders, and they keep hoping for a late-life renewal from 36-year-old Jose Altuve, whose OPS of .705 is his lowest since he was 21.
Brown’s record, therefore, is mixed. But the new decision-makers won’t have time to re-engineer the franchise before October, and the current Astros still aspire to be playing then. Among the advisers Crane might hire as the new GM is Jeff Bagwell, the Hall of Famer. He certainly knows where the secrets are. But maybe Crane should check with the Giants, who turned over their operation to their own success symbol, Buster Posey, and haven’t enjoyed the result.
Seattle’s fate depends on how often the fans get reacquainted with Raleigh’s persona as the Big Dumper, an observation on Raleigh’s physique from then-teammate Jared Kelenic. You haven’t heard the nickname very much in Raleigh’s season of carrying the bat back to the dugout. In the all-forgiving A.L. West, Raleigh has ample time to leave it all behind.
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