The “last remaining shreds of credibility” the Mariners might have carried with the fan base have been “decimated in a disastrous offseason,” according to Ryan Divish of the SEATTLE TIMES. It started with President of Baseball Operations Jerry Dipoto’s “comments and tone in a highly criticized end-of-season news conference.” Things then went “from bad to dreadful” with the revelation that the team’s payroll budget is “so limited that Dipoto and GM Justin Hollander had to create payroll dollars just to add players." Xfinity's move to put Root Sports Northwest on its most expensive programming package caused ownership to "reduce the expected payroll budget for the 2024 team" due to concerns that many fans "might refuse to pay for the upgrade or cancel subscriptions completely." Divish: “With MLB still trying to figure out how to keep regional sports networks while embracing streaming, are the Mariners going to operate with this sort of payroll in the seasons ahead?" Divish wrote it is time for John Stanton and the Mariners ownership group to “address what is happening with this erstwhile franchise and what it means moving forward.” Divish: “You can’t preach about providing organizational transparency and accountability when it’s going well and then remain silent when it’s not. You can’t continue to ask for patience from fans after it’s clearly run out.” The Mariners drew 2.7 million fans to T-Mobile Park last season, the most since 2005, and those fans “deserve to know why the dollars they invested in increased ticket prices, which are going up again this season, and costly concessions aren’t being reinvested into the MLB product” (SEATTLE TIMES, 12/11).
