This Mariners Opening Day scene: Ichiro, Edgar--and ‘cautious’ optimism, with frustration
The line snaked down 1st Avenue South and up Edgar Martinez Way. They stood in a light rain, around the statues of Ken Griffey Jr. and Edgar Martinez.
This was three hours before first pitch.
They roared when Martinez was announced during pregame introductions while in full game uniform standing along the first-base line. The Hall of Famer is Seattle’s senior director of hitting strategy.
They yelled again for Ichiro Suzuki, the franchise legend and 2025 Baseball Hall of Fame inductee, as he threw out the ceremonial first pitch. Ichiro did a full windup from atop the mound. He buzzed a fastball. Dan Wilson caught it while reaching above his head.
The park was packed — though, as of Thursday afternoon, notably not sold out. The announced paid attendance of 42,871 was the smallest for a Seattle home opener since 2013 (aside from the 2020 and ‘21 seasons crowds were limited by Washington’s COVID restrictions).
It was the most optimistic day of any baseball season.
It was Opening Day.
But with the Mariners, optimism comes with a caveat. And well-earned skepticism.
“It’s Opening Day, so I’m cautiously optimistic,” Ken Stewart, a 58-year-old union warehouseman from Puyallup, said.
Stewart was standing with his wife Joanna, a teacher in Graham, son Kevin and his son’s girlfriend near the front of the line down 1st Avenue South waiting for the Home Plate Gates of T-Mobile Park to open at 5:10 p.m. It was two-plus hours before Logan Gilbert’s first pitch to the Athletics’ Lawrence Butler began the 2025 season.
The Stewarts are like many Mariners fans. They see a World Series-caliber rotation of starting pitchers.
They also see a lineup of hitters that threatens to do what it did last season: Ruin that starting pitching, and leave the Mariners not even qualifying for the playoffs. For the 23rd time in the last 24 years.
“We need bats, man,” Ken Stewart said.
“We’ve got the greatest rotation in baseball. And we need some F-in’ bats.”
Stewart was attending his fourth consecutive Mariners Opening Day game. He and his family members are not season-ticket holders. They go to a few games a year.
“The bargain nights. The 10-dollar ticket games,” his wife Joanna said.
“Making it to the playoffs one year out of 20, I mean, c’mon,” Ken Stewart said.
No need to tell Stewart that Jerry Dipoto is entering his 10th year as the Mariners general manager and now president of baseball operations. Or that the Mariners are the only Major League Baseball franchise to never play in a World Series, let alone win one.
How long has Stewart been a Mariners fan?
“Since their inception (1977),” he said.
“And it hurts.”
How the Mariners pay to play
The source of Stewart’s — and Mariners fans’ — pain is how the team pays to play.
Or, doesn’t pay.
“I mean, Gilbert’s been pitching for the last couple years and getting zero run support. So, yeah, I’m frustrated,” Stewart said.
“And I’m wearing a (fellow pitching ace George) Kirby jersey underneath all this,” he said.
He pulled back a jacket and a sweatshirt wet from the rain.
“And if they’re not Yankees in the next couple years I’ll be surprised,” he said of Gilbert and Kirby, Seattle’s young pitching studs.
“We need to keep our pitching somehow. And get more bats,” he said.
“There’s no salary cap in MLB, right?”
Not really.
There is a luxury tax. This year any team with a player payroll above $241 million will pay a competitive-balance tax to the teams below that threshold.
The Mariners are nowhere near the luxury-tax threshold. They profit from not raising their payroll, in more ways than one.
In mid-January, after the first and richest waves of baseball free agency passed this winter, the Mariners were one of six teams to have not spent a dollar on a free agent. After that, they made only incremental signings for roster depth, not lineup headliners.
Donovan Solano is a typical Seattle expenditure. He is 37 years old. He signed a one-year, $3.5 million deal in mid-January. He begins the season as a backup at third, second and first base.
The Mariners have the fourth-lowest roster turnover from last season. The other top five teams in roster stability from 2024 to 2025 are the Phillies, Tigers, Royals and Twins. Seattle and Minnesota are the only teams among those five most-stable teams that failed to make the playoffs last year.
Dipoto and general manager Justin Hollander are basing the plan and hopes for the Mariners’ offense — and thus Seattle’s 2025 season — on returning starters: superstar Julio Rodriguez plus Randy Arozarena, Victor Robles, J.P. Crawford, Jorge Polanco and Luke Raley to improve on their poor 2024 seasons. All, at the same time.
That plan worked in game one. Arozarena launched a solo home run into the second deck far beyond left field to tie it a 2-2 in the bottom of the eighth. Then Polanco drilled a two-run homer over the wall in dead center field. That rallied the Mariners to a 4-2 win over the A’s in the opener, behind a strong start by Gilbert (two hits allowed, one earned run, eight strikeouts in seven innings pitched).
The Mariners entered Opening Day with the 18th-highest payroll in the 30-team MLB, at $124 million. That’s $74 million behind Texas. It’s $36.2 million behind Houston. Those are the two teams the Mariners have to beat to win the American League West.
The Dodgers have baseball’s highest payroll at $293.9 million. They are the defending World Series champion.
Bottom-dwelling Tampa Bay and Miami have baseball’s lowest, $58.2 and $41.7 million, respectively.
See how that works?
What galls many Mariners fans is Seattle could afford to spend. The M’s were again in the top 10 in MLB in revenues in 2024, at $396 million. Seattle made more money than the mega-market New York Mets and Los Angeles Angels last season.
With this elite pitching, the team’s spending on players has actually gone down. The Mariners’ payroll was also 18th to begin last season. But Seattle’s 2025 Openind Day payroll is $11.7 million less than it was last Opening Day.
Why Mariners fans are here
Allen Hall, his wife Andrea and their friend Debbie Kasalek all came from Puyallup to attend their first Mariners Opening Day.
Allen Hall, 47, is a throwback Mariners fan. He loves that they replaced manager Scott Servais late last non-playoff season with Wilson, the team’s 1990s and early 2000s catcher hero.
“I’m still believin’ in ‘Dan the Man,’ right?” Allen Hall said.
He was standing outside the Edgar Martinez statue outside the stadium’s first-base side two hours and 15 minutes before first pitch.
“I’m believing that this year is really going to be his year to break out as a manager, that he holds his ground and he holds these guys accountable — with Edgar and Ichiro behind him,” Hall said.
“I have a feeling that it’s going to work.”
Asked if she’s optimistic for this Mariners season, Andrea Hall, 46, said: “Loyal. “I’m loyal.”
Back in the other line of fans along 1st Avenue, Joanna Stewart gave another reason to come to Mariners games.
“I get sunburned,” she said, laughing.
“It’s a beautiful park. It’s a fun day out,” her husband Ken Stewart said. “And baseball is still affordable for a family.
“It’s not like a Seahawks game where it’s, like, 500 dollars for two people to go.”
“It’s family friendly,” Taylor, the Stewarts’ son’s girlfriend, said.
That is what Mariners owners — the two dozen investors in their ownership group, to be exact — have literally banked on: The casual fan coming out to the yard to enjoy a family friendly day and night of baseball under the blue skies during Seattle’s summers. And if they get to see fireworks or bobbleheads, they’ll pack the yard.
Allen Hall gets all that. He’s like the 2.55 million fans who paid to watch the Mariners in T-Mobile Park last season. And the 2.69 million who did in 2023. And in 2022...
“Yeah, I’m frustrated,” Hall said. “But I keep coming back.”
Why?
“Because I love baseball.”
This story was originally published March 27, 2025 at 8:08 PM with the headline "This Mariners Opening Day scene: Ichiro, Edgar--and ‘cautious’ optimism, with frustration."
