​SEATTLE, WASHINGTON – MARCH 30: General Manager Jerry Dipoto speaks with manager Scott Servais #9 of the Seattle Mariners during Opening Day at T-Mobile Park on March 30, 2023 in Seattle, Washington. (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images) | Getty Images Nobody gets to fire two managers in two years.Jeff Passan went on the radio on Tuesday and placed the blame for the Mariners season at the feet of manager Dan Wilson. Passan heavily implied Wilson should be replaced, using logic I’ve seen plenty throughout the season: This roster is far too talented to be playing this poorly.And, no, it’s not.Let’s just look at some projections. There are plenty of models out there, and you should consider them all, but I use Steamer because it’s 1) easily accessible through FanGraphs, 2) the most conservative on this iteration of the Mariners, and 3) disturbingly accurate at projecting their full-season fWAR. Here we can see how Steamer compares to the Mariners actual fWAR since 2016.Now, WAR are not wins (we’ll get there), but projected WAR are still quite good at projecting the actual standings. In fact, at just about any point in the season, if you want to know how well a team will play the rest of the year, you’re about as well off trusting preseason projections as their performance to date. That’s why things like FanGraphs playoff odds can look skeptical of surges and collapses, and why the Mariners still have good odds to make the playoffs.This makes projections an essential reference for assessing a team, pre-, mid- and post-season. Yes, I appreciate “um actually the forecast clearly states” sounds like the thing I say before getting shoved into a locker. But if you’re demanding someone get fired from a baseball team on the internet, well, I suppose I’ll find you in the locker with me.We can see a few things from this plot. First, there’s a nice linear relationship between projected WAR and the final standings, but there’s clearly some variance. Lots of things determine how many games a team wins beyond their talent on Opening Day. Teams can play above, at, or below their talent level. They can get good, neutral, or poor luck. They can run up against injuries and schedules and umpires and God. Perhaps coaches matter, too.We can also see the Mariners tend to get out of their seasons what they put in. In Jerry Dipoto’s tenure, the roster has either met or exceeded expectations every single season. They’ve been exceptionally predictable, a metronome set to 54 beats per minute — the perfect tempo for a dirge.Let’s look at this another way. I created some buckets for preseason WAR and found the end-of-season outcomes for each. The table below shows the median win total, as well as the high- and low results:Tier (Range)np10p25p50p75p9015–20 (Uncompetitive)1427.3%32.4%38.0%41.4%43.3%20–29 (Terrible)4936.3%40.7%43.8%48.1%52.6%29–33 (Bad)4939.4%42.6%47.5%53.1%56.0%33–38 (Average)4844.1%47.5%50.3%55.7%58.8%38–42 (Good)4847