Mariners General Manager Jerry Dipoto and Manager Scott Servais met with the media on Monday at Safeco Field to discuss the club’s 89-win season in 2018 and what’s in store for 2019 and beyond.

Here are some highlights from Monday:

Dipoto and Servais on Assessing the 2018 Season

We failed to reach the goal. The goal was to get into the postseason. That’s how I look at the season. That being said, the overall body of work, we did win 89 games. On paper, you should feel good about it. We did a lot of good things there…89 wins is a positive year on paper, but ultimately not where we wanted to get to. — Scott Servais We picked a unique season in which 89 wins wasn’t enough to get us to the postseason, which has been the exception rather than the rule since the two wild card format was adopted….we have built this with the intent of being sustainable. We want to be forward-thinking. Since 2016, we’ve had the 5th-best record in the American League. We are trapped behind 4 teams that have had extraordinary success and we’ve not been able to get over that last hump. We’ve put very productive teams on the field. We’ve won games…Now we have to figure out as we move forward what it takes for us to catch the front-runners, but we don’t want to make it to a Wild Card Game; we want to be a consistent playoff presence. For us to get there — and ultimately win a World Series — we’re going to have to reassess what we are in the marketplace and those meetings start now. — Jerry Dipoto

Dipoto and Servais on the Mariners core players

We have a core that’s been here for a while — a group that Jerry and I inherited when we came on board — and there’s a group adding and extending to that core. That’s where Mitch Haniger and Marco Gonzales and Edwin Díaz fit in. It takes a collective group. Again, ultimately we haven’t reached our goal here. In doing so, you look at a team — we have meetings, starting this morning, what direction we want to head and where to go. We may have to make a few changes to get to the goal. To Jerry’s point, it’s not just to get into a Wild Card game. It’s to get deep into the postseason and win a World Championship. — Scott Servais We have added a number of young, controllable players with the intent that they become the next wave of core roster members, and I think they’ve proven that we picked the right guys. We watched some remarkable individual seasons this year from players who really didn’t have a whole lot of track record in the Big Leagues. Not only from younger, less-experienced players like Mitch Haniger or even Edwin Díaz as a two-plus player in this league, Marco Gonzales in his first full season, but guys who’ve been around the game a little bit longer like Wade LeBlanc, who really broke out this year. It was a remarkable season for those guys. — Jerry Dipoto

Dipoto on why tearing it down doesn’t make sense for the Mariners

The likelihood of ever really truly considering a tear-it-down model, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. That being said, there are a lot of alternatives to tear downs. When I look at tear-downs, it’s everybody get out, we’re starting over. That doesn’t make a lot of sense because we just talked about so many positive elements of where our team is. Guys like Haniger, guys like Marco Gonzales, guys like Edwin Díaz — these are the pieces you’re trying to build around, not the pieces that you’re trying to send away. We want to be conscious of the fact that we have built up what we think is that next sustainable, young core and build toward it. Those are guys who are all in their mid-20s. There’s no reason for us to start from scratch, but we do need to reassess where this roster is and take a look at not just 2019, but how we catch the teams that are in front of us. — Jerry Dipoto

Dipoto on different approaches in roster construction

A tear-down, you’re just selling off anything that is not nailed down. I think when you take a step back, there’s a potential of doing some things smaller with the hope that a step back promotes two forward. A tear-down is just ripping it to the studs and moving to the back of the pack and hope that over the course of the next 5, 6, 7 years you can build forward. We will not do the latter. It just doesn’t make sense where our roster is. But anything else is certainly in play for us. — Jerry Dipoto

Dipoto on the club’s goal in constructing the roster

Our goal is to win the World Series as soon as we can. If we’re not going to win it in 2018, then our goals, starting with meetings this morning and as we move forward, are to determine what our best timeline is. And when we determine what a timeline looks like, what we’re doing is we’re looking at what we think the core of a championship team looks like within our player base, and their ages mean a lot. You’re trying to build around a general age group. — Jerry Dipoto

Dipoto on prospects who could make an impact in the short-term and the long-term future