ORLANDO, Fla. — As Jerry Dipoto sees it, his decade-long tenure in charge of the Mariners baseball operations has been defined by two parts.
The first part covered his first three seasons in Seattle, from 2016 through 2018, when the Mariners fielded a capable but aging team that ultimately didn’t achieve much.
The second era began when Dipoto launched the first full-fledged rebuild in franchise history going into 2019, which eventually led to the end of a two-decade playoff drought in 2022 and to the cusp of the Mariners’ first World Series this year.
“I like Part II a lot better than I like Part I,” Dipoto said.
For his part in all that, Dipoto on Tuesday was named the Baseball America Executive of the Year, the first Mariners executive to win the award since Pat Gillick in 2001, which, until this year, was the last time the club had won the American League West.
“It’s an organizational award, truly,” Dipoto said Tuesday afternoon at the MLB Winter Meetings. “It takes a village. I’ve said it for years. We work with unbelievable people. And most of what we have been able to do, we have done through building an awesome foundation through scouting, development and trades, and it’s [a credit to] the people in this room, and some people who are no longer in the room.
“We put together a good organization, and I’m proud of it. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished.”
For Dipoto, general manager Justin Hollander and the rest of the operations staff, the award is a recognition of what the Mariners built — and perhaps some shared belief in where this team could be headed.
With a core built around Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodriguez, Josh Naylor and a talented pitching staff, the Mariners have for several years talked about being a consistent contender — and they have the high-end farm system now to dream about taking hold of the AL West in the way the Houston Astros did over the last decade.
“There really is never a finish line, right?” Dipoto said. “You’re only as good as your ability to keep churning and keep developing.
“And while we’ll continue to evolve our model, mold our model in certain places … I don’t think we’re going to bust it and start over again. We like the model. And right now we’re starting to see some tangible results of what that looks like. We still have goals that we want to achieve that we haven’t achieved yet. So plenty to do, but I think the infrastructure is the way we want it, and we’ll keep relying on the things that we do. We’ll keep throwing our slider.”
The Mariners went 90-72 this season and in October came within eight outs of reaching the franchise’s first World Series before losing to Toronto in Game 7 of the AL Championship Series.
Since 2021, only the Astros (.576/466-343) and the Yankees (.569/461-349) have had a better overall record than the Mariners (.547/443-367) in the American League.
“One of the reasons that he wins that award and one of the things that he’s great at is empowering people to do their jobs and grow and try new things,” Hollander said of Dipoto. “And I’ll say it: I’ve screwed [stuff] up over the years, and he’s never come in and closed the door and said, like, ‘What the you-know- what?’ It’s like, ‘Let’s learn from this.’ And that’s something that I’ve tried to learn from.”
Dipoto is entering his 11th full season in 2026 in charge of Mariners baseball operations, making him the longest-tenured executive in that role in club history.
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