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 an 84 mph fastball. Dan Wilson caught it while reaching above his head.
The park was packed — though, as of Thursday afternoon, notably not sold out.
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.
The optimism paid off for one day, anyway, as Randy Arozerena and Jorge Polanco homered in the eight inning to put Seattle up 4-2. Andres Munoz made sure the lead stood as he closed it out in the ninth. Reliever Trent Thornton, who gave up a run while pitching the eighth, was credited with the win thanks to Polanco’s go-ahead 2-run shot. Starter Logan Gilbert allowed a single run on two hits, needing only 83 pitches to get through seven innings.
Before that, 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 source of Stewart’s — and Mariners fans’ — pain is how the team pays to play.
Or, doesn’t pay.
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 to 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 plans 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.
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 that 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 Opening Day payroll is $11.7 million less than it was last Opening Day.
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.”
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