The easiest thing to do with the Mariners’ offseason is still to roll our eyes at it. Nobody in Seattle needed a parade because the front office avoided the deepest end of free agency again. But a little more than a month into the season, the American League has made this conversation a lot messier than it felt in January.

The Mariners committed $99.75 million to new and re-signed major league free-agent contracts over the winter, and most of that money went to one player: Josh Naylor. That doesn’t exactly scream wild ambition. That also doesn’t count the $5.8 million they took on in the trade for Brendan Donovan. It doesn’t erase the frustration of another offseason where fans wanted the club to act bigger and more aggressively.…