SEATTLE — This offseason will be one of changes for the Seattle Mariners.

In the last two days, the Mariners fired several members of the coaching staff and it was announced that Dan Wilson wouldn't be returning as manager of the team in 2027.

With those staff changes and the regression of several players in mind, Seattle will be entering this offseason with more questions than answers just 11 months from being one game away from the first World Series in franchise history.

Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto addressed those questions and more in a news conference Monday at T-Mobile Park.

Here's several takeaways from Dipoto's "exit interview" on the 2026 season:

When Wilson was hired in the middle of the 2024 season, he entered the job with no previous managerial experience, but a lengthy familiarity with Seattle as a player, broadcaster and minor league instructor.

Dipoto described Wilson's interview as "35 years long" with the Mariners. The candidates for the job this time around will come from outside the organization and it will be "exhaustive," per Dipoto. It will likely include someone with managerial experience, which neither Wilson nor Scott Servais had beforehand.

"(Managerial experience is) not a prerequisite," Dipoto said Monday. "It will be preferred. We will go outside (the organization) to hire our manager. We need fresh thought. We need something new. It could be a shift in programming, it could be a shift in messaging, it could be a shift in language. We'll collaborate with whoever our future manager is and try to find the right person.

"If that person has major league managerial experience, that would be preferred. But generally speaking, we're just looking for somebody who has high character, growth mindset, has the ability to think strategically in the context of a major league game, when that happens very quickly."

There have already been several names reported as potential candidates, including current Arizona Diamondbacks skipper Torey Lovullo and former M's third base coach, and current Pittsburgh Pirates bench coach, Kristopher Negron.

Dipoto said the team doesn't have a shortlist of candidates right now, but what Dipoto described in what the organization is looking seems to fit the bill for what Negron, Lovullo, and other names reported could bring.

When discussing the team's managerial search, Dipoto seemed confident that the team will have no shortage of options.

A common thread of thought throughout this season is that Seattle, who finished the season 76-86, has one of the most talented rosters in the American League yet grossly underachieved.

If that is a common thought across league circles, it would make the skipper role in the Pacific Northwest a lot more appealing than other jobs involving teams with a similar record who are looking for manager. That was a sentiment echoed by Dipoto.

"Eleven months ago, we were seven outs (eight outs) away (from a World Series)," Dipoto said. "It's roughly the same group of players. Right now, we have a group of young players, we have six major league starters who are all homegrown and under the age of 30, we have the runner up in the MVP from a year ago who's our homegrown catcher, we have the center fielder who's a homegrown player, he's 25-years-old, has been top 10 in the MVP three times in the last five years, Colt Emerson, Cole Young, Brendan Donovan, (Dominic Canzone), Josh Naylor. This is a really talented roster. And none of those guys are outside the prime years of their careers. There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to reset, look ourselves in the mirror."

Dipoto also mentioned the conversations the front office has already had with most of the roster as a point of confidence that the train will get back on the tracks in 2027.

"We've had a lot of conversations privately with our roster this past week," Dipoto said. "And I know every one of them is already hungry to come back and prove this was an aberration."

Despite the many coaching changes the Mariners made Monday, the pitching staff remained untouched.

Dipoto opted to retain pitching coach Pete Woodworth and director of pitching strategy Trent Blank for 2027.

This decision was made despite a second-half collapse from the staff. Seattle's team ERA dropped from 3.61 from the beginning of the season to the All-Star Break to 5.09 in the second half.

The Mariners finished the year with a team ERA of 4.20, which ranked 19th in the major leagues. Seattle's starting pitcher ERA (4.05) ranked 10th in the majors and the bullpen ERA (4.46) ranked 22nd.

"(Pete and Trent's) goodness over time and the quality of the programs that they have put together are unquestionably awesome," Dipoto said. "And those guys communicate incredibly well. Our pitchers love them for what they provide. Trent has all the TLC in the world and the ability to keep guys healthy moving forward, and (Woodworth) is as good a messenger that exists in that clubhouse space. From 2021 until ... midseason of 2026, we're one of the three or four best pitching staffs, 1-through-13, in MLB. And we don't want to take three months and use that as a criteria to ruin a program that's been the backbone of what we've done for a decade."

Included among the retained coaches is senior director of hitting strategy Edgar Martinez, who was brought back as a hitting coach before being promoted when Wilson was hired as manager in 2024.

Martinez will have a role with the team in some capacity, but might not be in the dugout consistently as he was this past season.

Since being eliminated from playoff contention officially Thursday, several players have put some of the blame on themselves for how the season went.

Dipoto did not absolve himself of responsibility.

"Collectively, we failed," Dipoto said. "We failed to play up to our own expectations, which are very high. ... We just collectively underperformed in every area. ... All of these things, this is what I'm in charge of, is overseeing all of it. So the blame falls on me first. Part of my job is making decisions for how to get better and make sure this doesn't happen again, and it happened. Failure is only failure if you don't learn from it."

Dipoto, like many players on the roster, refused to blame injuries for why the season went off the rails and pointed towards the passivity that many players have in why the team didn't turn things around.

"We had a tendency this year to just shrug it off (and say) 'we're more talented than the teams around us, don't worry it'll happen' instead of going out and making our own thing happen," Dipoto said. "That's what accountability looks like. It's calling that out in the moment, it's stopping it before it gets rolling any further, it's being truthful in our discussion with one another. And for years, our program has always been built on truth. We tell the truth with love, and sometimes, you might get your nose out of joint for a moment, but you wake up the next day and you realize that you're loved. You're just trying to help one another."

This year's record of 76-86 was the same record that the Mariners had when Dipoto took over the team in 2015. They had a 10-win improvement in 2016.

"In the last six years (of my tenure), I feel proud of what we've accomplished on the field (but) it's been incomplete," Dipoto said. "This year was an opportunity to take that next or final step and we just didn't. If I didn't have a job today, it'd be justified. We failed. And we're gonna attempt to learn from that failure and lean into, what I think is, a great foundation to build on."

Seattle's defense this year was the worst all-time in the Statcast era in several metrics.

The Mariners had -57 outs above average (OAA) this season per Baseball Savant, which ranked dead last in the majors and was 15 OAA less than the 29th team in the majors in that category, the Athletics (-42).

Dipoto doesn't feel like Seattle needs to make specific moves to improve the defense, and shifted to focus on the players getting back to the form they had before this season.

"Some of it is just the regression of players who have been good defensive players," Dipoto said. " ... I say this, and this is just real, being a bad defender is a choice. Being a good defender sometimes requires a skill set that some players may or may not have. Our players have the skills to do it and, for a five-year stretch, we were somewhere between slightly above average to, in some areas, a well-above-average major league defense and we didn't beat ourselves. This year, we led the league in throwing errors. It was awful to watch and it was awful for the players."

Whatever changes the Mariners make to their roster, they'll have an abbreviated timeline to do it.

The current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the MLB and MLB Players Association expires Dec. 1. Seattle will have a month between when the World Series ends and when the current CBA expires to make any roster moves affecting the 40-man roster.

This, on top of looking for a manager, puts pressure on Seattle to make whatever changes it feels are necessary before Dec. 1.

However, the Mariners are opting to remain intentional with their process and won't rush or force any issues despite the expiration date.

"We can't really think about a CBA," Dipoto said. "We have to approach this like 2027 starts in mid-February for us. We're looking to build out our roster. We're going to have a very busy October and November, looking for a manager and staff. Markets will open and we, like we always are, will be very aggressive in trying to go out and fill out the holes that we have and try to find those final pieces. Along the way, (we'll) do an audit (on) ourselves. Why do we keep running into the same problem with ... our inability to find a right-hand bat who can enter our mark and seamlessly transition? (Randy Arozarena) did it and did an amazing job of producing maybe the best season he's ever had and produced throughout his time as a Mariner. It's been hard for us otherwise."

Dipoto was contrite and direct when addressing the failures of 2026, and it shouldn't have been anything else.

Bullpen will still be a question mark going into offseason, which was acknowledged by Dipoto as an area in need of more depth. Arozarena and shortstop J.P. Crawford are also free agents, and with the way he spoke, it seems like the team is focused on finding replacements for those two rather than bringing them back.

The 2027 as a whole, for all 30 teams, is still a question mark due to CBA negotiations and the very real possibility of a lockout. However, if there's one overarching takeaways from this week among players, staff and Dipoto, it is that the failures of this year have led to a necessary reset of mindset in the organization.

And that rest could be exactly what's needed by the team going into next season.