Good but not great every year isn’t enough, Mariners owners — try the Seahawks way

Maybe the additions of Randy Arozarena and Justin Turner will be enough to push the Mariners past the Houston Astros in the American League West.

And maybe – if the Mariners do reach the postseason – their sterling starting rotation will push them through the playoffs and erase Seattle’s embarrassing distinction as the only one of the 30 major-league teams to have never reached the World Series.

Or maybe the Mariners will finish two games out of a playoff berth for the third time in four years and their general manager will then sit at a table and explain the virtues of being a consistently good team over an extended period of time and then I’ll suffer a broken toe because I can’t stop kicking inanimate objects as I listen to him say this.

Sorry. I got kind of carried away there.

The problem is not that the Mariners are a good but decidedly not great team this season. The problem is that this is the fourth consecutive season that the Mariners are a good but decidedly not great team. While it’s too late to do anything other than furrow our collective brows and hope like hell they reach the playoffs, I do think it’s worth pausing for just a moment to point out that it doesn’t have to be like this.

In fact, the Mariners’ next-door neighbor provides a pretty striking example of a franchise doing more than just mouthing the words about building a great team. It can actually make the decisions and take the risks necessary to do so.

The Seattle Seahawks – like the Mariners – last made the playoffs in 2022.

And just like the Mariners, that was the Seahawks’ only playoff berth in the previous three seasons.

The difference is what the Seahawks did earlier this year: They fired the most successful coach in the franchise’s history.

This was and remains a huge risk not just because Pete Carroll was the first coach to lead the Seahawks to a championship, but because the Seahawks were still winning. Maybe not as much as they had from 2012 through 2014, but they were still successful.

They could be counted on to finish with a winning record pretty much every season. They’d make the playoffs at least every other year and were capable of winning a postseason game if they played it at home or the opposing quarterback got hurt.

Carroll’s Seahawks were no longer bona fide heavyweights, though. More importantly, they weren’t showing any signs of punching their way back to the top of the division, either, so owner Jody Allen and vice chair Bert Kolde made the decision to fire Carroll, creating the opening that Mike Macdonald wound up filling.

Now it’s possible that Macdonald will be able to turn the Seahawks into a championship contender. I talked to one former NFL GM who told me he believes the 37-year-old Macdonald is the defensive equivalent of Kyle Shanahan and Sean McVay and that Macdonald’s system will have a disruptive effect across the league.

It’s also just as possible that the Seahawks will fare worse under Macdonald. They had six coaches before Carroll, two of whom had been inducted into the team’s ring of honor in Chuck Knox and Mike Holmgren. None lasted as long nor won as often as Carroll.

Yet as tempted as I am to say that I think the Seahawks made a mistake in letting him go, I don’t ultimately believe that to be true.

I think it’s fairly clear the Seahawks had in fact plateaued under Carroll. The defense had not been better than average in any of the past seven seasons, and often was significantly worse than that.

While the Seahawks may have been able to make the playoffs this season if Carroll stayed on, it’s hard for me to imagine them advancing any farther than the divisional round, which has been the glass ceiling for this team going back to 2015.

Instead, the Seahawks made a tough decision and risked the possibility that things might get worse because they believed it was the only way they had a chance to be great again.

There’s a lesson here that I think the Mariners should learn from and that’s not because I believe they need to fire manager Scott Servais. I don’t think they need to fire general manager Jerry Dipoto, either, though I’m not going to stand on a stump and campaign for him to stay on.

The biggest risk the Mariners need to take involves their wallet. More specifically: Ownership’s willingness to reach into it.

For four straight years now the Mariners have had a good team that is capable of making the playoffs. They have not gotten any closer to becoming a great team in that time though, in large part because they’ve spent the previous two offseasons rearranging the furniture on their big-league roster and shopping from the bargain bin as opposed to making the kind of wholesale additions that teams make when they’re serious about winning.

I’m not going to say that Dipoto’s done everything right, but I also believe he has been asked repeatedly to make a dollar out of 15 cents.

Now maybe this year’s deadline additions will be enough to put Seattle back into the postseason for the second time in 23 seasons.

And once they’re in the playoffs, maybe they’ll be so well-armed that it overshadows the holes that remain in this lineup.

Or maybe they’ll once again find themselves on the outside looking in, and if that happens, I really hope the men who own this team will realize that simply being good isn’t good enough and take the risks necessary to give the Mariners the best chance at being great.

If not, I’m going to be limping around this winter because of the broken toe I suffer while listening to the general manager explain how important it is to remain good over an extended period of time.

Danny O’Neil was born in Oregon, the son of a logger but had the good sense to attend college in Washington. He’s covered Seattle sports for 20 years, writing for two newspapers, one glossy magazine and hosting a daily radio show for eight years on KIRO 710 AM. You can subscribe to his free newsletter and find his other work at dannyoneil.com.