Legendary Mariners broadcaster Rick Rizzs announced he will retire after the 2026 season. The club confirmed a stable broadcast-team lineup for the season. At the same time, Expedia Group announced it will lay off 162 Washington-state employees as part of a restructuring.
Seattle legend Rick Rizzs announces retirement after 2026 season
An emotional announcement from legendary Seattle Mariners broadcaster Rick Rizzs that the 2026 season will be his last marked an important milestone not only for him but for the club's fans. In an interview with MLB.com, the veteran—whose voice has been an integral part of Seattle summers for decades—shared his feelings and hopes for his farewell season.
Rizzs said he had considered retiring after last season, but two things made him delay his departure. First, the Mariners came closer than ever last year to reaching the World Series—the MLB's ultimate playoff series. That near miss fueled his desire to stay and try again. Second, he wanted his farewell to be intentional and public, not a sudden exit. He wants to share his final season with the people he has been describing baseball to all these years. His farewell-season plan is already set: Rizzs will call all 81 Mariners home games, while his schedule for road games will be reduced. In two weeks he will join the team for spring training in Arizona to begin his penultimate season on the job.
For those unfamiliar with baseball terminology: the World Series is the final playoff series of Major League Baseball (MLB) that determines the season's champion. The Mariners are one of the few teams that have never won the title, and the pursuit of that goal is central to players, coaches and fans. Spring training is the preseason camp where teams prepare for the regular season.
This announcement goes beyond a simple change in the broadcast booth. Rizzs’s voice is the soundtrack of summer—for wins and losses and the club’s history—for many generations of fans. His decision to stay, driven by the hope of a championship, adds a deeply personal layer of motivation for the entire team in the coming seasons. Fans and players now have a clear and emotional goal: “Win it for Rizzs.” His farewell season will be more than a string of games; it will be a long, poignant goodbye to a man who was the voice of hope and passion for baseball in Seattle for nearly four decades. It’s a story of devotion, unfinished peaks, and the desire to leave behind not just memories but possibly a championship legacy.
Mariners announce broadcast team for 2026 season
In baseball, news about broadcast crews often attracts as much interest as trade rumors, because those voices become part of the summer for fans. The Seattle Mariners made an important announcement confirming that familiar and beloved commentators and analysts will return for 2026, even as one of the team’s primary voices prepares for his final season behind the microphone.
As reported by Seattle Sports, the key figure in the announcement is Rick Rizzs, the legendary caller for whom the upcoming season will be his 41st and final with the Mariners. Rizzs, whose tenure with the club is the longest on record, will remain the lead radio voice but will gradually reduce his participation and hand off duties. His colleague Aaron Goldsmith, who has been with the team for 14 seasons, will continue as the lead television voice, providing continuity and broadcast quality. Angie Mentink, whose experience covering the club approaches 30 years, will continue as an analyst on both TV and radio and will participate in pre- and postgame programming, underscoring her multifaceted role in the broadcast.
Former Mariners players familiar to fans will return to the analyst team. Ryan Rowland-Smith, a former Mariners pitcher who now also works for MLB Network, will serve as an analyst for selected games. Notably, Jay Buhner, a Mariners Hall of Famer who returned to the airwaves last season after more than a decade away, will again join the team as a television analyst for select games. Dave Valle, who also contributes to MLB Network, will continue his role as a television analyst. It’s worth noting that Brad Adam, who covered the Mariners for ROOT Sports for 26 seasons (that network ceased broadcasting at the end of 2025), will now join the team working on TV pre- and postgame shows. Gary Hill Jr., the radio executive producer and engineer, will expand his duties this season to include radio commentary, partially offsetting Rizzs’s reduced participation. Radio broadcasts will continue to air on Seattle Sports 710 AM and the Mariners’ radio network.
This announcement not only confirms broadcast stability but also signals a transitional period tied to the departure of a key figure like Rick Rizzs. His farewell season will likely be an emotional event for fans raised on his calls. At the same time, the club shows a balance between veteran experience—such as Buhner and Valle—and the creation of new roles, as with Hill. Buhner’s return after a long break and Adam’s inclusion after ROOT Sports’ closure show how the Mariners value ties to the past while adapting to changes in the media landscape. For fans, it means that in 2026 they can still expect high-quality, expertise-rich, and nostalgic game coverage—especially important alongside other positive club developments, such as acquiring promising players and having seven prospects in MLB Pipeline’s top 100.
Layoffs at Expedia: restructuring amid growth
Following recent cuts at Amazon, another major Seattle tech company has announced significant layoffs. Expedia Group, a global leader in online travel booking, will lay off 162 Washington-state employees in April, reflecting continued optimization across the sector despite strong company financials.
According to a notice filed with the Washington State Employment Security Department, permanent layoffs at Expedia Group will affect state employees between April 1 and 19. The layoffs will impact both employees at the company’s headquarters in the Interbay area of Seattle and a number of remote Washington-based workers. Affected roles include content designers, data engineers, directors, product managers and software engineers. Part of the reductions, the WARN notice (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) states, is related to “the relocation or outsourcing of Expedia operations or employee positions.” A company spokesperson told The Seattle Times this is part of organizational changes: “We are eliminating some roles and opening others as we maintain discipline in evaluating the skills we will need in the future. We are also simplifying our structure and reducing organizational layers to move faster and with more accountability.”
Interestingly, LinkedIn painted a mixed picture amid these layoffs. On one hand, numerous posts appeared from affected employees. Shannon Riddle, a senior user research manager from Seattle, wrote: “After 7 years I was impacted by Expedia layoffs today.” Daniel Buffington, a program manager from Missouri, said: “After more than a decade solving hard problems with great people at Expedia, my role was recently eliminated as part of organizational changes.” Both profiles are now marked “open to work.” On the other hand, Expedia recruiters were actively advertising open roles on LinkedIn. The company’s careers page listed 271 available positions at the time of publication, including 118 in the U.S., 61 in India and 26 in the U.K. This contrast highlights the company’s strategy of “reprofiling” staff—cutting some positions while hiring for others that may better align with new priorities.
Founded in 1996 and owning brands like Hotels.com and Vrbo, Expedia Group bills itself as “one of the world’s largest online travel companies.” Its 2024 annual report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) showed about 16,500 employees across nearly 50 countries, with half in tech roles. These are not the company’s first cuts: last year, 3% of the global workforce was eliminated. Notably, these measures come despite strong financial results. For the third quarter of 2025 (company reporting often leads the calendar year), Expedia reported revenue of $4.4 billion, up 9% year over year, and net income of $959 million, an impressive 40% year-over-year increase.
However, as The Seattle Times notes, Expedia faces a tough competitive environment. The company not only competes with other online travel agencies and lodging aggregators like Booking.com and Airbnb, but also directly with hotels, airlines, car rentals and even search engines like Google, which are increasingly moving into travel services. In that context, the “simplifying of structure and reduction of organizational layers” cited by management may be an attempt to boost operational efficiency and speed up decision-making to better compete in a dynamic market. Thus, the Expedia layoffs reflect a wider trend in tech, where even profitable companies restructure to optimize costs, reallocate resources toward new strategic goals, and adapt to rapidly changing market conditions—moves that nevertheless have immediate human consequences for hundreds of employees and their families.
