Brewers are everything Mariners aren’t. Is Jerry Dipoto to blame? | Commentary

If you thought the Mariners’ 21-year playoff drought was rough, you’re probably not from Milwaukee.

Because from 1983-2007, the Brewers didn’t make the playoffs once.

The Brew Crew had another postseason-free skid from 2012-2017, which included three seasons in which they couldn’t crack the 75-win barrier.

That’s rough for a fanbase that had to turn to an NFL team 120 miles away if it wanted championship aspirations. But you know what? The Brewers did something about it. Can you say the same about the Mariners?

The M’s are about to start a three-game series with Milwaukee in Wisconsin. And what you have is a juxtaposition between two historically struggling franchises — one of which stepped up, and another which sunk.

What do you think of when you think of the Brewers these days? Pitcher Jacob Misiorowski probably comes to mind — with his regular triple-digit-mph pitches putting him at the top of the National League Cy Young odds. But that team is more than that. It’s a team that has made the playoffs every season but one since 2017. It’s a team that currently has the best record in MLB.

Is it because of an ownership group willing to spend in a way that most of their peers won’t? No. Milwaukee is 19th in payroll this year and was 22nd last year, when it finished with the best record in baseball. I’m on record calling out Mariners ownership for its lack of spending, but the Brewers have proved you can win without throwing an ungodly amount of dollars on talent.

Which is in stark contrast to the Mariners.

Seriously … what is Jerry Dipoto’s résumé right now? What has the Mariners’ president of baseball operations accomplished since the fall of 2015, when he took the job as GM? This team has made the playoffs twice in his tenure. The M’s are currently 59-66, four games out of first place in the American League West. All that World Series talk after taking the Blue Jays to seven games in the ALCS last year? Gone. And there is little sign that things are going to improve.

Yes, the M’s have the ninth-best farm system in the league, according to MLB.com. But it’s not so promising that a decade of title contention is on the horizon. The truth is the M’s are likely to lose some of their prime pitching talent as free agency nears, and it’s unknown whether they will be able to replace said arms in the coming years.

Yes, Kade Anderson has been annihilating the minor leagues. Maybe he’ll be a Cy Young candidate down the road. Or maybe he’ll be another Four A” guy that was masterful at the lower levels but miserable at the top. That would hardly be a unique story.

The truth about the Mariners right now is that they are hapless in a year that was never marketed as a rebuilding season. It was one thing for the 2019 M’s to win 68 games after Dipoto declared that it was a “step back” season. It’s another to dip into substandard baseball when myriad pundits expected the team to make a title run.

I’ll say here as I’ve said many times before — it’s a hell of a lot easier to write a column criticizing a team than it is to run one. And Dipoto has made some shrewd moves in his time at the top. The trade for Luis Castillo in 2022? Marvelous. The acquisitions of Eugenio Suárez and Josh Naylor at the trade deadline last year? Hat tip. But as Bill Parcells famously said: “You are what your record says you are.

There is a team in Milwaukee that responded to adversity with action. The Brewers may not have a World Series attached to their name in this century, but they have been regularly competing. The Mariners, meanwhile, are on the verge of again sinking to irrelevance as this season continues to spiral out of control. At some point, the front office needs to be called out.

There is still a month-and-a-half to go in this season. It’s not too late for the M’s to turn things around. But history suggests they won’t.

Underperformers such as Cal Raleigh, Bryan Woo, and Naylor — among others — deserve to be called out. But the people tasked with putting the proper talent on the field? They should not escape criticism.