Mariners catcher offers critical comments following team's elimination from playoffs

On the heels of the club’s elimination from postseason contention Saturday night, Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh spoke with reporters (including MLB.com’s Daniel Kramer), as he reflected on the 2023 season. In doing so, he delivered a clear call to action for the club’s front office headed into the offseason.

“We’ve got to commit to winning… to going and getting those players. You see other teams going out, going for it, getting big-time pitchers, getting big-time hitters. We have to do that to keep up.” Raleigh said, before expressing frustration with the organization’s decision to deal closer Paul Sewald ahead of the trade deadline.  “We lost a few close games, later in the game, and we could’ve used him.” Among Seattle’s 23 losses after shipping out Sewald, the Mariners led or were tied headed in the late innings in ten of them.

Raleigh went on to compare the Mariners’ approach to that of the Rangers, who clinched their first postseason berth since 2016 thanks to Seattle’s loss last night. “They’ve added more than anybody else, and you saw where it got them this year,” Raleigh said, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat, that’s for sure. But going out and getting those big names… would help this clubhouse, would help this team.” While Raleigh acknowledged the strength of Seattle’s homegrown core, he reiterated that “sometimes, you have to go out and you have to buy. That’s just the name of the game, and we’ll see what happens this offseason. Hopefully, we can add some players and become a better team.”

Looking ahead to 2024, the Mariners should be in a good position to make additions. Per RosterResource, the club has just under $107M on the books for 2024, with a payroll of just over $119M for luxury tax purposes, while that doesn’t include arbitration-level contracts for players like first baseman Ty France, it should still give a Mariners club that spent an estimated $152M with a luxury tax payroll of just over $196M plenty of room to make additions, should they choose to do so.

More from around the AL West…

• The Astros paired with the Houston Rockets to acquire AT&T SportsNet Southwest, from Warner Bros. Discovery on Friday, as noted by MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart. The regional sports network, which is set to be rebranded as Space City Home Network, will air Astros games in time for the 2024 campaign. The team’s current channels and TV broadcasting team will remain in place. The move brings to a conclusion uncertainty regarding Houston’s broadcast situation for the 2024 campaign, as Warner Bros. Discovery announced earlier this year that they planned on exiting the RSN business.
• Sam Blum of The Athletic recently took a look at the state of the Angels organization, interviewing various current and former team personnel, including players. The report provides insight into the club’s player development apparatus, which clearly appears to be lagging behind the standards set by other big market organizations. As Blum notes, the Angels are among the increasingly small group of teams that do not yet have a dedicated lab for either pitching or hitting, while the club’s major league spring training facility has been shut down for the past three springs, forcing big league spring training into the club’s minor league facility. Despite the club playing in one of America’s largest markets, one former coach told Blum that the club operates as “a typical small-market team.” The Angels, of course, have not made the playoffs in 2014 and figure to lose two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani, who won the AL MVP award in 2021, and figures to do so again in 2023.