2025 ZiPS Projections: Seattle Mariners

For the 21st consecutive season, the ZiPS projection system is unleashing a full set of prognostications. For more information on the ZiPS projections, please consult this year’s introduction and MLB’s glossary entry. The team order is selected by lot, and the next team up is the Seattle Mariners.

Batters

For the third time in the last four years, the Mariners hung around the playoff race for most of the 2024 campaign, before falling just short by the season’s denouement. When it comes to winning 85 to 90 games a year like clockwork, Jerry Dipoto’s ship is airtight and his sailors always on the ball. But so far, St. Louis Cardinals: Pacific Northwest hasn’t been quite as effective as the original series — the Mariners aren’t going to have as easy a time stealing division titles as the Cardinals did, playing as they do in a harder division. While the Mariners aggressively add players and make trades, there’s a basic conservatism here that limits the team’s ultimate upside; despite seven winning seasons in the last 11 years, Seattle has maxed out at just 90 wins. This isn’t a new thing either — the franchise only has one 95-win-or-better season in its history (the 116-win 2001 season, of course).

The lineup isn’t the strongest part of this team, but it’s at least solid and stable. The highlights are the J. Rodleigh Consortium (Julio Rodríguez and Cal Raleigh), two legitimate stars, though ones who have already likely found their respective peaks. Rodríguez struggled early this season, but there’s no fundamental reason to worry about him. And Raleigh has grown into a legitimate star, though I’d like to see him get a little more DH time given how important his health is to the team; he led all catchers in innings over the last two years, and it’s not like there’s a great DH situation to upset here.

Once you get past Rodríguez and Raleigh, the offense is fine, but rather underwhelming. Being decent everywhere raises your team floor quite a bit, but it also becomes very hard to meaningfully upgrade. ZiPS does see Victor Robles remaining a very solid starter in 2025, which is good news, and while second base feels a bit messy, the projections see basically all of the options as passable; this isn’t a White Sox situation from a few years ago, where they collected a bunch of 0.5-WAR second baseman with the apparent desire to Voltron them into an All-Star. ZiPS is especially sold on Cole Young’s future.

ZiPS rates Ben Williamson as one of the best minor league third basemen it’s seen in the decade it’s been able to use hit location/trajectory for minor league defense; if his bat develops and the computer isn’t hallucinating about his glove, he could become a serious keeper. Still, the bat isn’t there yet, with a .236/.309/.329 projected line, so he isn’t going to force the Mariners to give Josh Rojas the boot or prevent them from bringing in another third baseman, at least for 2025.

Again, this isn’t a bad offense, but I’d like to see some actual risk somewhere. The offseason is just getting started, so there’s plenty of time to bring in a little more danger and a little less meh.

Pitchers

The rotation is what butters the Mariners’ bread or, to stick with the nautical theme, lards their pemmican. In a very early estimate — which should not be taken too seriously yet, as it’s only mid-November — ZiPS has the Mariners with the second-best rotation in baseball behind the Phillies. In the very preliminary run of projected 2025 WAR, ZiPS puts all five of Seattle’s likely starters in the top 60 in the majors. And there’s no excessive extrapolation required either; all five have shown they can pitch convincingly well in the majors. The problem comes with the “what if.” ZiPS projects a big drop-off in ERA+ from Bryce Miller to the likely sixth starter, Emerson Hancock — a full 22 points (107 to 85), in fact. Of all the things people say in March that they later regret, “If the pitching just stays healthy, we’ll win the division!” has to be near the top. Suffer a couple serious injuries, and Seattle’s rotation — and the team — may fall apart fairly quickly.

There’s kind of a similar weird gulf when you look at the Mariners bullpen. ZiPS gives very optimistic projections for Andrés Muñoz and Gregory Santos (and Matt Brash, but he’s recovering from Tommy John surgery). But after Santos, there’s another Splash Mountain. ZiPS is a great deal less inspired by Yimi García or Trent Thornton, and it’s no sunnier about Collin Snider than Steamer is. It amounts to a solidly average bullpen — ZiPS likes this group better than Steamer does — but it’s a top-heavy one.

Crunch everything together and you get 89 to 93 wins based on our depth chart playing time. But ZiPS isn’t usually as optimistic about health as our depth charts are, so that’ll come down to 85 to 90 wins, or… somewhere around .540. There’s nothing wrong with being a .540 team over the long haul, but that doesn’t mean you have to settle for it.

Ballpark graphic courtesy Eephus League. Depth charts constructed by way of those listed here. Size of player names is very roughly proportional to Depth Chart playing time.

Players are listed with their most recent teams wherever possible. This includes players who are unsigned or have retired, players who will miss 2025 due to injury, and players who were released in 2024. So yes, if you see Joe Schmoe, who quit baseball back in August to form a Norwegian Ukulele Dixieland Jazz band that only covers songs by The Smiths, he’s still listed here intentionally. ZiPS is assuming a league with an ERA of 4.11.

Hitters are ranked by zWAR, which is to say, WAR values as calculated by me, Dan Szymborski, whose surname is spelled with a z. WAR values might differ slightly from those that appear in the full release of ZiPS. Finally, I will advise anyone against — and might karate chop anyone guilty of — merely adding up WAR totals on a depth chart to produce projected team WAR.

As always, incorrect projections are either caused by misinformation, a non-pragmatic reality, or by the skillful sabotage of our friend and former editor. You can, however, still get mad at me on Twitter or on BlueSky.