This is not your dad’s good Mariners projection.

FanGraphs has been publishing playoff odds since 2014. That’s over 12 years of daily computer projections. In that entire history, the Mariners have had better odds of winning the AL West than they do today on just 45 days.

Heading into 2026, thier projection has the Mariners as 62.3% favorites to win the division, with 80.0% odds of making the playoffs, and the highest odds of winning the World Series of any team besides the Dodgers.

The story of the 2026 Mariners begins with the two names on the billboards: Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez. The Mariners are one of just two teams with two players getting top-10 projections. (The Mets: Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor.) We knew the projections would anticipate regression for Cal Raleigh—how could they not after the season he just had? And indeed, they see his bat coming down to just a bit above his career averages, as the computers view last year as a serious outlier. But when you add that offense to upper-echelon defense at the most important defensive position, even with the regression, it still comes out to a third-in-baseball projection of 6.4 WAR. For his part, Julio clocks in as a net positive in every aspect of the game, with another 25-25 season and positive value in the No Fly Zone. In the part of his projection I personally find most encouraging, the systems think he’ll keep most of the improvements he made in his strikeout rate last year.

Certainly, a season-ending injury to either of them would drastically impact the Mariners’ odds. But that’s true for just about every team that’s ever played. And the fact that there are two of these players on the Mariners roster makes an enormous difference. The Mariners without Cal is not the same as the Yankees without Judge or the Tigers without Skubal.

Nor is this a stars and scrubs roster. The Mariners have plugged a lot of the holes that have sunk their boats in past seasons. It’s true that Cole Young and Colt Emerson are untested. And the right field and DH platoons make me nervous. But these are quite different situations than the Rowdy Tellez/AJ Pollock plans of years past. The B-side of the bullpen is uninspiring (what team’s isn’t?), but the A-side runs deeper than this time last year. The Saturday hosts of the Meet at the Mitt podcast spent all of last season harping on the need to get a fourth reliable arm in the bullpen to back up Andrés Muñoz, Matt Brash, and Gabe Speier. Not only did Eduard Bazardo step into that role as the season wound down (and showed no sign of regression in the WBC), but the Mariners went out and got a fifth guy in Jose A. Ferrer, whose 3.27 ERA projection would line him up to be the closer on about ten teams. The 2025 Mariners also went into the season relying on Julio and Cal, who each got the best projection at their position last year from FanGraphs. But where last year, Seattle had four positions projected to be the bottom third (1B, 2B, 3B, DH), this year, that number is just one.

PositionMariners Projected WARMLB RankCatcher6.11First Base2.99Second Base2.615Shortstop2.823Third Base3.112Left Field2.214Center Field6.01Right Field1.916Designated Hitter1.516Starting Pitching14.38Relief Pitching3.58Total47.05

That position is shortstop, where the Mariners receive the 23rd best projection, led by J.P. Crawford, who has been the subject of heated debate among the fandom this offseason. The shoulder injury that’s knocked him off the Opening Day roster complicates things, but it seems minor enough that the team waited until the last minute before even putting him on the IL. Assuming the injury doesn’t linger, the computers believe in him. It’s true that he’s no longer one of the cornerstones of the roster, yet his demise has been greatly overstated by his detractors. He’s 31, not 41. Last year was his second-best season with the bat of his entire career, with a 113 wRC+. Not a lot of guys who put up their two best offensive seasons in the prior three years end up with a large segment of fans arguing that they’re washed. Last year’s output came in streaks, as it always does for J.P., but the popular conception that he fell off a cliff in the second half is unfounded: July and August were weak months, but his September wRC+ was 138. And with a .339 BABIP, that was hardly a mirage. The defense has degraded badly over the years, there’s no question about that. But while he’s no longer a Gold Glover at shortstop, and he’s even crossed into being a below-average defender there, he’s still playable at short if his bat stays in positive territory. If his offense collapses, that’d make him a liability, but that’s not what the systems expect. Every major projection system sees him with a WAR in the 2s. That’s not the star he was in 2023, but with the the additions of Randy Arozarena and Josh Naylor, who project for a combined 5+ fWAR, he doesn’t need to be. The Mariners are fine with a J.P. in the 2s: that’s an above-average player, not one who’s in danger of getting cut. The fact that his projection puts the Mariners’ shortstop position at 23rd as FanGraphs sees it says more about the overall strength of the position around the league. Again, the injury could derail things, but the team isn’t acting worried.

If J.P. does miss significant time, the Mariners are better equipped to weather that thanks to the addition of Brendan Donovan. While that trade ended up costing more than a lot of folks were comfortable with, the difference he makes for this roster in particular is huge. His positional flexibility allows for a variety of problems to be something less than debilitating. The current plan is for him to play third base. But if it looks like Cole Young isn’t working out, you can move Donovan to second and give Colt Emerson a shot at third. He even helps with positions he doesn’t play. Say that disaster strikes Julio. You can move Robles to center and have Donovan play right field. If something goes wrong, Donovan allows that to happen anywhere but catcher, as long as some of the depth is playable.

After a down year last year, the rotation looks poised to bounce back too. Injuries hampered all of Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, and Bryce Miller last year, while Luis Castillo continued his gentle decline from stardom. But having five potential aces means that even when things are going wrong, the chances that at least something’s going great are quite high. And that’s just what happened last year when Bryan Woo ran an All-Star campaign. We’ve seen a different one of Castillo, Kirby, Gilbert, and Woo front the rotation over the past four seasons. Projections see bouncebacks for Kirby, Gilbert, and Miller, and hardly any further decline for Castillo or regression for Woo. Some systems even see Woo as getting better. PECOTA has this as the best rotation in baseball.

The depth behind the front five is concerning, especially after Logan Evans went on the TJ table, and it’ll be tested right away while Miller works his way back from an oblique strain. But the projections see Hancock as a perfectly cromulent sixth starter, looking at ERAs and FIPs in the low-to-mid-4s. That’s rotation-caliber on a lot of teams. Kade Anderson and Ryan Sloan probably need more seasoning, so if further depth is needed early in the year, things don’t look great. But if you were betting on starting pitchers to pitch their way into MLB stardom down the stretch the way Nolan McLean and Trey Yesavage did last year, Anderson and Sloan are decent picks, and that’s just not something projection systems are all that well suited for.

All told, these are not the Mariners of the mid-2010s, where you could focus on the good parts of the roster and squint to see how it could come together. This is a version where you have to focus on the bad parts of the roster and squint to see how it could fall apart.

To be sure, that absolutely could happen. You don’t have to believe that the Mariners are uniquely cursed by fate to imagine them missing the playoffs; it’s enough that the sport that they play is baseball. But the median projections from the computers—who neither carry emotional baggage nor wear rose-colored glasses—see the Seattle Mariners as the team to beat in the AL West, and it’s not particularly close.