Thanks to a lot of work (and some good old-fashioned successful union busting by the owners) MLB and the MLBPA have come to a tentative agreement on a new collective bargaining agreement, saving the 162-game season for 2022, and setting us up for perhaps the most frenetic free agent period in the league’s history. Immediately after the news came down the beacons were lit, the signal aloft in the sky, the Batphone ringing:

It is Jerry Dipoto Time

If you’ve read anything I’ve written, or follow my Twitter rambling, you almost certainly know I’m not a big Dipoto fan. Approximately a third of that is his inability to capitalize on a playoff-worthy core from 2016-2018; a period that saw his major free agent acquisitions be Nori Aoki, Marc Rzepczynski, and Juan Nicasio, and his attempts to trade into a winner moved talents like Freddy Peralta, Ketel Marte, Chris Taylor, Ryan Yarbrough, to other organizations. The rest is that, as a bit of a flim flam man myself, I am here to tell you Jerry Dipoto is a born huckster, and had he been born a century or so earlier would have gladly sold you reclaimed bath water as a miracle tonic outside a rural apothecary in frontier Colorado. 

That aside, as much as my cynical instincts are to mock a fanbase earnestly revering a man who has presided over nearly one third of the team’s two decades-long playoff absence, the instinct is completely correct. After six+ seasons in Seattle, and entering the fourth of a full rebuild, the Mariners are in desperate need for their President of Baseball Operations to conquer one of the most unique and challenging markets imaginable.

Thanks to a roster utterly devoid of significant long term risk (and no, Robbie Ray’s 5-year deal is not a significant risk), and with a consensus top-three farm system, the Mariners need a front office ready to adapt to a constantly and rapidly changing free agent ecosystem. There will need to be branching backup and contingency plans in place, ready to pivot to at a moment’s notice. Baseball is going to compress an entire winter’s worth of transactions into about how long it took you to realize you were in over your head with Elden Ring and the Mariners, perhaps more than any other team, will set the course of the next era of their franchise by it.

When I push past my personal frustrations with the Dipoto regime I can acknowledge the very real strengths it presents. He has largely solidified the organization’s front office structure, something his predecessors were hilariously bad at. He does deserve ample credit for the rebuilding of the farm system. Anyone can trade off valuable assets for highly-rated prospects, but Dipoto has done so and then seen those prospects match or exceed their trajectory in the Mariners’ developmental system. In fact that system is undoubtedly his greatest strength. 

Director of Player Development Andy McKay appears to be the product of running an electrical current through a wet cat poster, but results are results. The farm has phenomenal high-end talent and its depth and regard around the sport are both growing rapidly. If they can harness that system into a steady stream of quality major leaguers then the Mariners could potentially be among the standard bearers of the sport we have spent half a century waiting for them to be.However, only the Rays of the sport truly build a winner avoiding free agent splashes entirely, and no one should want their team to be the Rays (or think their front office is smart enough to become the Rays).

So, yes, it is Jerry Dipoto time. It’s time for Trevor Story or Kris Bryant, Seiya Suzuki or Michael Conforto. It’s time to surprise everyone with a Carlos Correa signing, and a trade for a top-end starting pitcher nobody saw coming. It’s time to build the team we deserve, the one we’ve spent all those cold May Wednesdays dreaming about while the team loses 4-1 to Kansas City. It’s time for a team that will capture the imagination of a new generation of fans, and lead this region into a new era celebrating this game we all love so much. 

It all kicks off tonight, and will all be over shockingly quickly after that. I hope the Mariners are ready, because it is Jerry Dipoto time.