Earlier this week, longtime Seattle Mariners broadcaster Rick Rizzs announced that the 2026 season will be his last. He'll be retiring after 41 years in the M's broadcast booth - and more than 50 years in professional baseball.

It's hard to believe that 2027 will be the first Mariners season without Dave Niehaus or Rick Rizzs at the helm, but it will be. Rizzs alone has been the broadcaster for 80 percent of the franchise's existence. Simply put, you cannot tell the story of the Seattle Mariners without Rick Rizzs. While the players created moments on the field, Rizzs has brought those moments to life for four decades.

Speaking at his retirement press conference on Wednesday, Rizzs proclaimed that the Mariners were going to win the World Series in his final campaign.

And I hope they do, because nobody deserves it more as I discussed on the most recent 'Refuse to Lose' podcast:

"I don't remember who said this in the wake of Dave Niehaus's death, which it's hard to believe is more than a decade ago now, but in the wake of Dave Niehaus's death somebody said that the Seattle Mariners never, and I'm paraphrasing: The Seattle Mariners have never gotten to the World Series and that's too bad because there's one man who deserved it more than anybody else and that was Dave Niehaus.

And now as we sit here more than a decade later, I want the World Series for me, I want it for you, I want it for the players, I want it for all of us, but now I want it for Rick Rizzs. Because if Dave Niehaus is number one in terms of who deserves a Seattle Mariners World Series, Rick Rizzs is number two."

The Mariners have been to the playoffs in 1995, 1997, 2000, 2001, 2022 and 2025, advancing to the American League Championship Series four times, but always falling short. 

The M's will enter the 2026 campaign as one of the favorites in the American League after advancing to Game 7 of the ALCS a season ago. This offseason, they've bolstered the roster by re-signing Josh Naylor, acquiring reliever Jose Ferrer and adding platoon player Rob Refsnyder.

There is still more potential work to be done, with Brendan Donovan still looming as a trade target and Eugenio Suarez still a possibility in free agency. The bullpen could also use another arm.

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