Introducing The Vibe Compass

Charting our way through stepping back

While, not unlike the Baron Harkonnen, I have found immersing myself in the bubbling black goo of the Mariners’ offseason to be a rejuvenating experience, I recognize that it serves as toxic slime to the majority of the fanbase. You want your team to be good, and they will not be. That is frustrating for you and, while there is a certain necessary, brutal healthiness in focusing on their inadequacies I recognize the tolerance for that goes only so far. SO, let’s take a break and introduce: The Mariners Vibe Compass.

The Vibe Compass is the brainchild of my friend and colleague Samuel. It’s a malleable tool for plotting where various Mariner things fall for you. It is not dependent on statistics or metrics, although it certainly can (and in our example below certainly is) be influenced by them. There is a therapeutic element to the act of remembering and charting things; of sorting and ranking all the memories and emotions we keep jumbled up in us. Samuel and I want to offer the template for you to use in whichever fashion you could find enjoyable. Maybe plot individual Mariner seasons, player careers, or facial hairs. Rank press confer-no, no do not do that (bops self on nose with rolled up newspaper). We are CHANGING GEARS.

For the purposes of example and discussion, Samuel and I chose to chart the vibes of a sampling of Mariner personnel moves from the start of the rebuild to today (2018-present). I give to you, the Mariner Vibe Compass of the Great Step Back:

A maps is only useful if it has boundaries, so let’s briefly discuss the four corners of Vibetopia:

• UNSERIOUS/UNCOOL: TRADING ROBINSON CANO AND EDWIN DIAZ
  
  The rotten fruit of a poisoned tree of ideology. The answer to the question: “What if you typed ‘build me an organizational philosophy’ into an AI trained solely by having a McKinsey Consultant read it Malcolm Gladwell?” The singular move that decimated the coolest roster the Mariners had since the Griffey Years, and set them on the course to eschew anything resembling courage, inspiration, and charisma.
  
  Do you want the 54% press conference? Because this, right here, is how you get the 54% press conference.
  
  I could write for days about the exhausting, soul-lacerating way this organization has twisted the Robinson Cano deal into an unforgivable sin never to be repeated under any circumstances. I could point out that, for all the thousands upon thousands of words spent on “sustainability”, “saving for the right time”, and “replenishing the farm” this trade did absolutely none of those things. The return on the trade has all but fully washed through the organization, producing next to nothing in terms of actual success on the field. The team has not re-invested any of the savings from the Cano deal into the on-field product, nor will it ever.
  
  None of the legitimately positive things the Mariners have done since the trade (drafted well, developed arms, Julio/Raleigh, etc.) are a result of this transaction. All the background re-shaping of how the organization works could have been completed while simply allowing two very good Seattle Mariners to stay on the team.
  
  Trading stars for prospects is loser stuff, and the model the M’s adopted in order to justify it is one that only the very, very shrewdest organizations in the game can pull off to even make the playoffs. The modern era of MLB continues to tilt towards the franchises most ready and willing to regularly spend top 5-10 money on big league payroll. The Mariners promised they would be among those teams back in 2018, and they have completely broken that promise. Incredibly, historically unserious stuff.

• UNCOOL/SERIOUS: TRADING KENDALL GRAVEMAN FOR ABRAHAM TORO
  
  Ol’ Jerry Dipoto really thought he’d really cooked one up back in the summer of 2021. The Mariners were a hard charging band of total nonsense; one that found itself competing for a playoff spot deep into the summer despite absolutely zero plans or aspiration to do so.
  
  The evening prior to the trade they had just capped perhaps the signature regular season victory of the Dipoto tenure, an 11-8 victory over the hated Houston Astros in which the team not only came back from a 7-0 deficit but did so with one of the most iconic Mariner home runs of the decade. You want to talk serious, cool and seriously cool? BEHOLD:

  

  It was then perhaps the wettest of possible farts, vibely-speaking of course, that the team traded Kendall Graveman - the winning pitcher of the very same iconic victory referenced above and one of the clubhouse’s indisputable leaders - to those very same hated Astros in exchange for Abraham Toro. They even played Houston the same day. In Seattle. Lol and, may I add for posterity’s sake, lmao.
  
  It was a serious move. It really was. Trading an aging relief pitcher on the cusp of free agency for a young player with potential multi-positional versatility and league average offense is a move crafty franchises make. However the optics of this move, which were clearly not considered before making it, were so incredibly repellant to literally anyone associated or interested in the 2021 Mariners, y’know, being good that any sort of coolness potentially derived for being shrewd was utterly lost.
  
  The trade infuriated the Mariners’ veterans, completely ruined the team’s relationship with Kyle Seager - one of the greatest players in franchise history - and also had the misfortune of not working out at all. Abraham Toro was not good, and has bounced around the league ever since. (He’s actually a free agent right now, and would potentially be a decent fit for the 2025 roster. That move would be funny and practical enough to make it fall slightly into the “Cool/Serious” quadrant of the Vibe Compass. Do it, Jerry.)

• COOL/SERIOUS: ACQUIRING LUIS CASTILLO AND RANDY AROZARENA
  
  Twin moves here, both adhering to the same principles: Players who are good at baseball generally tend to be cool, and trying really hard to win baseball games in the here and now is very cool.
  
  Luis Castillo came to Seattle as perhaps the biggest gamble of the Dipoto Era. The team traded four prospects, including two of its top six in Noelvi Marte and Edwin Arroyo. It worked, immediately and over the longterm. Castillo has been fantastic in Seattle, and was never better than the summer he was acquired, pitching them not only into their first playoff appearance in 21 years but also making two outstanding postseason starts. Going for it is the coolest thing any baseball team can do, and acquiring Luis was the most the Jerry Dipoto Mariners have ever gone for it. And it worked! Sad that such an occurrence was then outlawed by congress and is now unable to be repeated. Alas.
  
  Anyway, the Randy Arozarena acquisition last summer is a variant of all the above. Randy is not as good a player as Luis, and the 2024 Mariners certainly were not as serious as the 2022 team, but he is among the very coolest players in baseball. That he may be sad and lonely in Seattle does not mean bringing him here was a mistake, but merely means the Mariners should work around the clock to become cooler to help him feel at home.
  

• COOL/UNSERIOUS: RE-SIGNING ICHIRO
  
  Every criticism the Mariners receive for over-tapping the nostalgia account balance is valid and accurate. A franchise devoid of real ideas often finds itself reminding you of the handful of times they didn’t embarrass you as compensation. Being nostalgic is, as a general rule, deeply uncool. HOWEVER, there may not be a current living human cooler than Ichiro. As he was as a player his existence on the Vibe Compass defies all convention and norm.
  
  Signing him at age 45 (!) to a minor league contract for the sole purpose of finishing his career in MLB’s Opening Series in Japan was not the kind of thing a serious baseball franchise does, and the 2019 Mariners were among the most unserious teams in franchise history (complimentary, actually). Ichiro did not get a hit in six plate appearances, an occurrence that would have excited the crowd so thoroughly their shouts would have lifted the Tokyo Dome off the ground. It did not matter then, and does not matter now. The least cool thing Ichiro has or ever will do is cooler than the coolest moment of 98% of humanity.
  
  Zero criticism, full endorse. A+++++++ would shoehorn into lineup to honor a damn near unmatched legacy again.
  
  P.S. This serves as an excellent excuse to remind you to rewatch the Dorktown Episode focusing on the Ichiro years. No piece of media has ever, nor I doubt will ever again so perfectly capture the essence of this franchise we do actually love with our entire hearts.

So that’s the Vibe Compass. It will most likely make a return to the newsletter moving forward. For now if you’re chart-inclined I’d encourage you to use the template to make your own. I’d say drop it in the comments but the comments are not on, and will never be on.